ERIC Identifier: ED404584
Publication Date: 1995-00-00
Author: Cochran, Larry
Source: ERIC Clearinghouse on
Counseling and Student Services Greensboro NC., Canadian Guidance and
Counselling Foundation Ottawa (Ontario).
Conflict in Career Decisions. ERIC Digest.
A value conflict arises when one value can only be realized at the expense of
another value. For example, an artist might believe that commercial art provides
security, but little creativity. By contrast, independent artists lack security,
yet enjoy opportunities for creativity. Across the artist's range of options,
realizing one value seems to require foregoing another value. In stronger cases
of conflict, a person's whole set of values can be divided into groups that
clash with one another. In weaker cases, conflict might be limited to a few
values. This digest describes the scope of career value conflict, its
developmental significance, and some strategies of conflict resolution.
SCOPE OF CONFLICT
In three studies of conflict in career
values, Cochran (1977, 1983, 1986) found that approximately one of every three
significant relations among values was conflicting. In one study, 84 senior high
students rated 10 personally selected options on 10 common values (Cochran,
1986). For every pair of values, at least one student demonstrated a conflict.
Values that were particularly prone to conflict included salary, freedom in job,
security, leisure time, and challenge. For example, the promise of higher salary
might tempt persons to sacrifice their free time or fear of insecurity might
frighten persons away from challenges. The diversity of conflict was striking.
Even without evidence from the above studies, it seems that conflict within
decision making is common. Conflict prompts a decision. If an option existed
that met all of one's values, a decision would be unnecessary. Whatever option
is examined, there are apt to be gains and losses, and it is this struggle
between what to realize and what to neglect that calls for a decision.
DEVELOPMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CONFLICT
Individuals
typically embrace career values as means or vehicles of value, not values in
themselves. For example, salary may forward other values (intangible
constituents of the good life), but it has no value in itself. The immediate
implication is that conflicts between career values cannot be adequately
resolved or understood in themselves. Rather, career values are concrete ways to
pose fundamental value issues of a person's vision of a good life. For example,
can one best attain a good life by increasing one's capability of acquiring
goods and services (salary), by avoiding calamities (security), or by becoming a
better person (cultivation of talent)? Now, when one career value conflicts with
another, fundamental questions arise with some urgency. Is it better, for
example, to have the goods most worth having or to become the kind of person
most worth being (Feinberg, 1970)? Conflict provides a natural entrance to
fundamental questions and meanings concerning a person's implicit vision of
life, providing an exploratory depth that might help persons establish stronger
priorities and make wiser adjustments.
While there are many reasons for encouraging greater depth in career
counseling (e.g., preparation for coping with conflict and compromise), two
reasons furnish immediate significance. First, studies of midlife career change
(Osherson, 1980) indicate the presence of intense and unresolved conflicts from
earlier decisions, conflicts so significant that one can speak of a lost self.
One value or set of values is realized at the expense of a core value or set of
values, a loss that can eventually lead to crisis. Second, as Taylor (1977) has
argued, a person's identity is defined by fundamental evaluations of what ideals
should prevail in life. Becoming a person requires a capacity to articulate
one's position with the depth necessary to determine compatible courses of
action. In this sense, resolving conflict helps one become a stronger agent in
shaping a desired life.
SOLVING CAREER VALUE CONFLICTS
Conflict directs attention
and motivates individuals toward a solution. According to Janis and Mann (1977),
if the conflict is significant, solvable, and if there is time, a person is apt
to be motivated (e.g., vigilant) to explore options, gather information, weigh
values, and strive for a solution. Below are seven strategies that counselors
might consider as they counsel clients. The first four strategies emphasize
dissolving conflict (making it disperse) while the last three strategies
emphasize resolving conflict (settling it by resolution).
CORRECTING JUDGMENTS
Conflict is based upon judgments of
options. Often, these judgments are faulty or too extreme. In these cases,
conflict might be dissolved if misjudgments are corrected. For example, the
artist who is noted in the introduction might find that commercial art allows
more creativity than originally thought. Corrections of judgments typically
arise through further exploration of options, gathering information, and gaining
experience. Corrections might also occur through the consideration of temporal
changes in occupations. Beginning commercial artists might work largely under
the direction of others, but over time, they may become responsible for creative
projects. By suspending static judgments of occupations and by considering how
occupations is change over time, conflict can sometimes be realistically
dissolved and converted into anticipated challenges (e.g., to perform well
enough to earn more responsibility).
EXPANDING OPTIONS
Ordinarily, a conflict is limited to a
range of options. For example, creativity and security might conflict with one
another, but only within a particular set of options. By searching more broadly,
a person might discover options accompanied by little or no value conflict. One
should also consider how a value might be satisfied in other outlets, such as
recreational pursuits, volunteer work, or civic participation.
EXAMINING INFLUENCES
A variety of transient and extraneous
influences can make a particular value unjustifiably prominent. A peer group,
family, television, or a romantic relationship, can render a salient value, upon
closer examination, as not pronounced at all. In these cases, it is important to
trace the basis for a value and try to determine whether it will be an enduring
desire or a momentary urgency.
RECONCEPTUALIZATION
Values might clash because they have
been conceived narrowly, vaguely, or in a distorted manner. In these cases,
values can be conceived more broadly, more sharply, or with more balance. By
helping clients to refine, extend, and elaborate meanings, conflict due to
faulty conception can often be reframed and minimized. Also, a more adequate set
of indicators (i.e., how one could determine if an option had the quality
desired) can be identified.
PERSONAL CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT
Consider a conflict between
confidence and challenge. The person feeling confident in jobs that lacking
challenge, might lack confidence in challenging jobs. In a case such as this,
conflict could be dissolved if the person became more capable of undertaking
challenges without excessive discomfort. Numerous difficulties (lack of esteem,
shyness, etc.) call for personal development in order to realize other values
(see discussion of meta-cognitions in Peterson, Sampson, & Reardon, 1991).
SEEKING COMPLEMENTARITY
As ends in themselves, two values
might beat odds. However, if considered as means to fulfill one's vision of a
good life, incompatible values can sometimes be made complementary. For example,
salary and time-off might conflict with one another, but each might also be
important in forwarding a common end such as the quality of family life. By
seeing how each value complements the other as means toward a common end, a
conflict is placed in perspective. A client can consider each value in
preparation for evaluating options and making wise compromises. Common ends can
be explored by asking clients why they prefer, for instance, higher salary.
SETTING PRIORITIES
Perhaps the most natural way to resolve
conflict is to determine which value is most important. Suppose a client was
faced with a choice between a job that was interesting but low in salary, and a
job that was uninteresting but high in salary. Such a conflict might be resolved
by whether or not salary was more important than interest. Sometimes, a priority
is obvious. At other times, a person must decide which value should prevail in
an envisioned course of life. The peculiarity of this decision is that a client
does not decide between options, but between values, weighing their relative
advantages and disadvantages for the future. Occasionally, clients can transcend
a conflict by considering their priorities. For example, a client might find
that the conflicting values are relatively unimportant when compared to other
core values.
CONCLUSION
The techniques chosen in career counseling
largely determine the contents of awareness. Some contents are apt to become
visible while others remain invisible. Unfortunately, traditional techniques of
career counseling tend to make value conflict invisible. For example, conflict
is not apparent in interpreting an interest test or a test of work values.
Conflict can, however, be made apparent through a career grid (Cochran, 1983)
and through some forms of discussion. In short, recognizing and dealing with
conflict requires a change in career counseling practice. The immediate
question, then, is whether or not it would be worthwhile to make value conflict
a part of career counseling.
In cases where conflict can be dissolved, it need not become a focus of
attention: future experiences might stimulate the necessary corrections.
However, if strategies are constructive (e.g., there is nothing wrong with
searching for better options), conflict in such cases need not hamper counseling
with irrelevant and negative content. In cases where conflict must be resolved,
it seems necessary that conflict be recognized, understood, and dealt with in
some way. Resolving conflict is crucial because the clashing values have such
strong developmental implications.
REFERENCES
Cochran, L. (1977). "Difference between supplied
and elicited considerations in career evaluations." Social Behavior and
Personality, 2, 141-147.
Cochran, L. (1983). "Conflict and integration in career decision schemes."
Journal of Vocational Behavior, 23, 87-97.
Cochran, L. (1986). "Conflict in the career decision schemes of high
aspiration youth." Canadian Journal of Counselling, 20, 136-145.
Feinberg, J. (1970). "Moral concepts." London: Oxford University Press.
Janis, I., & Mann, L. (1977). "Decision making." New York: Free Press.
Osherson, S. (1980). "Holding on or letting go." New York: Free Press.
Peterson, G., Sampson, J., & Reardon, R. (1991). "Career development and
services: A cognitive approach." Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Taylor, C. (1977). "What is human agency?" In T. Mischel (Ed.), The self:
Psychological and philosophical issues (pp. 103-135). Totowa, NJ: Rowman &
Littlefield.
