Chapter 4 - 4

04 Business

The Levinson Model

When running a business, it is important for managers to understand employees’ career goals and attitudes toward their job.

By understanding psychological phases that employees may be experiencing, managers can help the business.

They can pick out particularly able and willing people to benefit the business.

While it is impossible to generalize an individual’s ambitions entirely, the Levinson model has been used to formulate how people approach their careers at different times in their lives.

The Levinson model was created by Daniel Levinson.

It was based upon his study of forty men in four different occupational groups.

Hourly industry workers, business executives, university biologists, and novelists were all surveyed extensively.

Their answers were then used to identify particular periods common among all groups.

The resulting Levinson model then attempted to explain career approaches.

Results were placed in the context of five-to seven-year cycles that occur over the course of an adult’s life.

These cycles represent different approaches translate into professional behavior.

The Levinson model begins with the seventeen-to twenty-two-year-old age group, when individuals are trying to establish emotional and financial independence from their families.

Some go to college; white others choose to enter the work force directly.

Over the course of early adulthood, individuals dabble in a number of different careers and experiences.

Many people associate this period with a process of self-discovery.

Since they are no longer students and are attempting to find a professional field right for them, there are few facets of their lives with which they can form an identify.

As individuals enter their thirties, they take a step back and evaluate their experiences.

Feeling pressure to “settle down” and begin a formalized career, individuals will most likely pursue a career in a field they find interesting.

In their mid-adulthood phase, a career will be decided upon.

The individual will then focus on advancing in the workplace.

Success in the workplace will be his or her primary point of identification.

As the products of these efforts become evident and individuals become financially secure, they may turn inward and re-evaluate their career and goals.

With financial security established in the mid-forties, individuals seek to secure friendships and re-establish contact with old acquaintances.

Their financial security gives them the opportunity to focus on their personal lives.

As they reach the age of retirement, they once again re-focus their outside of the professional realm.

While the Levinson model is helpful for managers, it is only a series of generalizations.

Some question its value in the current marketplace.

Many social and cultural changes have taken place since Levinson first published his findings in the 1970s.

For instance, Bill Gates, famous and very wealthy founder of Microsoft, defied the phases of the Levinson model.

He started out at a young age with a single focus and retained that focus throughout his life.

Since there are exceptions to the Levinson model, managers should get to know all of their employees’ goals according to a narrow, age-based model.