ABSTRACT
The career has been described as the 'supreme social reality for large sectors of the middle class (Dahrendorf, 1959). In many ways, it constitutes a set of organizing principles around which those in managerial and professional occupations are able to structure both their work and non-work lives. It enables managers, in particular, to make sense of what might otherwise appear as an almost random series of events and activities. Corporate careers, as they have developed during the postwar decades, confer a sense of stability, order and, usually, security (Pahl and Pahl, 1971). Those who have careers typically experience a sense of achievement and advancement largely because their jobs do not simply consist of undertaking tasks on a day-to-day basis, but, instead, are directed to the attainment of longer-term personal goals (Sofer, 1970). Together, the promise of relative job security and the offer of personal advancement within corporate hierarchies represent the major rewards of the twentieth-century middle-class career (Wilensky, 1961). These, as well as financial remuneration, are the key mechanisms whereby large-scale corporations obtain the motivation and commitment of their managerial employees. By contrast, other categories of employees are noticeably less well paid and secure in their jobs, and their commitment to organizational goals is often relatively limited.
