Nova SBE's Career Life Design project seeks to promote more dignified, meaningful, and satisfying work for present and future generations. The project was recently supported with a Research Grant, awarded by Fundação “la Caixa”, worth 100 thousand euros.
Led by Nova SBE Professor Samantha Sim, with the collaboration of researchers Amélia Monteiro and Radek Oros, as well as Professor Sebastian Kernbach (University of St. Gallen), the Collaborative Design-thinking Approaches, Adaptive Psychological Functioning & Career Development project is an initiative of the Nova SBE Leadership for Impact Knowledge Center and Nova SBE Careers & Well-being, which also has the support of two external partners: dNovo (Portugal) and Life Design Lab at HSG St. Gallen (Switzerland).
The project, which aims to explore a variety of personal and professional outcomes, will focus on two studies: one with students entering the job market and another with older unemployed people. Both studies will make it possible to measure numerous parameters that influence personal and professional satisfaction, particularly at the psychological level, self-esteem, and perceived subjective well-being, and concerning the professional aspect, alignment with the value of work, career involvement, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy, among others. The Research grant will enable research, through randomized clinical trials, into the effects of Career Life Design (CLD) on psychological and career resources, as well as the longitudinal effects on actual career outcomes.
Intended to inspire the practice and promotion of innovative career development programs that can respond to the changes and needs of current and future generations, the project - which encompasses one of the first studies to evaluate Career Life Design - aims to contribute to existing career theories by focusing on the construction of new identities focused on a greater meaning of well-being and job satisfaction.
The team notes that "the work also aims to inspire the practice of more innovative career development practices and programs that can better respond to the changing needs of current and future generations of workers”.