Mid-career faculty networks: A qualitative study exploring Hong Kong mid-career faculty career choice and the role of developmental relationships.

摘要

Higher education institutions find difficulty in retaining faculty members because of the tight financial constraints to offer appealing remuneration packages and salary increment annually. In order to seek an economical alternative, higher education administrators intend to develop and retain faculty members through relational development. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to understand the role of developmental relationships and networks in shaping mid-career faculty's career decisions through the lens of Developmental Networks Theory. Four frontline mid-career academic faculty members in a higher education institution in Hong Kong participated in the multiple interviews in this study. The researcher selected an Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach to enable participants to make sense of their lived experience in relation to career decision making. The results revealed that the participants employed a number of developmental seeking behaviors to obtain information, help, and feedback from developers from both work and non-work relationships across different networks. The participants perceived that supervisors and colleagues were the most influential work relationships while family was identified to be the most significant non-work relationship. Despite taking developers' guidance and advice into consideration, most of the participants made their own final career decisions. Job security, stability, and long term career planning were discovered to be some of the most important factors determining mid-career faculty work satisfaction, organizational commitment, and subsequently their career decisions to remain or leave their organization. The findings of the study provide implications for faculty members, administrators, and management of higher education institutions to further understand faculty career considerations and recognize the growing importance of developmental networks, thus implementing alternative mentoring practices and policies. Future research is recommended to delve into examining the role of developmental relationships from developers', rather than proteges', perspectives, the effectiveness of peer mentoring, and the role of developmental networks in other countries in the South-East Asian region.