The ongoing transformation and relocation of Oilco’s finance function through the SSC model was made clear in the exploratory interviews and we had been curious to understand how professional accountants in the SSC would perceive their work and career prospects given the new working methods and the migration of work overseas.
5.1. RQ1: how has the changing nature and location of global finance work impacted on the work and experiences of the professionals who do it?
In the exploratory interviews we had expected a sense of resistance to the SSC model and its role as a change agent, however these workers actually felt enthusiastic about: their new global roles; the opportunity to lead systems development; working virtually, and to continue progressing within the company as their four-yearly transfer windows came around. The explanation seemed to be that in an environment of constant change the company was very supportive to its staff and had recognised (perhaps belatedly) the need to build a brand identity for the Finance SSC within the business and to help workers to stay connected with the global brand. Perhaps, these onshore workers felt less concerned because there were still employed and had opportunities available ‘on-shore’ but in any case, the ‘pathfinder’ reputation that Oilco had forged in the SSC sector would help them to move on in the SSC sector if they wished. We were not able to access the displaced onshore workers. That having been said, there was a feeling that the SSC was different in many ways, especially in terms of being more remote from the rest of the organisation, even though it touched almost all parts of it.
Findings relating to RQ1 echoed Clarke’s (2013) conception of the new organizational career with support from the organization in terms of individual development, while recognizing the limitation of promises in respect of progression opportunities. Individuals exhibited loyalty both to their own career, and to the organization, especially when they understood how Oilco could contribute to their skills development and therefore future employability. At all levels, these were regarded as good jobs with a globally recognized employer brand, while at the same time there was acknowledgement of the pressures arising from a narrowing supervisory cadre, wide spans of control, and relatively limited promotion opportunities deriving from broad, flat structures (Herbert & Seal, 2012; Nicholson & Aman, 2012) and an ‘hourglass’ hierarchy (Rothwell et al., 2011). These sentiments came through in the follow-up interviews, but concern was tempered by the fact that these workers were overseas and such jobs in their locale had not existed 20 years ago. Hence they were naturally enthusiastic about the transformation of the finance function.
5.2 RQ2: What are the main career anchors for finance professionals in a global shared service centre? Can this provide a new model of career anchors potentially more appropriate for working lives in the 21st century?
We employed the COI as a traditional theoretical framework to help us to understand the career orientation impact of new ways of working and the new organizational form of the SSC. Theoretically, the six career anchors proposed by this research (organizational challenge, skills security employability, security stability, global managerial competence, entrepreneurship and social engagement, flexibility and freedom) supported the call for fresh perspectives on career orientations in new working contexts (Gubler et al., 2014). Schein (1996, p. 80) had noted that: ‘- profound changes are occurring worldwide’ – and had posed the question: ‘Will there even be such a concept as an organizational career?’. After more than two decades of profound change, our findings suggest that, for our respondents at least, organizational careers do still exist, played out in a global, technologically enabled context.
In terms of practical implications, an updated version of career anchors for contemporary working contexts could serve as a more suitable self-help tool for individual career management for finance professionals in SSCs in the spirit of Schein’s (1974, 1978) original intentions for the theory. The tool could also be employed by organizations for job matching (especially in the four-yearly job rotation windows operating in Oilco) to identify opportunities that are congruent with individual anchors. Overall the findings suggest that career anchors may be context specific and that there is further opportunity to refine new anchors to better suit new organizational models. In addition to conceptions of the new organizational career (Clarke, 2013), the notion that accounting work has increasingly incorporated operational and strategic work with managerial responsibility (Scapens & Jazayeri, 2003) has impacted on perceived skill requirements.
In this study, the globalised nature of accounting work (Mohamed & Lashine, 2003) had been evident but in this case within the context of one organization with a strong global culture. A significant finding is that ‘global working’ needs to be re-conceptualized as not necessarily involving physical movement, but rather working with a global perspective from a single country in a pan-global corporate context supported by common ERP systems and processes. This offers a more specific contextual frame than general notions of a global knowledge-based economy.
Reflection on the quantitative data analysis elicited two main outcomes. The first of these was to split Schein’s original security/stability anchor into two components: organizational security/stability, and employability security/stability. This was supported by factor analyses from previous studies on the career orientation inventory (Baruch, 2004a; Petroni, 2000; Sumner, Yage & Frank, 2005). The second outcome was the recognition of a new measure relating to perceptions of global working, which resonated with the internationalism anchor suggested by Suutari & Taka (2004). This construct was intended to be quite distinct to the internationalism anchor as envisaged by Lazarova et al., (2014), which focused on physical geographical mobility. Our respondents exhibited a strong sense of global connectedness arising from close ties across the multinational business as a corporate whole, which together with the standardizing nature of the ERP system, tended to moderate national and cultural differences.
Regarding RQ2, interpreting the six factors has required a logical attempt (informed by the literature and our qualitative data) to identify the underlying dimensions that unified a group of items (Comrey & Lee, 1992; Rummel, 1970; Tabachnik & Fidell, 2006) It appeared that many of the constructs were blending the original career anchors with some of the proposed anchors (e.g. global working and employability security/stability). This differed greatly from previous Exploratory Factor Analyses that had discovered instances where anchors split and loaded on to two components (e.g. Danziger et al., 2008; Feldman & Bolino, 1996; Hardin et al., 2001; Igbaria et al., 1991; Petroni, 2000). We were encouraged by the clarity and simplicity of the six-factor solution, which explained a reasonable level of the variance. The blending of items associated to different original anchors on the modified COI could further reflect the interdisciplinary nature of professional work in the SSC, or more likely a recognition that this is simply a quite different way of working, with the work itself relocated around the world. In this context, the finance tasks retained a strong organizational ‘steer’, potentially due to the strength of Oilco’s corporate brand and culture, underpinned by the common ERP system. Our findings, for these respondents, support Schein’s view, summarised by Rodrigues et al., (2013, p.144) that: ‘even when people are able to identify one dominant anchor, they still relate to the needs, values and abilities encompassed by other anchors’.
The new Organizational Challenge (OC) anchor represented 26.6% of the variance, with high internal reliability (α = .822). All five ‘pure challenge’ items occurred within this anchor and were supplemented by items traditionally associated with service/dedication to a cause, entrepreneurial creativity and technical/functional competence. The service/dedication to a cause item (- ‘use my talents in the service of others’) may indicate a connection to informal mentoring. Both the remaining items were anchored in entrepreneurial creativity and technical/functional competence, potentially drawing upon the application of skills (or talent) in order to overcome challenges, as one respondent identified:
To be part of something new and build something new, so [as] to fix something or to make sure things are moving, I like that things really happen. (SSC Team Member)
We suggest that the composition of the organizational challenge anchor reflects our respondents’ desire to succeed in Oilco’s more dynamic and challenging workplace environment of the 21st century, within the organizational context. This suggests a contrast to the relatively stable, even ‘relaxed’ environments enjoyed by Schein’s original respondents (Schein 1993, p. 40). Instead, the focus here seemed increasingly to be on global managerial competence—managing across borders, cultures, and virtual platforms—rather than simply exercising general leadership in a hierarchical structure. The competencies valued by the respondents emphasized the ability to collaborate across diverse teams, to navigate complex process-based workflows, and to influence without direct authority, which reflects the decentralized and technologically mediated nature of work in SSCs. This reframing aligns with the evolving definitions of leadership and management in multinational corporate settings where agility, communication, and systems fluency often outweigh traditional command-and-control capabilities.
In summary, the findings support the argument that career anchors are both context-specific and evolving. While some of Schein’s original categories remain relevant, others have been transformed or blended to reflect contemporary organizational realities. Anchors such as Skills Security/Employability and Global Managerial Competence represent adaptations of older concepts that resonate more closely with the current globalized, digital, and flattened organizational landscape of the SSC. Furthermore, Flexibility and Freedom appears to embody not only a desire for work-life balance but also a practical response to uncertainties in the labor market, suggesting a shift toward viewing organizational roles as stepping stones within broader, more individualized career narratives.
Taken together, these six anchors—Organizational Challenge, Skills Security/Employability, Security and Stability, Global Managerial Competence, Entrepreneurship and Social Engagement, and Flexibility and Freedom—may offer a more nuanced and realistic framework for understanding how finance professionals in SSCs navigate their careers. These insights point toward the need for organizations to update career development tools and frameworks to better align with the lived experiences and evolving aspirations of their workforce.
