Examines the relationship between identity status categories and the experience of parental influence on career development. Life stories of 11 young adults regarding significant events through which their parents influenced them were classified by narrative structure based on Gergen and Gergen's macrostructure framework. Results indicated…

Highlights the relatively unexplored relationship between ordinary language explanations of career behavior and formal theories of career development. Classifies ordinary explanations of career behavior along two dimensions--extent to which explanations are founded in person or situation and extent to which they account for predictability.…

Although counselors have implicitly understood and used a number of its tenets, an action-theoretical approach is a relatively recent development in career counseling. This digest analyzes the tenets of this approach. An action approach to career counseling sees clients as agents who steer and direct their activities. It represents an integration…

The thesis of this article is that occupational career is constructed through a system of intentional, goal-directed processes in the form of actions and projects as well as other careers, such as the family career and relationship careers. A contextual action theory of career is proposed as an approach that reflects a constructionist stance and…

Suggests that vocation needs to be considered as an expression of a self-other relationship in which there is reciprocity between the self and others. Considers this relationship from an ecological perspective and reviews implications for counselors. (JAC)