The Construction of Career Aspirations among Healthcare Support Workers: Beyond the Rational and the Mundane?

TY - JOUR

T1 - The Construction of Career Aspirations among Healthcare Support Workers

T2 - Beyond the Rational and the Mundane?

AU - Kessler, Ian

AU - Bach, Stephen

AU - Nath, Vandana

PY - 2019/3

Y1 - 2019/3

N2 - This article engages with a literature that views the limited career aspirations of low-paid, low-status workers as a reasonable response tomaterial and structural constraints. Based on four hospital trust cases studies, the article contests this view, revealing how healthcare support workers in NHS England have retained the cognitive capacity to override such constraints to develop a strong and authentic career goal to become a nurse. This goal is acknowledged by the healthcare support workers themselves as unlikely to be achieved and is therefore presented as a flight from rationality. Its emergence is explained by workplace interactions that allow such an ambition to become taken-for-granted. The article deepens understanding of career ambitions amongstlow-paid, low-status workers, while adding weight to a literature suggesting that career aspirations can be driven by values and norms, not only by a means-end rationality.

AB - This article engages with a literature that views the limited career aspirations of low-paid, low-status workers as a reasonable response tomaterial and structural constraints. Based on four hospital trust cases studies, the article contests this view, revealing how healthcare support workers in NHS England have retained the cognitive capacity to override such constraints to develop a strong and authentic career goal to become a nurse. This goal is acknowledged by the healthcare support workers themselves as unlikely to be achieved and is therefore presented as a flight from rationality. Its emergence is explained by workplace interactions that allow such an ambition to become taken-for-granted. The article deepens understanding of career ambitions amongstlow-paid, low-status workers, while adding weight to a literature suggesting that career aspirations can be driven by values and norms, not only by a means-end rationality.

KW - Healthcare assistants

KW - careers

KW - NHS

U2 - 10.1111/irj.12245

DO - 10.1111/irj.12245

M3 - Article

SN - 0019-8692

VL - 50

SP - 150

EP - 167

JO - INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL

JF - INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL

IS - 2

ER -