Diversity, Success, Motivation, Burnout and Professionalism among Young People in Moldova

Abstract

It is common that careers which offer social services are identifying different professional approaches depending on geographical mentality, either the former Soviet space or capitalist one. The dominants of political representations regarding professional standards and social carelessness influence the fingerprint relating to the contents, conjunctures, standards, statuses and professional acceptance of young into the professional society, where nor Moldova hasn't been excluded from this avid transformation. At the national level, the connection between education, research and needs (community or individual) should be revised as a condition for any changes. Currently, the career orientation process of young people are left to chance, without particular operational work efficiency, they are forced to cope with fluctuations in the systems, legislation gaps, formalism, state pressure, bureaucracy, different approaches in solving social problems, managerial failures etc. The article has the aims to elucidate the issues, in terms of capabilities that underpin international professional standards in creating new professions, taking into consideration motivation, success, professionalism and burnout where diversity is considered a circumstance career moderator in social perception of young professionals. This synthesis is operated logistically on research study carried out in Moldova, where the vocation confers a significant as a gift of self.

Keywords: vocationmotivationburnoutsuccessprofessionalism

Theoretical competition over career development

There are many predictors of career developmental theories. The assessment of traditional career

practices in vocational guidance in mixture with theoretical commands and legislative regulations of

labour law and career management strategies could not be implemented completely, because social

factors always will interfere in drifting the approach and structure of work process standardisation. In

previous articles it was discussed the core concept of vocational anchorage based on influence of

system theory of framework, regarding professional development, careers construction theory, the

chaos theory of careers and the ecological theory of career counselling (Zubenschi, 2015, p. 533). In

supporting theoretical background it will be beneficial to juxtapose four career influent factors:

motivation, burnout, success and professionalism. All they are linked in our research, with gender

diversity among three professions which are providers of education, health and social work services.

These are careers represented by a strong relationship with their clients and trust in educating valuable

persons, treatment and healing, improving, organising, facilitating and intervening in difficult social

cases. These professions are dealing with high performances demand and work competences in high

rate stressful environment, when success is guaranteed by first class involvement or reactions.

1.1.Motivation as core factor in achieving a long lasting career success

Motivation is a strong asset in career success. The motivation as variable refers to the expressed

interest (vocational interest) as state of engaging in career activities, predisposition of reengage as part

of events, ideas over time and environmental impact. Motivation as interest has important

particularities including the affective (positive emotions accompanied by engagement) and cognitive

components in the interacting system (perceptual and representative activities related to engagement),

where both inherited biological roots being expressed as outcomes of an interaction of persons and a

particular content. Our interest in opening this part is focused on describing the mechanisms and

existing Pre-screening, in depth analysis and choice theory (PIV) of choosing a career activities and its

motivation aspects, following the involved steps or processes with their specific products and

consequences.

The PIC (Pre-screening, In-depth exploitation and Choice) represent a model of the tree stage

process of career making decisions (Gati, 1986, p. 411; Gati, 1990, p. 279), involving the career

readiness and conditions for beginning the process, where career counselling has an important clinical

applicability and impact on young future facilitating the career decision process (Gati, 1996, p. 171).

The PIC model for career decision making describes the alternatives on which should be focused more

than simply capabilities or skills, as motivation should be upgraded for decision making process

concerning career activities and interests (Gati, Fassa & Houminer, 1995, p. 214). As well as

aspirations could fail into disappointment and frustration when the decision making process are not

alternatively revised in advance with new preferences and interests, compatible with competences, as

people tend to like to be good at (Leolong & Barak, 2001, p. 31). The five steps of pre-screening stage

constitutes three lists of career alternative analysis: the initial list of potential alternatives (prescribed

in following order by four processes: selection of the relevant aspects, ranking aspects by importance,

defining the range of acceptable levels for the most important aspect not yet considered and comparing

the individual range of acceptable interests with the levels of the alternatives and finding incompatible

alternatives), the list of remaining too long aspirations (which help the counsellor to guide and to

follow the sensitivity analysis as last step of pre-screening stage) and the list of promising alternatives .

In depth exploration stage will alienates alternatives from promising to most suitable, and examines

the possibility to actualize them, “zooms in” the one promising alternative in collecting additional

information. The most suitable alternative represents the choice, based on evaluation and comparison

among them. As matter of fact the career-related aspects can been seen as forming a universe that

includes various vocational interests, needs, work values, work characteristics and roles, abilities and

personal style. The self-exploration should focus on capabilities and motivational factors (Leolong &

Barak, 2001, p. 34).

The dynamic approach of PIC model encourages young people to move back and forth between the

stages in order to rethink and reinforce their previous career opportunities, evaluate the general level of

career indecision, examine the specific difficulties, assess career choice anxiety, and identify

dysfunctional beliefs, for example the career decision-making difficulties questionnaire (Gati, Krausz

& Osipow, 1996, p. 513) reveals difficulties in career decision making process as lack of motivation,

external conflicts, dysfunctional believes and needs. Gati, Krausz and Osipow classified the career

decision making difficulties based on career process development, as the beginning and during the

process (Gati, Krausz & Osipow, 1996, p. 514). At the beginning of the career decision process the

difficulties are due to lack of readiness , attributed to lack of motivation, indecisiveness, and

dysfunctional myths. During the process, it was found more than few separated difficulties, as lack of

information about : as career decision making steps or process, self (abilities, personality traits,

occupations and aspects), occupations and ways of obtaining information; and concerning the

inconsistent information due to: unreliable information (abilities, personality traits, existence and

characteristics), internal and external conflicts. The implication of understanding difficulties in career

decision making process essentially will facilitate the process by itself, enhance the career fit and will

contribute to practical implications in vocational guidance.

The cognitive view of vocation as nature interest, dispute over representational of interests

expression aspects. The interests' expression aspects are considered to be more truly reflected by

internal and authentic motivations. Darley and Hagenah (1995, p. 36) suggests that interests directly

reflect the personality structure by the intervening processes of the individual value system, needs and

motivations, lather in an comprehensive review of Scahffer, Berdie, Brender, Fryer, Asch and Roe

suggests that interests are represented by personality needs, motivational and learning mechanisms

(Darley & Hagenah, 1995, p. 63).

It is important to mention that alternatives to search over career guidance platform or counselling

assistance nowadays are more than sufficient, focused on investigating the aspects of career decision-

making difficulties and on coping strategies with career indecision, finding the best way of dealing

with career decision-making difficulties, learning about lifestyle, career profile and about degree of

career preferences crystallization or locating the “promising option” at the pre-screening stage by

CDDQ , SCCI, EPCD, CDMP, PC, PIC, MBCD or Choice inventories (Gati, Krausz & Osipow, 1996,

p. 515; Hall, 2002, p. 15; Gati & Tal, 2008, p. 157).

The cognitive model of interests implicitly discuss over perceived abilities, expected success which

involves motivation for success and anticipated satisfaction. In assessing the interests is commonly

practiced to study the career motivators and client emotional sphere. In literature, the development of

career interest frequently is described as a four phase model (Hidi, Renninger, 2006, p. 121), split on

triggering the situational interest (in variance of environmental or text feature as learning, surprising

information, density, character identification, etc.), maintaining the situational interest (maintained by

personal involvement in solving professional tasks, based on involving activities as project based

learning, cooperative group work, one to one tutoring etc.), emerging individual interest (characterized

by positive feelings, stored knowledge and values, engagement, curiosity, etc.), and developing well

the individual interest (taking risks, magnification of engagement, knowledge and values). These four

phases point on significant drift over motivation, needs and success, also the self-efficacy theory reflect

over individual's believes as key ability to attain individual goals, accomplish successful outcomes,

increase the achievement of motivation and performance (Bandura, 1982, p. 122; Bandura, 1997, p. 19;

Zimmerman, 2000a, p. 21; Zimmerman, 2000b, p. 85). The satisfaction of basic psychological needs

reflect core function in career self-determination theory, an valuable outcomes in career goals and in

fulfilment of needs (Deci & Ryan, 2000, p. 244).

1.2.Burnout and job performance

A diversity of social psychological theories, from James (1911) on strenuousness, Fromm (1947) on

the productive orientation, and Allport (1955) on their own striving, through White (1959) about the

competence, to Bandura (1978) concerning self-Efficacy and Brehm (1966) on persons, that created

reactance assume as well as react to events in their lives the stressful life and thrive on as well as

stressful situations tolerated (Penacoba & Moreno, 1998, p. 62). Professional burnout or as it is called

burnout, is a syndrome that develops on the background of chronic stress, which leads to chronic

emotional exhaustion and person energy resource depletion, a reaction of it, caused by excessive

communication with others, especially if they are over stressed. The burnout syndrome occurs as a

result of negative emotional inflation, without the capacity of releasing, leading to the emotional

exhaustion, fatigue and depletion of human resources (Santoro, 2010, p. 12).

It seems that the burnout term is very authentic for nowadays, but its roots goes to 1974 when

Freundenberg introduced it as connotation in describing the state of mental and physical exhaustion

caused by one's professional life, in terms of fatigue, tiredness and demoralization, studying the

“person to person related careers”. Another founder of the burnout concept Maslach (1981) believes

that burnout represents the syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduction of

personal achievements that can occur in careers related to activities which involves close

communication with others (Maslach & Jackson, 1982, p. 99; Goodman & Boss, 2002, p. 33).

V. Boico understands the professional burnout as mechanism of psychological defence, developed

by the body as total emotional exclusion or as partial response to certain psycho traumatized actions.

Generally the burnout syndrome is afflicted by excessive work responsibility, working hours overload,

high emotional involvement in over demand activities, unfavourable social and working environment

(Savicki & Cooley, 1994, p. 658), neglecting the creative attitude in developing a professional activity,

evasion of IT use, inability of emotional self-adjustment and the lack of communication skills and the

ability to find proper solutions in difficult communicational situations with peers, subordinates etc.

There are many researches which suggests on relationship between burnout and turnover in the

context of voluntary or involuntary termination (Golembiewski, Hilles, Daly, 1987, p. 296; Goodman,

Boss, 2002, p. 39), their research indicates that the higher phase is associated with greater role conflict,

reduced job performance and greater emotional and physical distress. Goodman and Boss (1998)

indicates that employees who stay with the organization has lower scores of burnout as employees who

turnover (Goodman, Boss, 1998, p. 18). Maslach and Jackson (1982) developed the phase model of

burnout, based on Maslach Burnout Inventory or MBI, and do not measure the presence or absence of

burnout, taking into consideration the voluntary resignation which includes things like other

employment, family obligations, moving, school, health and personal reasons. In contrary, MBI

circumspect the involuntary termination over the phenomena of misconduct, unacceptable work

performance, excessive absenteeism and tardiness as insubordination (Goodman & Boss, 2002, p. 43).

Maslach and Jackson (1982, p. 53) define burnout more as the result of an inability to successfully cope

with job stress, manifesting by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and diminished

accomplishment “Tab. 1 ”.

The burnout syndrome is represented by a contextual professional experience or subjective

experience in relation of individuals to their careers. Among career theories as traits and factor

approach the burnout syndrome is not mentioned, as well as it is not addressed to the emotional aspects

of experiencing careers (Lent & Brown, 2013, p. 7). The related studies mention also about the

negative relation between job performance and burnout (Bernard & Bass, 1999, p. 11), where clear job

demands will have a positive effect on burnout syndrome reduction, as well as the intellectual

simulation might have positive effect especially in professions already exposed to much sources of

stress in the work environment (e.g. doctors, teachers) (Seltzer, Numerof & Bass, 1989, p. 177).

Experimental structure and research design

Today the vocational guidance today are not adapted to the existing environmental contexts, as

period of transition, the labour offer, the individual development and professional empowerment. They

are leaded by professional misfit between career guiding practices and professional success. In

previous data analysis (Zubenschi, 2015, p. 535), based on sample of 220 professionals from Moldova

(between 25-50 years) old, it was selected 112 individual inquired with professional instruments

“Tab. 2 ” (Tomas Ellers questionnaire of professional motivation for success; Orlov inventory of needs

in achieving professional success, Edgar Shein inventory - professional anchors and Boico professional

Burnout inventor).

The data of professional between 25-35 years old, it was mandated to analyse, to process and to

assess in focusing more on the inventory factors correlation and primary statistical analysis. The professional field of expertise gather more graduated field as social work, pedagogy, foreign language,

gynaecology, psychiatry and surgery. The gender distribution it was likely equal in medicine, and

women segregated among social workers and teachers “Tab. 3 ”.

2.1.Data analysis and valuable disclosures

Ordinarily the data was clustered by career nature, as studying the important findings in correlation

tests between motivation in acquiring success (MS), professional need (PN), career anchors (CA) and

professional burnout (PB) it was estimate a negative Pearson correlation “--0,429” between

professional need and professional anchors and positive one “0,349” between motivation in acquiring

success and professional burnout among doctors. Based on Kendall’s tau_b coefficient it was found a

strong negative correlations between professional burnout and motivation in success acquiring “-

0,405”. In Education and social work careers wasn't established any correlation, barring the

nonparametric test - Kendall’s tau_b coefficient which among educational field expressed a strong

negative correlations “-0,272” between professional anchors and motivation in success acquiring.

Positively correlates the intratest items based on Pearson correlation in medicine: EC/NSA “0,481”; AI

and RPT by”0,434”; SD and NSA “0,560”; SD and NSA “0,560”; OVC and NSA “0,539”; OHC and

NSA “0,448”; GC and NSA “0,530”; SSW and NSA “0,409”; SSW and MN “0,384”; SSC and RPT

“0,417”; and negatively in the same professional field mostly among burnout factors, career

orientations and needs in success acquiring: CVC and ED “0,376”; OVC and RPT “0,539”; OVC and EC “– 0,367”; LS and NSA “- 0,417”; OVC and EC “– 0,367”; OVC and ED “- 0,376”; GC and EC “ –

0,368”; GC and ED “– 0,390”; SSW and ED “– 0,427”; SSW and DE “– 0,462”; SSC and ED “- 0,

371”; LS and NSA “- 0,417”; SD and EC “– 0,380”; SD and ED “– 0,369”; SD and DE “-0,414”,

which conclude that career anchors in medicine are strongly linked among talents, values, orientations

and talent needs.

Among teachers the majority of Kendal's tau nonparametric coefficients was positively suspected

with repudiation of correlation between emotional caging and motivation in need EC and MN “–

0,381”, as well as SD and MN “0,414”; FC and ED “0,429”; SSW and RPT “0,402”; OI and ED

“0,366”; NSA and EC “0,545”; NSA and DE “0,531”.

In Social work professions among young's it should be considered the positive correlation between

burnout scales, and those two negative one expressed by general managerial competence, motivation in

need and needs in success acquiring: EC and RPT by “0,409”; ED and EC “0,512”; EC and DE

“0,538”; RPT and ED “0,338”; SSW and DE “0,353”; GMC and DE “-0,378”; NNSA and MN “-

0,303”.

Conclusions and Recommendations

In conclusion, the established data could lead us to the supposition that career design of vocational

path among doctors in Moldova are mostly developed, leading young professional to the success in

their professional achievement, appointed by talent based predictors.

The new educational code approved in 2014 involves tensions among teachers in translating the

legal responsibility into practice. Taking into consideration the personal approach and transliterated

understanding into experience of facts by need in success acquiring, emotional detachment or

exhaustion as a note of high expression in Eight-phase model of burnout, is the illustrative prove that

should be more invested in it, by researching this phenomena. The success of the new generation lead

directly to the new and adapted curriculum, answer in addition to the children needs.

The burnout as predictors in social work field should be studied more especially in the Republic of

Moldova, in comparison with others professions, their professional standards, people expectation,

professional prestige and vocational guidance. Herein, the qualitative focus of the most powerful social

process are mirrored negatively by brain drain, where the career standards are not focused on

facilitating the process of interacting with others, commonly referred on normal GDP, awards and

premises, safe work environment, real career opportunities. These processes are strongly standardised

by a suitable employment system, curriculum design, organisational image and member identification

in the organisation. However a study on workers who search, attend or experience a job should be

considered mostly in present social implications as much demanded prerogative.

The characteristics of employment system, especially when young specialist are searching for a

qualified job, should give more freedom of choice, taking into consideration the HR practices pointed

on internal career opportunities, trainings, profit sharing, job clarity description, employment security,

sharing of profit and oriented appraisals and performance results.

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