Congruence in Career Intervention

If there is any principle upon which most career development theorists can agree, it is that some degree of fit between an individual and the environment will lead to beneficial career outcomes (Borgen, 1986; Spokane, 1985; Vondracek et al., 1986; Zytowski & Borgen, 1983). This sense of fit, which is usually called congruence, is the central tenet in Holland's (1985a) theory of career choice and is implied in most other theories of choice as well, including Super's (1957) in which fit is described as the implementation of the self-concept in a compatible job. According to Super, "holding and adjusting to a job is ... a process of finding out whether that job permits ... [the worker] to play the kind of role he wants to play" (p. 191). More recently, L. S. Gottfredson (1981) argued that there is a zone of acceptable career alternatives that an individual will consider, which are determined by the person's level of aspiration and the sex type of the job.

The clearest and most widely studied view of congruence was described by John Holland (1985a), who offered three general propositions:

1. Congruent individuals will be reinforced, satisfied, and less likely to change environments than will incongruent individuals.
   
   
   
   
2. Incongruent individuals will be influenced by the dominant environment to change in the direction of congruence.
   
   
3. When placed in an incongruent environment, persons with consistent and differentiated personality patterns will be more likely to operate to make changes in the environment than will inconsistent and undifferentiated individuals; that is, they will clarify the influence of the environment.

The evidence that individuals select an occupation congruent with their person-environment fit occurs in about 50 percent of the cases. When expressed and measured interests correspond, that predictive power jumps to 70 percent (Borgen & Selling, 1978). Secondly, congruence is correlated with job satisfaction and well-being in the range of about .20 to .55 (Assouline & Meir, 1987; Meir, 1989; Meir & Melamed, 1986; Spokane, 1985).

Two views of congruence exist. The first assumes that fit is a static process in which an individual with a well-defined set of traits selects an environment that most comfortably corresponds to those characteristics; no change process is either implied or necessary (Borgen, 1986). The second view considers congruence to be an interactional process whereby individuals and jobs change and adapt to each other over time (Vondracek et al., 1986).

One troublesome finding in the congruence literature (Schneider, 1987) is that some work organizations may successively narrow the kind of personality inhabiting their environments in a way that jeopardizes the organizations' ability to function creatively; Schneider has dubbed this the attraction-selection-attrition problem. When this process continues for a long period, the work environment may become so homogeneous with respect to skills, competencies, and attitudes that it loses its ability to respond to novel situations. Although some evidence (Prestholdt, Lane, 8c Matthews, 1987) suggests that this process may be reasoned and helpful, on the whole it is a vexing problem. Congruence may thus not always be beneficial (Muchinsky & Monahan, 1987).

Despite the declining popularity of the strictly static view of person-environment fit, one or two very capable individuals still adhere to this interpretation. The question is whether the next reasonable step is some hybrid model of developmental fit or an interactionist theory that holds that relatively stable individuals influence their environments more than their environments influence them.

Although the inventories themselves may not be as effective in promoting change as was once hoped, clients still expect to receive them (Campbell, 1973), and counselors still use them. Clients believe that these technologically sophisticated inventories will provide answers that individuals would not otherwise obtain on their own. In light of such powerful expectations, it is unlikely that the tests' popularity will subside in the foreseeable future. Counselors and researchers must thus now decide which inventories are best for which clients and which problems.

Continuous and Discontinuous Career Development

Career counseling and psychotherapy also differ in their approach to the problem of discontinuity in many career choices. Although individuals may progress through their career stages either continuously or cumulatively, as Tiedeman and Ohara (1963) have described, there are at least a dozen discontinuities, or points, at which a sharply defined decision must be made, such as the following:

1. Selection of part-time employment while in school and afterwards;
   
   
2. Selection of subjects to be taken in junior high school;
   
   
3. Selection of subjects to be taken in high school;
   
   
4. Selection of first full-time position;
   
   
5. Selection of another position when dissatisfaction arises over a former position;
   
   
6. Retirement.

To Tiedeman and Ohara's position choices, two other discontinuities may be added:

1. Decision to remain in or leave the labor force following childbirth.
   
   
2. Selection of a reentry job following childbirth.

Although all of these discontinuities may not be experienced by any one individual, they are often forced on someone by the realities such as firings or layoffs. Many, however, are predictable, and demand decision-making skills and behaviors that are not required in personality developmental progressions. There will always be certain critical choice points at which individuals will feel pressured to take some specific career actions. Because these discontinuities are more regular and marked in career development than in personality development, many clients in career counseling will be feeling a greater sense of urgency than those in personal counseling and psychotherapy. This often results in a more structured and focused intervention than is found in longer-term psychotherapy. Greater structure and support may also characterize career crisis interventions used when a client has been laid off or fired.

Defining career counseling as a subset of psychotherapy ignores this and the three other fundamental differences between career and personal problems: forced adaptation by the social environment, person-environment fit, special career technology, and continuous and discontinuous development. Practice models of career intervention have been few, because applying psychotherapy theories to career situations has serious deficiencies. Restricting our definition of career intervention to the dyadic or group interaction with a counselor limits the populations with which we will work, and decreases the variety and cost efficiency of service delivery. A more moderate definition was outlined by Crites (1981) who distinguished career counseling from guidance and psychotherapy by noting that career counseling was both more and less than personal counseling. All vocational problems are not personal problems, but the two domains do interact. Crites offered five helpful distinctions between career counseling and psychotherapy:

1. The need for career counseling is greater than the need for psychotherapy.
   
   
2. Career counseling can be therapeutic.
   
   
3. Career counseling should follow psychotherapy.
   
   
4. Career counseling is more effective than psychotherapy.
   
   
5. Career counseling is more difficult than psychotherapy.

Evidence continues to accumulate to support each of Crites's five propositions, which point toward a broad view of career counseling as therapeutic, but not exclusively so.