Sarah Brothwell
Career Decision-Making Approaches
November 12, 2012 8
This article discussed two forms of decision-making: descriptive and prescriptive.
Descriptive theories describe or explain the choices that an individual makes when deciding on
career choices. In contrast prescriptive decision-making theories focus on an ideal approach to
decision making. One descriptive model is the David Tiedeman, which is a developmental one
that explains four phases of anticipating a choice. These phases deal with exploration,
crystallization clarification, and the choice process itself. These phases can be guides for the
counselor in understanding the decision-making process and the nature of the individual’s
internal cognitive and affective process. Also explains how individual go through a process of
adjustment once a choice has been made to take a job. The phases of job adjustment include
induction (implementation of choice), reformation (the introduction of a new member into a
group and the reception of that individual by other members) and integration (the newness wears
off, and the group and the individual accept each other. The excitement about the new choice
may diminish and become an integral part of the individual. The Assessment of Career
Decision-making: includes scales that measure three decision-making styles: rational, intuitive,
and dependent.
A prescriptive approach is the Anna Miller-Tiedeman who model could be described as
spiritual. Miller-Tiedeman explains that life and career are totally related and titles her theory
Lifecareer Process Theory. Bloch and Richmond have described seven themes that individuals
can use to better understand their lives and the career decisions that are a part of their lives.
These seven themes reflect a spiritual approach to career decision-making. They include: change
(is inevitable, occurring at many times throughout one’s life career), balance (sometimes
individuals seek a balance in their lives, and other times it is a natural inclination to maintain a
balance between, work, play and other activities), energy (the way individuals approach their
careers can be measured or viewed by the amount of energy that they generate in their work),
community (communities of companionship, communities of culture, and the cosmic
community. Work is a means of interacting with one’s community), calling (is about hearing
your own song and singing it out loud and clear. Finding one’s calling is to recognize one’s
interests, skills, values, and abilities and apply them to productive work), harmony (finding the
work that will bring about a true sense of appreciation and understanding), and unity (to believe
in unity and to trust the universe. To trust the universe is to be prepared to deal with changes that
occure and to believe that one universe is one whole). The spiritual approach to counseling
shows how individuals can transcend their ordinary lives and connect with inner meanings found
deep within themselves (little empirical support). Each individual is his or her own theory maker.
Gary Peterson and his colleagues created the cognitive information processing approach,
which examines how decision-making skills can be used to help clients integrate information
about self and occupation and make good career choices. Three basic components of cognitive
information processing are knowledge domains, decision-making skills domain, and the
executive processing domain. The knowledge domain consists of knowing oneself and knowing
about occupations and the world of work options. The decision-making skills domain individuals
learn about how to make decisions. In the executive processing domain, clients become aware of
how their thoughts influence their decisions. The cognitive information processing theory’s
approach to career development is best illustrated through the pyramid of information
processing. In describing the pyramid, we will first focus on the base of the pyramid, the
knowledge domain, and then go next to the decision-making domain, and finally to the executive
processing domain. This approach also involves communicating the problem, analyzing
information, synthesizing alternatives, evaluating or valuing alternative and executing action
plans.
Questions
1. What are the most important contributions of the theory? From this chapter I felt the
Anna Miller-Tiedeman model, which could be described as spiritual, resonated most
strongly with me. I feel that the seven themes that individuals can use to better
understand their lives and the career decisions that were describe match closely with the
way I view the counseling process and relationship. I like the fact that the counselor
deeply respects the experience and knowledge of the client and allows them to be the
expert on their own lives. It also described concepts that were useful to help the client
make sense of their career decision-making process.
2. What are the three things you learn from the theory? 1. I learned that career decisionmaking could be viewed in a variety of different ways. 2. I learned that each perspective
has different strengths and weakness. 3. I also learned that there are two forms of
decision-making: descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive theories describe or explain
the choices that an individual makes when deciding on career choices. In contrast
prescriptive decision-making theories focus on an ideal approach to decision making.
3. What are the possible practical applications of this theory? All of the theories described
in this chapter have possible practical applications. I believe that the Miller-Tiedman is
most applicable the clinical application of career counseling. I see the seven basic
principals as very helpful for guiding clients to more functional and appropriate beliefs
about work and life.
4. What are the ways you could use the theory in your line of work? When working with
people with disabilities all of these approaches could be applied. I believe that the
Tiedman approach could be successfully applied to help the client explore his or her own
unique skills and interests. This model can also help guide the counselor in assessing
where the client is in his or her own development.
5. What type of client will benefit most from the use of this theory? I believe that all clients
could benefit from understanding their internal and external decision making processes.
Clients who have more developed critical thinking skills will appreciate the material.
Clients who are unaware of their decision-making process or are poor decision makers
can use any of the models to become better at making decisions.
6. What type of client would benefit least from the use of this theory? Clients who are
uninterested in discussing their decision making processes may not benefit from these
theories.
7. What do you believe are the overall limitations of the theory? The Miller-Tiedman
approach has little empirical evidence. The Tiedmen approach may be too simplistic. The
cognitive information processing approach may be good at explaining decision making
processes, but may not be as useful when applied to career counseling.
Sarah Brothwell
Question:
The Miller-Tiedman theory distinguishes between:
A) Personal and common realities
B) Exploration and crystallization
C) Occupational knowledge and decision-making skills
D) All of the above