Careers and Freedom

A bold new career theory transforming career development practice, empowering individuals to make informed, life-enhancing choices.

A thought-provoking, multi-disciplinary approach to career guidance, in which Professor Robertson applies the principles of the Capability Approach to develop a radical new career theory supporting individuals to make choices that will enhance their lives. 

‘This is an amazing book which explores careers from an extremely original perspective and does it in a very readable way ... I learnt a huge amount while reading it and was enormously impressed with the way that it draws such diverse influences together into a coherent whole.’

Professor Tristram Hooley

This is a book about career theory; it addresses concepts to describe people’s careers. Significantly, it enhances career development practice to support individuals to make informed choices and further their lives. It is inspired by the Capability Approach, a moral framework developed by Nobel Laureate, Amartya Sen, which addresses issues of social justice, freedom and wellbeing.   

Professor Robertson draws on systems thinking and innovatively applies it to career development. He develops a way of thinking that promotes a ‘big picture’ overview of careers, which, in turn, facilitates an understanding of the full range of helping strategies open to practitioners.  

The result is a theory designed to support practitioners’ understanding; not an approach that exists solely to further academic discourse. Additional insights and perspectives from the disciplines of economics, philosophy and politics will ensure that this becomes a foundational text and will provide a major and long-lasting contribution to scholarship in this field.