Review
"Its key features develop a bridge between theory and application, offering a rigorous self-assessment process and providing a more thorough experiential view than most existing books."--Johnson Thomas "Business India" (8/14/2008 12:00:00 AM)
"Back around the turn of the century, I was on the Alliance for Work-Life Progress board, and some of the board members found their jobs and offices being downsized as a fairly lengthy recession set in. I have been in touch with many of these folks since then, and they have all done well, but mainly by changing careers. What they really needed was Career Management and Work-Life Integration, by Brad Harrington and Douglas Hall (2007). As the authors note, job ladders inside of corporations (and job security) are largely a thing of the past. For young or mature adults, the implications of that shift are enormous. Specializing can be dangerous, and making yourself indispensable may not be a great idea. So individual career planning becomes on one level more difficult and less useful because the unexpected is always just around the corner, but on another level far more important if you don′t want to end up stuck doing work you don′t like for a company you like even less... And this really is a work-family book, which is anything but surprising once you take in the implications of modern careers: the difficulties of navigating contemporary careers are heavily compounded for modern families, where dual-earners are the norm, and fathers as well as mothers expect to devote substantial time to children and, increasingly, elderly parents and relatives. And corporate work-life policies become important for a reason that is often downplayed: attracting talent. My reading of most of the literature on the business case for work-life is that it tends to emphasize talent retention. But that may be the wrong angle if the problem is getting the right people, and planning on fairly short ′career′ duration. I should mention that much of the book is very much practical, with exercises designed to draw out the reader′s values, aspirations, history, and family situation in order to make sense of -- and plan for -- the future. I highly recommend it for that practical
purposes, but genuinely enjoyed it as a contribution to rethinking the way work & family will play out in the future. Great stuff!" --Bob Drago "Newsletter" (7/23/2007 12:00:00 AM)
About the Author
Brad Harrington Brad is the executive director of the Boston College Center for Work & Family (CWF) and a research professor of organization studies in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. CWF is a national leader in helping organizations create effective workplaces that support and develop healthy and productive employees. The center pro-vides a bridge linking the academic community to the some of the world's most progressive companies in the human resource arena.
Before coming to Boston College, Brad spent 20 years with Hewlett-Packard Company, working in a broad range of executive and management positions in quality improvement, human resources, education, manage-ment development, and organization development in the United States and Europe. His roles included chief quality officer for HP's worldwide medical products business and head of HP's management and organization develop-ment organization. Brad holds a bachelor's degree in business administra-tion from Stonehill College, a master's degree in psychology from Boston College, and a doctorate in human resource development and organization development from Boston University. Brad has consulted with many corpo-rations and healthcare organizations on strategic planning, cultural change, leadership development, career management, and work-life systems. In 2006, Brad was honored as one of the Ten Most Influential Men in the Work-Life Field.
Brad is married to Dr. Annie Soisson, and they have three children: Maggie, Hannah, and Dillon. Brad and his family reside in Winchester, Massachusetts.
Douglas T. Hall: Tim is the director of the Executive Development Roundtable and the Morton H. and Charlotte Friedman Professor of Management in the School of Management at Boston University. He is also faculty director of the MBA program. He has served as acting dean and asso-ciate dean of faculty development and faculty director for the master's pro-grams at the School of Management. He received his graduate degrees from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He has held faculty positions at Yale, York, Michigan State, and Northwestern universities and visiting posi-tions at Columbia, Minnesota, and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Tim's books include Careers In and Out of Organizations, The Career Is Dead--Long Live the Career: A Relational Approach to Careers, Careers in Organizations, Organizational Climates and Careers, The Two-Career Couple, Experiences in Management and Organizational Behavior, Career Develop-ment in Organizations, Human Resource Management: Strategy Design and Implementation, and Handbook of Career Theory. He is a recipient of the American Psychological Association's James McKeen Cattell Award (now called the Ghiselli Award) for research design, the American Society for Training and Development's Walter Storey Professional Practice Award, and the Academy of Management's Everett C. Hughes Award for Career Research. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and the Academy of Management, where he served as a member of the Board of Governors and as president of the Organizational Behavior Division and co-founder and president of the Careers Division.
Tim is married to Marcy Crary, and he has three children and five grandchildren.
