Career anchors: interest motives, research opportunities, and a contribution to the Italian validation of the Career Orientation Inventory (COI-it)

Background: in the new careers context the concept of Career Anchor (Schein, 1978) has acquired new interest and offers several research and action opportunities as regards both people and organizations. To measure career anchors we propose a first validation of the Italian version of the Career Orientation Inventory (COI) as adapted into a short version by Igbaria and Baroudi (1993). Methods: 347 Italian workers filled in the COI-it and, to evaluate the convergent validity, a sub-group filled in the MOW (Meaning of Work) questionnaire. Internal consistency, factorial structure (first and second order), and correlations between anchors and importance features of working were evaluated. Results: we found: a) support for internal consistency, construct and convergent validity; b) a peculiarity of work security in the Italian context; c) a second order structure above anchors, consisting in work, organizational and independence career orientations. Conclusions: the results seem useful for further specification the anchors structure and for analysis of the meanings of the three main orientations of individual careers.