Resumen de Careers of young professionals in the tourism and hospitality industries: analysing vocational commitment, protean career, and lifelong learning
Laura Pauline Verena Elisabeth Schmidt
Careers are a central element in any individual¿s working life and also from an organisational and societal perspective the question of how professional careers unfold is paramount. Contemporary career attitudes, vocational commitment, and a continuous, lifelong learning become crucial elements in terms of contemporary career trajectories and patterns in the tourism and hospitality sectors. As a generic conceptual basis, the academic literature on professional careers and employment, vocational commitment, protean career, and lifelong learning is reviewed. In addition, specific theoretical frameworks have been developed to address the research objectives and the research hypotheses derived from them in a distinct manner. Regarding the methodological approach of the work, the objectives of the doctoral thesis are approached empirically with one survey of hospitality apprentices in Bavaria, Germany, and with another survey of tourism and hospitality management graduates of Munich University of Applied Sciences. The quantitative data collected are analysed with univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistical techniques.
The results highlight education¿s influence on young professionals¿ vocational behaviour, especially on their vocational commitment. Apprentices¿ vocational commitment is affected both by academic and workplace aspects of the dual system of vocational education. Furthermore, the findings of this study reveal that personality has a significant impact on protean career orientation, especially extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Moreover, three groups of lifelong learners among tourism and hospitality graduates based on their degree of learning orientation with different profiles have been found. These findings allow interesting contributions to be made at two levels: theoretical implications related to the development of the academic field of career research, and practical implications based on recommendations to human resources leaders and managers of tourism and hospitality companies and educational centres.
