Young people especially the adolescents do face several challenges in decision making before they settle on their careers. For instance, a person who hails from a family background that consists of the majority of entrepreneurs, that person would as well be influenced by such choices when he would have reached a stage of making a choice in his/her career. In most instances, children to politicians end up being politicians due to the family influences. Families are therefore considered to have played a big role in impacting human behaviors. The research on family science on sociology, education, and psychology offer theories that describe families and also explains the importance of the family outcome (Brown and Venkatesh, 2005, P 399-426). Family science explains better how families impact organizations and the people in them. While trying to review on how families influence the organization and how organizations influence families, this paper will refer to some important family science theories and find out how such theories leverage and enhance our understanding on the association of a career choice to an individual from a given family system.
The family is considered to be the most important and enduring of all the human social groupings. Just as have mentioned earlier, entrepreneurial research shows that a person raised from an entrepreneurial home is more likely to be an entrepreneur due to the influences of the family. Gender is another factor that is central to both families and organizations. Gender influences how families divide labor within households and how family members manage the work-family interface. For organizations, gender influences Human Resource practices and employee behaviors e.g., compensation practices, leadership style, team diversity, leadership roles, and overall organizational success. In a family set up, roles are played according to gender (Fields, 2004). The work of male children is different from that of the female gender. When it comes to the duty and responsibility, there is as well a significant difference in the roles played by both the parents in the family. When children grow up, they tend to learn from these roles and hence influence their career choices in the future when they grow up.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Family background reviews on the general system theory. The general therapy theory is commonly used to analyze family therapy. Family therapy generally emphasizes on how the family can influence a career choice for an adolescent who is studying abroad. Family system theory is not only be defined by the characteristics of its people but also by the communication interactions within the family and the communication system that link the family members define the family system. The general system in this context is open, dynamic and is associated with circular communications. Furthermore, general system theory points on the relevance of the current communication over the initial condition to explain the family status quo. For that reason, family system theory focuses on one’s current family (Bertalanffy, 1969). According to family systems theory, positive feedback loops encourage change, whereas negative feedback loops entrench a status quo.
Despite the straightforward tenets of family systems theory, its practical application is complex in the sense that it requires the analyst to decipher conscious and unconscious communication, specifically the information that is encoded by the sender and the recipients’ ability to decode this information. Different career choices are influenced by the difference in the complexity of the family systems. The certain family characteristic such as birth, celebrating special events, communication and health help in promoting the family resilience on an event of the crisis at different family lifecycle. Circumplex model is the best family system, model (Rodick et al., 1986, P 77-87). This model leverages the key family dimensions of flexibility, cohesion, and communication in explaining family outcomes. Family cohesion refers to the emotional bonding that the family members have towards one another. Family flexibility, on the other hand, refers to the quantity of change in the family leadership, role relationships and relationship rules. Finally, the third dimension is family communication that comprises of all the family listening skills, self-disclosure, clarity, continuity tracking respect and regard. The circumplex model describes how specific combinations of different levels of cohesion and flexibility interact with communication quality to affect the functioning of the current family (Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985, P 76-88).
Family System theory research in the context of an organization
Of the theories we review, family systems theory has attracted the most attention from management researchers. A few entrepreneurship studies drew on family systems theory, but it has thus far mostly attracted attention from management researchers interested in family business and organizational behavior. Family business researchers have long pointed to the relevance of family systems theory for understanding the intricate relationship between family and business systems. For example, pointed to ways that the family and the business form a joint system in which family-based principles can hinder effective business decisions. Other studies have drawn on family systems theory to describe how one particular aspect of a family system, such as the parent-child relationship and intergenerational rivalry, hamper rational decision-making in family businesses. Likewise, family businesses can challenge the family system. For example, explained how the emotional intelligence of individual family members and the emotional capability of the family as a whole influence family during grief recovery after the loss of a business. The family system of the business family also can impact non-family employees (Lee, 1996, P 18-29). Most of these studies, however, have done little more than point to the fact that family systems influence or are influenced by the business, or assess only one system dimension without embracing the complex multidimensional family system that family systems theory describes.
Implications of family systems theory to management research
Family systems theory shows that family communication, structure, and relationships affect how people view challenges, interact with others, and respond to stress. More generally, we see opportunities for management researchers to leverage family systems to better explain attitudes and behaviors at work, and how organizations, in turn, impact families. Likewise, elements of an entrepreneur’s current family might either encourage or discourage the search for entrepreneurial opportunities, the desire to take action, and the success of those outcomes (Mederer and Hill, 1983, P39-60). For example, are people from more cohesive families less likely to strike out independently or embrace entrepreneurial opportunities that negatively affect family time? For those who do become entrepreneurs, do more cohesive family systems provide a stronger foundation for overcoming challenges? The current family is also likely to be influenced by outcomes of the entrepreneurial process. Might grief hamper the ability of an entrepreneur’s family system to regain balance?
Finally, there are areas of management research where family systems theory has been largely absent, such as organization theory or strategic management. Taking strategic management as an example, it seems likely that CEOs’ and other top managers’ current family systems can either support or interfere with their organizational effectiveness, and that (1) the impact of the family system on the organization is potentially broader than at lower levels and (2) family systems and their impact might be quite different due to the nature of their jobs and membership in the social elite. As an example of how a CEO’s family system might have the broad impact, the level of flexibility and cohesion in the CEO’s family system could spill over into how CEOs allocate incentives among top managers and how those managers are held accountable. CEOs with flexibly connected current families pay dispersion and foster a similarly cohesive and collaborative culture among managers (Koziara, 1993, P 79-80). With respect to how family systems might impact top managers differently, on one hand, the high work-related stress relative to other managers seems likely to lead to more severe consequences for managers’ family systems. On the other hand, CEOs’ high earnings and social status might offer stress-reducing avenues for achieving performance across a wide range of household tasks that might facilitate greater balance.
PARENTAL CONTROL THEORY
Also refers to the theory of parental styles. This theory states how parental styles in the family of origin impact individuals especially upcoming generations who are still in colleges pursuing different careers affect their personality and behaviors. In this theory, it relies on different styles including authoritative, permissive and, authoritarian. Permissive style can be categorized into two. It can either be indulgent or negligent. Parental control theory assumes that siblings from authoritative parents: the parents who provide a balance between the parental demands and responsiveness, their children have the best outcome in terms of self-esteem, mental health, independence and achievement orientation. On the other hand, authoritarian parent’s restrictive control retards children’s autonomous decision-making skills, lowers self-esteem, and fosters anxiety and a lost sense of identity (Roberts et al., 1991, P 11-46). Lack of control in indulgent permissive and negligent permissive homes results in less mature and less-achievement oriented children. Through research, the parental control theory has been supported based on its consequences of the parental styles on the adolescents. Categorically, the adolescents from the authoritative parents had higher grades, adopted healthier diets and lifestyles, and also had greater psychological competence. There was further confirmation that authoritativeness facilitates children school success. It was founded that children’s sense of autonomy and a healthy psychological orientation towards school meditated the effect of parenting on school success. In another perspective, authoritarian parents produce children produces children who are obedient and conform to rules though, have low self-esteem, more anxiety and have less sense of identity. Finally, children from indulgent permissive homes are reported to have high self-esteem that is not warranted since both two types of permissive parents produce children with low grades, the children are reported to are less engaged in schools and reported greater substance abuse. Such children are also good in associating their failures to external courses. The predictive power of parental control theory is also believed to differ across ethnicities despite the efforts put on it by several sociologists. Statistics show that authoritative parenting predicted school achievement only on some specific people like Africans, European and Hispanic-American adolescents but not for Asian-American adolescents (Ritchie and Fitzpatrick, 1990, P 523-544).
Parental control theory in the context of Organizations
Entrepreneurship scholars were first among management researchers to adopt parental control theory. In her study of 320 tenth-grade students and 139 small business founders in East Germany, found that authoritative parenting in the family of origin predicted entrepreneurial competence in both samples, which then predicted entrepreneurial interests and entrepreneurial career prospects in the student sample, and early plans for starting an entrepreneurial career, earlier start-up, and greater length of business existence in the founder sample. Similarly, in a sample of Nigerian youth, it was founded that authoritative parenting was significantly related to entrepreneurial interest. In a recent study of women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in Turkey, it was founded that both samples perceived their mothers as indulgent permissive. However, the women entrepreneurs viewed their fathers as indulgent, whereas the entrepreneurs viewed their fathers as authoritarian. In the family business context, it was predicted that a permissive parenting style might lead to entrepreneurial incompetence. They argued that permissiveness led to dysfunctional behavior because it reinforced the child’s sense of entitlement.
Collectively, these studies showed that parenting style influences the attractiveness of entrepreneurial careers and suggested that perhaps it can also impact an individual’s effectiveness as an entrepreneur. Outside of entrepreneurship, it was predicted in their theoretical model that, due to parental modeling, authoritative parenting in an employee’s family of origin has the most positive influence on an individual’s capacity to become an effective leader. Authoritative parents encourage independence within limits and their disciplinary methods are supportive, which should help prepare their children to replicate the same behaviors when they assumed leadership roles. Two additional studies showed effects that ran in the other direction; the workplace influenced parenting style in the current family (Ray and Schmitt, 2010 P 196-216).
Implications of parental control theory for management research
While existing research predicted a theoretical relationship between authoritative parenting and effective leadership, future research would benefit from empirically testing this idea. Also, Murphy and Johnson’s model could be expanded to explain and predict how the other parenting styles outlined in the theory might align with different leadership styles. For example, do authoritarian parents, who are highly demanding and nonresponsive to their children, create micromanaging offspring who constantly look over the shoulders of their employees, usurping their creativity and self-esteem? When does a person consciously reject how he or she was parented and work hard to enact a different style as a leader? Another way organizational behavior research might advance is by leveraging parenting style to explain why the same organizational practices have varying degrees of effectiveness for different employees. For example, employees, who were raised by authoritative parents might embrace job autonomy and produce at a high level. Employees raised by authoritarian parents, in contrast, might flounder in jobs that stress autonomy because freedom is a foreign construct with which they have little experience. Rather, these individuals should thrive in highly structured environments.
INTERGENERATIONAL SOLIDARITY THEORY
Based on earlier research in social psychology and family psychology, (Bengtson and Roberts, 1991) and (Silverstein and Bengtson, 1997, P.429-60) developed the intergenerational solidarity theory. The theory details six dimensions of intergenerational solidarity that indicate the level of cohesion between parents and their adult children.
Although the six dimensions are widely accepted, they are not additive and, therefore, do not form a meta-construct. Instead, the dimensions reflect the “complexity and contradictions of family life”. Most studies have investigated antecedents to one dimension or interactions among several dimensions. (Bengtson and Roberts, 1991), for instance, demonstrated that the strength of a parent’s and a child’s family norms shaped a child’s affection for a parent and a parent’s affection for a child, and combined with parent-child opportunities for interaction, parent and child norms and mutual affection predicted the level of parent-child association. Although levels of intergenerational solidarity have been relatively stable over time, societal changes have increased the heterogeneity of intergenerational solidarity across families. To capture this heterogeneity, (Silverstein and Bengtson, 1997, P.429-60) defined classes of intergenerational solidarity. Although children in the tight-knit class engage with their parents based on all six dimensions of intergenerational solidarity, those in the detached class do not engage with parents on any dimension. In between these two extremes, sociable, obligatory, and intimate, but distant classes represent common combinations in U.S. families.
A number of subsequent studies identified contingencies that nurture or undermine particular dimensions of intergenerational solidarity and help explain observed heterogeneity in intergenerational solidarity in the United States. For instance, parents’ divorce, parents and children living at a geographic distance, and having step-grandparents undermined opportunities for interaction and, therefore, hurt intergenerational solidarity. However, differences in intergenerational solidarity also prevailed within families. The parents’ generation showed, on average, higher intergenerational solidarity than the children’s generation, which is 2017 called generational altruism. The financial wealth of the older generation supported parental interactions and financial transfers to children. However, parents’ divorce and subsequent custody decisions tended “to distance children physically from their divorced fathers” and increased the likelihood of a detached relationship. Earlier studies focused on family-based drivers of intergenerational solidarity but neglected societal factors, which suggests caution when applying the theory’s insights to novel contexts (Parrott and Bengtson, 1999, P 73-105).
Intergenerational theory research in the context of the organization
Results from a few pioneering studies that apply intergenerational solidarity theory provide initial insights that are relevant for management researchers. On one hand, the intergenerational solidarity of Korean immigrants motivated them to become business owners so they could afford a good education for their children. On the other hand, intergenerational solidarity also entailed parental demands to help out in the business, which distracted immigrant children from pursuing their education and careers. One important finding for organizational research has been that intergenerational solidarity strengthens children’s especially daughters’ felt obligation to care for elderly parents. Intergenerational solidarity also strengthened traditional family gender roles (Schrod et al., 2007, P 23-46). The result was that women with strong intergenerational solidarity with their parents were more likely to arrive late to work, reduce work hours, and take more time off. These negative effects appeared particularly strong for blue-collar workers who must take unpaid leave to care for parents.
One study investigated how family-friendly policies at work impact how employees managed obligations derived from intergenerational solidarity. They were surprised to find that employees from organizations with family-friendly work policies provided significantly less health care, fewer hours of help, and less social support to their parents. They speculated that this was the case because employees with flexible work schedules and employer training were able to care for parents more efficiently than those who lacked such support.
Implications of intergeneration solidarity theory through research
Overall, the few studies that leverage inter-organizational solidarity research in organizational contexts suggested that solidarity can influence career choices, obligations to care for elderly parents, and that organizations might influence the way children offer elder care while working. With respect to the latter, it seems that there is merit in further efforts to understand how HR policies interact with intergenerational solidarity. The one study to date offers counter-intuitive findings in that these policies were linked to employees’ offering less time and support to parents. Is this because human resource policies are so effective that they reduce employees’ time commitments? Alternatively, are families with solidarity healthier and thus making fewer demands on employees’ time, or do family members perceive their investments in parent care differently? Another obvious avenue for future inquiry is to investigate how organizational actors’ intergenerational solidarity experiences affect career choices and work behaviors. Childhood exposure to family role models who are entrepreneurs, for example, is one of the most important predictors of entrepreneurial intention (Wiseman and Gomez-Mejia, 1998, P 133-153). Because higher intergenerational solidarity increases children’s self-efficacy and self-efficacy is an important predictor of entrepreneurship, intergenerational solidarity might explain why some families produce entrepreneurs for a generation.
FAMILY INFLUENCE CAREER CHOICES OF AN ADOLESCENT
Scenario 1: How families influence the choice of a career
Some children embrace the career of their parents positively. Our parents were the closest people we see around while growing up, we tend to copy and follow in their footsteps in whatever they do. Children believe that their parents are always right and whatever they say is final. A child raised from a family where the father is a policeman will grow up when he/she knows that his/her father is the most powerful person on earth by seeing them carrying their guns wherever they go. Likewise to a child raised from a family where one of the parents is a teacher will grow up knowing that his/her parent is the cleverest person in the entire world and whatever the parent says is final. Finally, the child raised from a family comprising of a medical doctor will be growing up with a mentality that his/her parent is the most learned person on earth (Wolfradt et al., 2003, P 521-532). From these scenarios, we can conclude that such children will be influenced positively in choosing their careers and they may end up being like their parents. The parents will also find easy time in nurturing their children having in mind that their children are being influenced and attracted with what they do.
From this scenario, when we make a review of the three theories discussed above, the family can influence career for the adolescents positively. Parental control theory predicts how parents nature their children behaviors and character. It is evident from the parent control theory that specific families influence specific characters of a child. A student who is yet to settle on a career should be given enough time to chose on the career he/she would wish to undertake without necessarily making choices for them because each child has got a unique ability compared to the other.
The tendency of our family deciding on the choices we are to make for the future career should come to a halt. Parents should not gauge children based on personal thoughts imaging that their children must probably become what they are in the future. However, adolescent still needs to be guided in many ways having in mind that most of the adolescents are not mature to make personal decisions, especially in some important aspects. Some careers are not worth admired and when an adolescent is realized to be admiring certain careers like robbery, prostitution, and other dirty jobs, such adolescents should be properly guided on the right career choices by their parents. There are some adolescents who withdraw ideas from social media and other sources like for instance when an adolescent starts to admire a musician from a daily newspaper or Facebook, the parental in this case is mandated to know clearly the talents of such a child and his/her capabilities if it’s true that when the child is given an opportunity can end up making a successful artist and earn a living from it (Rodgers, 1964, P 262-270).
When the child is going towards the right direction, then he/she should be fully supported without any hesitations from the parent or family members. Another important aspect to note on how families influence the career choice of an adolescent is that a parent should be very close to the teacher of the child and should often seek to know the abilities from the teacher or by looking at the child’s assessment reports. By doing this, the parents will be able to know best certain subjects that the child performs best and can choose a career for the child from the information they obtain in those reports. This will motivate both the child and also to give parents and teachers easy time in nurturing this child because his/her abilities will be made clear to all the stakeholders of the child.
FAMILY INFLUENCE CAREER INTENTIONS WHEN ONE GOES ABROAD TO STUDY
Scenario 2: How families influence career choice
Before going into details of the paper, here is a significant scenario of an adolescent boy who got some scholarship to further his studies in the University of Paris in France despite the fact that he was originating from the United Kingdom. The man hailed from a family whereby both his parents were politicians and occupied big offices in the United Kingdom government. To be precise, the whole family loved politics and that actually was the passion and wish of his parents to their children. This man was called John. Brian had since admired to be something else not related to politics since his childhood. However, as we are yet to see, indeed, a family can influence a career choice of an individual. John wanted to be a civil engineer and he did not associate with political issues but since every time he went back home for a holiday, all he could listen to from his parents were things to do with politics all the time in all their discussions. The friends to his parents were as well as politicians, the children to his family friends also had begun to love politics being the fact that, that was the order of the day in the family discussions. Sometimes it needs some external forces to overcome certain scenarios but John didn’t have all that courage to defend his future career I this house.
By the time he got his scholarship to further his studies, his parents became nervous with his career and were forced to write a letter to the head office of the university informing them that John had changed his mind from pursuing engineering course to a law course. His parents believed that when John did law, he could find it easier joining politics in future. For one to perform better in politics, he/she is expected to undertake a course in law for this is one of the strongest tools one would need when it comes to the interpretation of laws and fighting for human rights. As had mentioned before, families can influence the career of an individual both positively and negatively. In this case, John’s career was influenced negatively but he didn’t have an option but to comply with the terms and conditions of the family (Shearman and Dumlao, 2008, P 186-211).
When the person leaves his country to attend for further studies from a different institution far away from his/ her country of origin, such people tend to encounter different challenges in the process of undertaking their studies. The pressure is exerted upon these people by either their parents or their country of origin that will demand to choose a career for them because, at long last, such individuals are entitled jobs back in their home countries, not the places they went to study. These people may decide to change their careers and embark on other career chosen by them by their families having the fact may be one of their family members are occupying good positions that are targeting them to work in as soon as they finish their studies without necessarily considering the career of this person (Schrodt and Ledbetter, 2007, P 330-356). Another aspect is whereby a person is offered a job after finishing school back in his country after taking too long time studying entrepreneurship that his/her family succeeded most in and the person is not having the passion for the job is that he/she has no entrepreneurial skills to come up with new things to be adopted easily simply because the career was forcefully planted on him (Steinberg and Mounts 1989, P 1424-1436).
Intergenerational solidarity theory shows that individuals who share strong relationships with their parents and live in their geographic proximity not only draw on their parents to help raise children but also can count on financial resources, which they might need to start a business. In summary, family science theories can describe the family contingencies that produce the most motivation, the fewest hurdles, and the most family resources for adolescents and graduates seeking to start a business or entering any traditionally male career path (Oshri et al., 2015, P 44-63).
To provide another example, the way in which children are brought up in the family affects their proclivity to become entrepreneurs and enter business careers, more generally. In particular, children of entrepreneurs are more likely to develop entrepreneurial intentions, which are an important antecedent to entrepreneurial careers. However, most entrepreneurs are male, and extent entrepreneurship studies have called for research that helps explain what facilitates and/ or hinders female entrepreneurship (Zhao et.al., 2005, PP 1265). Combining intergenerational solidarity theory and family communication theory might help explain when women are more likely to start businesses. Family communication theory explains that individuals, who grew up in pluralistic families, are more likely to become curious and innovative in their later work careers. Intergenerational solidarity theory shows that individuals who share strong relationships with their parents and live in their geographic proximity not only draw on their parents to help raise children but also can count on financial resources, which they might need to start a business. In summary, family science theories can describe the family contingencies that produce the most motivation, the fewest hurdles, and the most family resources for women seeking to start a business or entering any traditionally male career path. More generally, there is unanimous agreement that having more women in traditionally male-gendered careers brings new insights and greater potential for meaningful contributions in those careers, and family science research reveals factors that increase or challenge this objective. Quickly changing family development stages and decreased intergenerational solidarity in the Western world are contingencies that might actually undermine the very foundation that many women quote as critical support for career success and challenging gender norms.
Similarly, more and more parents work full time and outsource childcare, reducing the time that parents can effectively spend with offspring engaging in conversations that develop self-efficacy and curiosity, which, later on, are drivers of openness to career options (Yogev and Brett, 1987). What is not known is whether the childcare institutions that replace traditional parenting are more or less effective at instilling self-efficacy and curiosity in children (Broderick, 1993). Other related future research questions are as follows: How can organizations best leverage the growing diversity of employees’ family backgrounds and upbringing? Although the challenges of managing racial and gender diversity in organizations have been described, what about potential challenges resulting from incompatible parenting styles, family communication patterns, and different attitudes toward senior colleagues or family members in need of help?
This paper has reviewed three prominent family science theories and the pioneering studies that have used in an organizational context and offered research agendas describing how each theory might advance management research. My review highlights ways families influence behavior in organizations and how organizations, in turn, influence families. In essence, people grow up in their family of origin, which influences the type of person they become and, thus, the way they behave as entrepreneurs, employees, and managers (Wiseman and Gomez-Mejia, 1998 P 1936-1957). The current family also directly influence
