Social Career Theory: Holland's Theory Of Career Development

Holland’s theory is based on the idea that career choices are an expression of personality. Holland’s theory assumes that individuals can be categorized into a combination of six personality types: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, or conventional; environments can also fit into one of these six types. Each personality and environment type have themes related to interests, work activities, potential skills, and values. Based on this, Holland theorizes that individuals of an occupation will have similar personalities and like similar work environments. In addition, Holland assumes that people search for environments that best fit them in expressing their skills and meeting their needs. Thus, each person generates a code that best fits that person’s interests and work values in relation to their personality and ideal work environment. The theory of work adjustment is also a person-environment fit theory. This theory complements Holland’s theory with a focus on work adjustment rather than work choice; in other words, TWA is concerned with assessing an individual’s satisfaction with their work and how long they may remain at that job. Two dimensions are …show more content…
SCCT focuses on the individual personal meaning placed on career decision making events. SCCT explains how interests develop, how choices are mad, and how an individual self-evaluates. SCCT emphasizes the importance of self-efficacy, an individual’s perceived confidence in performing tasks, in our career decision-making process. Self-efficacy is hypothesized to “[mediate] between what [a person knows] and how they act and that person’s beliefs in their abilities…helps determine their actions” (Swanson & Fouad, 2015, p. 177). Self-efficacy is constructed by an individual from previous performance accomplishments, vicarious learning, social persuasion, and emotional arousal