Grænser i den grænseløse karriere? En komparativ analyse af karriere og fastholdelse

Abstract

This master thesis focuses on career and retention in Thermo Fisher Scientific (TFS). The aim of this thesis is to get an understanding of what career is and what career does in TFS. To get an adequate understanding this thesis is made as a comparative analysis; which means that the thesis includes two separate analyzes of career – a discourse analysis and a retention analysis. The thesis is made as a single case-study. This means that the purpose of this thesis is to get an understanding of career in TFS only and not a general understanding of career. We have chosen that the scientific perspective of this thesis is social constructivism. This choice has influence on all the selections we have made regarding methods, theory and so on. The focus in this thesis is relevant because the understanding of what career is has changed a lot over the past years. This means that there can be a great difference between the understandings of what careers is. That the same word – career, may therefore mean different things to different people. This may have consequences for the organization, especially if the organization wants to retain their employee. In the theoretical field there is also a big difference in the definition of what career is. Therefore it relevant to point out that this thesis understands career as Arthur and Rousseau and their Boundaryless Career. In Boundaryless Career the definition of career is more complex and subjective than in the traditional understanding of what career is. This, and the fact that career is unconstrained by the organizational boundaries, makes retention of employees a matter of the expectations and understandings of career. When career is subjective retention must be the same. The purpose of career is not the same for the organization and for the employee. The employee can want a career for several reasons, while the organization uses career as a way to maintain the employee.