Men in Mid-Career
A study of British managers and technical specialists

Deals with problems of men aged 35–40 who have invested half a work-life in one career and may now be at turning-point.

Cyril Sofer (Author)

9780521096065, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 May 1970

400 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.59 kg

'Sofer has done an excellent job. In elegant, graceful prose, he paints a penetrating portrait of pre-state ploitics, from the militant Revisionist movement on the far-right to the Communist on the far-left, illustrating the process by which David Ben-Gurion and his particular faction of the Labor movement achieved hegmony.' Haárett and Herald Tribune

Originally published in 1970, Men in Mid-Career deals with the problems of men aged 35–40 who have invested half a work-life in one type of career and may now be at a turning-point. It is at this stage that they come to realise the implications of the commitments they have made during the last 15–20 years. By this time, their personal reputations rest mainly with one employing organisation and it is difficult for them to leave unless they take a bold step involving great risks and far-reaching implications for their families, homes and types of life. The author provides a comprehensive review of the literature on the subject that was emanating from the UK and US, and goes on to report on a detailed study of representative samples of managers and technical specialists in two large UK firms. The book juxtaposes the viewpoints of senior management and the man whose career is simultaneously a building block in a task-centred system and the repository of his identity.

Acknowledgments
Preface
1. The work preoccupations of executives
2. Persons as organisational resources
3. The career as a personal experience
4. The bureaucratised organisation as an occupational environment
5. Functions of work roles
6. The personal significance of the job
7. The personality of the industrial manager
8. The Autoline and Novoplast companies: structure, operations, ideology and personnel institutions
9. Composition and representativeness of the samples studied
10. The role of the job and the meanings of work
11. Evaluations of the job and the employing organisation
12. The career in retrospect and prospect
13. The company in the life space
14. Career concerns and hazards
15. The technical specialist in the industrial organisation
16. Advancement within the organisation
17. Interaction between the executive, his colleagues and his employing organisation
Appendices: 1. Interviewing schedule used with Autoline and Novoplast samples
2. Characteristic functions of members of sample
3. Occupations of fathers of men in sample
4. Descriptive details of men at Autoline and Novoplast
5. Effects of differences in occupation and education
Author index
Subject index.

Subject Areas: Sociology & anthropology [JH]