Career Endeavour: Pursuing a Cross-Cultural Life Transition: (Cross-Cultural Management)

This book is concerned with trainee professionals and their search for meaning through the determined and creative pursuit of a cross-cultural career transition. Adopting a qualitative research framework, the book describes the career experience of professional trainees from non-Western cultures who have chosen to develop their careers in the West. It examines the process of the initial consideration of change, the exploring of options (including whether to emigrate) and how the many issues and challenges of adapting to the socio-cultural environment of the host country were met. In addition it examines how the process provided the trainee professionals involved with greater self-understanding and how as a result they were able to further consider their future career plans. The book then highlights the implications of these experiences for theory, research and practice.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Preface; Introduction; Conceptualizing life career interaction; Constructing narrative inquiry; Individual narratives; The general narrative of NWC counsellor trainees; Understanding a cross-cultural life career transition; References; Appendix; About the author; Index.

About the Author :
Dr Charles P. Chen is Associate Professor of Counselling Psychology and Canada Research Chair at University of Toronto, Canada.

Review :
Winner of the Canadian Counselling Association (CCA) 2008 Counselling Book Award 'Chen studies cross-cultural career transition through the experiences of those who have made the journey. This book is a significant scholarly and practical contribution to a topic of increasing importance in the modern world.' Larry Cochran, University of British Columbia, Canada 'This book is essential for those interested in career development, whether as academics or practitioners in fields such as counselling. The eight individual stories of cross-cultural transition speak to the outsider in all of us.' Jocelyn Robson, London Metropolitan University, UK ''What sets this book apart from other published works in the field of career development and counsellor education is its focus on an area that has been largely overlooked in the scholarly literature, namely the NWC professionals' experience of meaning making and human agency. Therefore, this book is much needed and long overdue. I am grateful for the opportunity to have read and learned from this excellent book....' Canadian Journal of Counselling 'A key strength of the book is that it presents a very thorough qualitative research study with a methodology and design that is consistent with the purpose of the research. The research methodology, design and data gathering and data analysis processes are clearly described.' Australian Journal of Career Development