key: cord-0867875-k0k7ifwj
authors: Guan, Yanjun; Deng, Hong; Zhou, Xinyi
title: Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on career development: Insights from cultural psychology
date: 2020-05-07
journal: J Vocat Behav
DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2020.103438
sha: 809a9240a6502638195b9817d1cbf68d8a6c3589
doc_id: 867875
cord_uid: k0k7ifwj

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a significant global crisis that requires individuals, organizations and nations to take necessary steps to cope. To develop a comprehensive and systematic understanding of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on individuals' career development and possible coping strategies, we adopt a cultural psychological perspective to analyze: (1) how internalized cultural orientations (e.g., values, thinking styles, regulatory focus) may shape individual responses and coping strategies to COVID-19 pandemic; (2) how national culture influences the collective actions and norms during COVID-19 pandemic; (3) how to integrate insights from cultural psychology to enrich research on career management strategies in response to a fast changing environment. While this paper primarily focuses on the role of national culture (i.e., the shared meanings and practices in a nation), these discussions can largely be applied to other cultural settings. Practical implications are also discussed.

J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f COVID-19 AND CAREER 4 1987; Triandis, 1995) , self-construals (Markus & Kitayama, 1991) , thinking styles (Ji, Nisbett, & Su, 2001; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001; Spencer-Rodgers, Williams, & Peng, 2010) , regulatory focus (Higgins, Pierro, & Kruglanski, 2008; Kurman & Hui, 2011) , and so on. Given that members from the same nation are socialized to use their culture-specific orientations to guide their daily coping processes, there are significant cross-cultural differences in individuals" appraisals of stressors, choices of coping strategies, and indicators of adaptive outcomes (Heppner, 2008; Wong & Wong, 2006) . In this section, we discuss how culture plays a pervasive role in shaping the ways people assess and cope with career-related stressors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic emerges as a stressful and even traumatic event that requires individuals to make sense of the new situation and choose appropriate coping actions. Since cultural values reflect the desirable end states that are worth pursuing (Hofstede, 1980; Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987; Triandis, 1995) , they are likely to influence members" attentiveness to and prioritization of stressors in the appraisal processes. For example, in a country that values individualism (vs. collectivism), people tend to form an independent (vs. interdependent) selfconstrual (Markus & Kitayama, 1991 ) and prefer to use ideal self (vs. ought self) to guide their behaviors (Higgins et al., 2008; Kurman & Hui, 2011) . These cultural orientations will direct members" attention to stressors closely related to their personal career development (Heppner, J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f COVID-19 AND CAREER 5 individualism, self-construals and regulatory focus only represent limited aspects of cultural influence, future research should adopt a more comprehensive framework of cultural orientations (e.g., Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987) to advance existing literature on cultural differences in appraisals of stressors.

To cope with the various stressors associated with COVID-19, individuals may choose to use primary control (e.g., directly solving the associated problems) or secondary control (e.g., accommodating and reappraising existing problems) strategies (Rothbaum et al., 1982) . The choices of coping strategies have also been found to be shaped by national culture (e.g., De Vaus, Kuppens, & Bastian, 2018; Heppner, 2008; Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984) . For example, through comparing Japanese and American cultural traditions and practices, Weisz et al. (1984) found that primary control strategies are heavily emphasized in American society whereas secondary control strategies are more valued in Japanese society. Evidence points to cultural differences in thinking styles (Ji et al., 2001; Nisbett et al., 2001; Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2010) helps to account for such Eastern-Western differences in coping strategies. Specifically, Easterners (e.g., Chinese, Japanese) are more likely to use holistic (vs. analytical) and dialectical thinking styles than Westerners (e.g., Americans), which are characterized by the emphasis of context (vs. objects) as the determining forces, the expectation of constant changes (e.g., bad things can be transformed into good things), as well as the tolerance of contradiction (e.g., opposite characteristics or elements can coexist with each other). Although the primary control strategies are generally preferred by Westerners, the holistic and dialectical thinking styles give rise to the tendency of valuing the secondary control strategies and using both among Easterners (De Vaus et al., 2018; Heppner, 2008) , which helps to explain the high levels of resilience, or The above discussions suggest that culture is a useful angle to understand the variations of coping strategies and their effects (Heppner, 2008; Wong & Wong, 2006) . More importantly, this line of research may help to advance extant research on career management strategies by recognizing a fuller range of functional strategies arising from different cultures, which has the potential to enrich the repertoire and flexibility of individual career management activities in response to the fast situational changes (Cheng, 2009 ).

In addition to its manifestation in individual orientations, culture is also embedded in a nation"s social systems, collective actions and daily practices (Hofstede, 1980; Kitayama, 2002) .

As the COVID-19 pandemic is a threat to nations" security, prosperity and social order, collective actions led by governments are deemed as crucial steps to overcome the emerging problems associated with it. In the subsequent section, we continue to analyze how national culture influences the collective decision-making processes and subsequent actions, and how these factors may impact members" behaviors.

The collective decision-making process of a nation is closely related to the dominant leadership prototypes and styles in that culture (House et al., 2004; Smith et al., 2002) . Smith et al. (2002) found that managers from high power distance cultures are more likely to seek guidance from vertical sources (e.g., superiors, authorities) rather than lateral sources (e.g., peers).

J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f COVID-19 AND CAREER 8 guidance for the public (e.g., social distancing, wearing masks, tracking individual health conditions) and closely monitor and punish deviance (e.g., Brueck, 2020) .

For example, China employed nationwide lockdown, individual insolating, community recording, and domestic and international travel tracking. Almost everyone has participated in the coping process through self-isolating and establishing health profiles (Ankel, 2020) . The level of collective cooperation and compliance from individual citizens is beyond apprehension to many cultural outsiders, especially members of loose cultures (e.g., Australia, Spain, USA, Netherlands), where governments allow people to have more personal discretion (e.g., Govan, 2020; ""LIBERATE"", 2020). The cultural practices discussed above may also impact individuals" coping, self-regulation and career management practices, over and above the influence of personally internalized orientations. Since high power distance, high collectivism, and tight norms of a society are associated with centralized decision-making process, emphasis of collective interest over individual interest and strict control of social order, they will create a strong situation that heavily influences members" work and life activities, irrespective of their own preferences.

To cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, many employees, such as "key workers" or "essential workers" whose jobs are vital to public health and security (White & Hope, 2020) , are expected to continue working. Those workers contribute to minimizing the collective damage and securing the national interest, at the potential expense of their own physical and mental well-being individuals who prioritize personal interests over public benefits and defy collective coping actions, such as escaping from quarantine, hoarding essential hygiene products or concealing health information (e.g. Yiga, 2020).

Since every member has multiple cultural identities, they may identify more with their ethnical culture, professional/occupational culture, or religious culture, instead of national culture.

The complexity of social identities and the varied levels of cultural identification may lead to the risks of intergroup prejudice or even conflicts within a nation. For example, people who identify with certain cultural groups may perceive other groups as a threat, leading to intolerance and aggressive behaviors against other groups (Russell, 2020) , which may further escalate into a larger-scale social crisis. Governments and social institutions should seek guidance from cultural and intergroup theories to effectively prevent these incidents. Previous research has shown that it is possible to shift members" representations of group boundaries and guide them to include another group into a more inclusive, super-ordinate group (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000; Guan et al., 2011b) . For example, by sending strong signals of "shared similarity" or "common fate" (Drury, 2018), governments and social institutions can promote cultural members" perceived similarity and common goals with other groups, to transcend the barrier of group membership.

In addition to the above within-culture factors, in a globalizing world, members of a culture also take influences from foreign cultures (e.g., by accessing international media), thereby forming plural cultural identities (Chen et al., 2016a; Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martinez, 2000; Morris, Chiu, & Liu, 2015) . This polyculture perspective suggests that nowadays individuals are capable of developing multiple cultural identities, and these identities can be J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f COVID-19 AND CAREER 11 primed and activated by relevant cues to help individuals adapt to the changing situational demands (Oyserman & Lee, 2008) . This approach will not only help to understand cross-cultural differences in coping strategies and career management strategies under the COVID-19 pandemic, but will also provide important guidance for individuals to develop a more flexible and adaptive way to cope with the emerging challenges in their career development (e.g., Cheng, 2009 ). This dynamic view of culture also carries important implications for the cultural adaptation and career management strategies of sojourners, expatriates, immigrants, and so on (Guan et al., 2018).

As national culture can be conceptualized and operationalized in diverse ways, future research should continue to seek insights from other relevant models, such as cultural differences in social beliefs (Chen et al., 2016b; Leung & Bond, 2004) , or use an indigenous approach to develop a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the different aspects of cultural influence (Gelfand & Denison, 2020; Leung, 2012) . In addition to national culture, other characteristics of a nation, such as economical, geopolitical and historical factors, also play important roles in shaping members" behaviors, which should also be taken into consideration in future research (Tsui, Nifadkar, & Ou, 2007) . As culture can be manifested at different levels, future research should adopt a multi-level approach to examine how national culture, regional culture, professional/occupational culture and organizational culture interplay with each other in influencing individuals" coping and career management strategies (Leung et al., 2005) . Lastly, although national culture is often viewed as a relatively stable factor, it is also subjective to change (Hamamura, 2012; Huang et al., 2018) . Whether the COVID-19 pandemic and the individual and collective actions aiming to cope with this crisis would lead to significant changes to culture is an important question that needs to be answered in future research.

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