An investigation of Career Anchors Model among Education Organization, Physical Education organization and higher education Employees in Iran

The purpose of the present study was to investigate career anchors, that is, Technical/Functional, Service/Dedication, Autonomy, Identity, Pure challenge/Variety, General managerial competence, Security, and Creativity anchors, preferred by the academic employees (MAs and PHDs) working for the three organizations of Education Organization, Physical Education Organization, and Higher Education (MSRT). It was meant to discover the kind of anchors preferred for job promotion and possible reasons as well. Four provinces, i.e. Guilan, Tehran, Lorestan, and Isfahan, were selected based on geographical considerations. DeLong (1982)’s standardized questionnaire was used for data collection. Friedman and Kruskal walis tests were used for data analysis. Results indicated that among all career anchors, Service/Dedication, Autonomy, and Technical/Functional anchors were mostly preferred by the employees to reach their professional goals. However, Security, Identity, and Creativity were the least effective anchors used by the participants. It seems that interpersonal relationships connected to anchors play an important role in job promotion. In addition, Creativity anchor was one of the least favorite perhaps because people are not provided with needed opportunities to indicate their innovations so prefer to try other anchors.