Profiles: An Exploratory Study of Business School Participants in France

The current business environment has become clearly more international, marked by boundaryless careers, mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, and layoffs. With the ever-growing disappearance of the long-term employment contract, employees are considered as being responsible to manage their own development. The concept of career anchor was first introduced by Schein (1978) to describe the association of self-perceived attitudes, values, needs and talents that individuals develop over time. The present study uses the Career Orientation Inventory (COI) developed by DeLong (1982a, 1982b) to measure career anchors within a population of students and alumni from a French business school in the south of France. It explores how career anchors are related to age, gender, work experience, and education and addresses the associations between various career anchors. Career anchor profiles yield characteristics which can be linked to various career stages. In addition, the findings support career anchor associations previously proposed by Feldman and Bolino (1996). The study contributes to the ongoing research on career anchors and their measurement within a French context.