With the current pandemic impacting the world of work as we know it, the latest research has found that our culture could dictate how we cope with concerns over our career.
Concerns over career development often determined by our culture
With the current pandemic impacting the world of work as we know it, the latest research has found that our culture could dictate how we cope with concerns over our career.
Researchers Yanjun Guan, Hong Deng, and Xinyi Zhou from Durham University Business School looked at personal cultural orientations, such as values and thinking styles, as well as national culture and its influence.
According to the findings, in countries that value individualism – for example, the UK, America, and Australia – people tend to form an independent mindset to guide their behavior. This means that their attention will be directed to stressors related to personal career development, including:
- Job insecurity
- Difficulties of working from home
- Career opportunities.
Interestingly, in countries such as Japan and China with a collectivistic culture, their attention seems to go more toward issues related to workgroups, organizations and social networks.
The report also revealed that culture really does play a key role in shaping the way people are assessing and coping with the stress on their work caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Yanjun Guan, said, “In a globalizing world, people take influences from foreign cultures too, by accessing international media and so on. This suggests that we’re capable of developing multiple cultural identities, and these identities can be primed and activated by relevant cues to help individuals adapt to the changing situational demands.”