Notes+on+Holland+Aritcle

John Holland's Contributions: A Theory-Ridden Approach to Career Assistance Gary D. Gottfredson Marissa L. Johnston

JOHN L. HOLLAND: -Contributed a clear theory: - organizational power for categorizing persons and environments - easily communicated - included self-directed interventions and instruments - incorporated in a revision of the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory - used in research

- Limitation of Person-Environment Theory: - limited by what is included in the personality and environmental formulations - many influences on people's careers are outside of the scope of P-E theory, such as caring for a child or an aging parent, general psychological health, abusive work environment, work overload, and geographical or other personal constraints

Assessment and Intervention Tools: -Self-Directed Search (SDS; Holland, 1970) developed and tested to be a career intervention - structure for organizing information in parallel terms - makes inferences about the congruence between the self and occupational alternatives - allowed clients to give psychological meaning to daydreams by using an occupational classification - helped clients assess preferences, activities, competencies,and self-estimates - encouraged clients to explore a range of occupational alternatives organized using the typology - was found to increase the occupational options being considered, develop knowledge about the classification of occupations, and reduce clients' concerns about career planning. - similar beneficial effects for both young men and young women.

The Career Attitudes and Strategies Inventory (CASI; Holland & Gottfredson, 1994): - developed to supplement the P-E theory - provided a direct assessment of some other aspects of adult career status - intended to be both an assessment tool and an intervention

Holland's Career in Environmental Context - born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1919 to family with intellectual and artistic interests - graduated from the Municipal University of Omaha - served in the army as a clerk, test proctor, classification interviewer, and psychological assistant - As a personnel clerk during World War II, saw the soldiers as representative of a few personality types - This was the origin of what later developed into his taxonomy of vocational personalities. - Career counselors had mismatched instruments for categorizing persons and occupations. - VPI was composed of occupational titles comprising the six occupational scales of the VPI - had parallel taxonomies for persons and work environments - Graduate degree at the University of Minnesota. - Herbert Feigl, positivist, convinced Holland that data require organization by theory for interpretation - Bill Alston advised Holland to clarify and simplify his theory at Stanford University. - 1973 version of Holland's theory became clear and simple - 1957 - became director of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) - early research involved young people NMSC; early critics suggested his theory applied only to elite - became vice president for research and development at the American College Testing Program (ACT) - opportunity to study large samples of typical, college-bound students - Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in 1969 - tested the theory using large representative samples

The Theory of Vocational Personalities and Work Environments, 1997: - developed to describe, understand, and predict the vocational and other choices people make - intended to account for the differential attraction of environments for certain kinds of people - its applications included the description, understanding, and prediction of behavior in a variety of settings - included description of many kinds of environments - Entry into and persistence in P-E transactions are the primary outcomes the theory is designed to explain. - evolved in response to evidence

The Main Ideas of The Theory of Vocational Personalities and Work Environments (a) work and other environments differ, characterized in terms of a typology of environments, (b) individual differences among people can be characterized in terms of a typology of persons (c) some environments better matched to some individuals, and vice versa

Environments: - environments can be characterized in terms of their resemblance to six model environments - the actual environments people experience resemble the ideal environments to different degrees - environment may be described in terms of the environmental models it most resembles - Environments include occupations or specific jobs, colleges or majors, clubs, other places, other people - The six environmental types are Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. - An environment will make the demands, provide the rewards and opportunities, and encourage the values characteristic of the model environment it most resembles. - environments can be characterized by subtype and degrees of resemblance to the six models - The Position Classification Inventory (Gottfredson & Holland, 1991) assesses environments

Persons: - Individuals can be characterized in terms of their resemblance to six ideal personalities. - Each personality type displays distinctive competencies, preferences, values, and self-evaluations. - Individual people resemble the six model personalities to different degrees - a specific person may be described in terms of the personality types he or she most resembles. - The six personality types are Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. - The SDS (1994) assesses persons in terms of Holland's theory.

P-E interaction: - person displays characteristics and pursues the values of one personality type - An environment tends to make the demands, reward the competencies, and encourage the values typical of the environmental model it most resembles. - The interaction of person and environment result in degrees of congruence or incongruence - Theoretically, environments attract congruent persons - Similarly, persons will prefer congruent environments because they demand the competencies the person has, foster the person's values or outlooks, and reward the distinctive accomplishments of their type.

Secondary Ideas: Levels of congruence and typological resemblance - environmental models—and the personality types—are represented by a hexagonal arrangement with the Realistic and Social, Investigative and Enterprising, and Artistic and Conventional types representing opposing vertices. - The demands of an environment have more in common with those arranged next to it. - An Investigative personality type in an Investigative environment is most congruent with the environment - An Artistic personality type in a hexagonally opposed Conventional environment is very incongruent. - individuals seek and persist in congruent environments and avoid and leave incongruent environments. - environments attract and retain congruent persons

Level: - people differ in their capacity for coping successfully with complex environmental demands - occupational, educational, and other environments differ in the complexity of the demands they make - A level dimension distinguishes both occupational environments and people of the same RIASEC type. - Environments that make complex demands are more difficult to attain and succeed in - Level of an individual's aspirations, preferences, or capability for coping with complex demands, and level of complexity of an environment's demands are important in understanding vocational choices and other vocational behavior. - the Dictionary of Holland Occupational Codes (Gottfredson & Holland, 1996) provides not only a RIASEC classification for most occupations in the U.S. economy, but also an indicator of the substantive complexity of these occupations.

Identity: - vocational identity refers to the clarity or focus of vocational preferences, aspirations, and self-perceptions. - an environment's identity refers to the focus and clarity of its demands, goals, and expectations for its inhabitants. - persons and environments of high identity more clearly display characteristics of the model or types they resemble - an environment of high identity more forcefully exerts the demands and expectations characteristic of its type - individual of high identity is more likely to find and persist in satisfying environments, have better vocational adjustment - highly focused environment is more likely to attract and retain satisfactory inhabitants and produce desired outcomes - The Vocational Identity scale (Holland, Gottfredson, & Power, 1980) assesses a person's level of identity - the Organizational Focus Questionnaire (Gottfredson & Holland, 1997) assesses environmental identity

Differentiation: - the extent to which a person or an environment resembles one or two types to the exclusion of other types - person with great resemblance to one personality model who does not resemble other models has a differentiated profile - An environment with no distinctive resemblance to any one environmental type is undifferentiated - a differentiated environment will produce more predictable outcomes - the vocational choices of an undifferentiated individual are less predictable - the identity construct has generally proven to be more powerful than differentiation in empirical tests of the theory

Other Ideas and Influences: - P-E theory aims to explain educational and occupational choices, career stability, and satisfaction - many influences on people's careers are beyond its scope - the current sharp downturn in the economy has led many people to lose their jobs - evolution in the worldwide economy has changed the mix of occupational alternatives available to people - Family responsibilities, romantic entanglements, general mental health, and interpersonal problems with coworkers or supervisors either lead to change or constrain against it. - many people may be relatively satisfied in incongruent environments - people sometimes become dissatisfied in or leave environments that are congruent with their personalities

Holland and Gottfredson (1994) proposed a set of constructs intended to complement the P-E theory: - includes influences on vocational stability and change that are outside the scope of the typology. - include family commitments or freedom from such commitments, geographical constraints versus cosmopolitanism, interpersonal abuse in the workplace, career worries, proclivity to take or to avoid risks, dominant or nondominant interpersonal style, general job satisfaction,and various other barriers or career limitations.