Professor of Sustainable Careers

The Chair contributes to establishing and growing the SBE’s research competencies in the fields of sustainable career development and management, and thus echoes the VU´s overall research profile themes ‘Governance for Society’ and ‘Science for Sustainability.’

With this Chair in Sustainable Careers, SBE aims to recognize and build research competencies in the field of contemporary careers. Careers affect almost everyone, and they are changing rapidly. To illustrate, careers are becoming more complex and dynamic, often characterized by sudden disruptions and shifts. Moreover, organizations and employees increasingly have shorter-term employment relationships, and an increasing number of workers operate in non-standard work arrangements, such as freelancers, agency workers, and ‘gig’ workers. These changes and challenges make the sustainability of careers a more urgent issue than ever before. Therefore, research in this area must help overcome these challenges and find new ways of effectively managing the long-term happiness, health, and productivity of the workforce. Hence, it is essential to reflect this research area with a Chair focusing on these topics.

The Chair focuses on topics related to major contemporary challenges around sustainable careers and career development. The Chair will also focus on studying sustainable careers among non-standard workers, for example, researching how gig workers or agency workers can establish high levels of career sustainability. Combining career research with a focus on changing employment relationships should lead to a state-of-the-art research program that addresses how the field of career studies can help to resolve complex challenges around managing and developing sustainable careers. Consequently, researchers working in this area take a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach, drawing on theoretical perspectives from various scholarly areas, such as Career Studies, Work and Organizational Psychology, Organizational Behaviour, and Human Resource Management.

Your duties

• To facilitate collaborations among faculty within the department and allow for collaborations in the wider academic community
• To recruit, train and mentor PhD students and work with junior academics to develop and publish their research
• To be an active and engaged member of the department, school, and university, working to leverage synergistic opportunities among staff members
• To contribute to SBE’s excellent educational programs to strengthen these programs further and align them with the latest developments in sustainable career research
• To further develop SBE’s research in the field of Sustainable Careers.
• To externally represent and profile the School of Business & Economics and the Vrije Universiteit

A challenging position in a socially involved organization. On full-time basis the remuneration amounts to a minimum gross monthly salary of €6,648 (H2)
and a maximum €9,680 (H2), depending on your education and experience. The job profile: is based on the university job ranking system and is vacant for at least 1 FTE.

The initial employment contract will affect a period of 18 months.
Additionally, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam offers excellent fringe benefits and various schemes and regulations to promote a good work/life balance, such as:

• a maximum of 41 days of annual leave based on full-time employment,
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus,
• solid pension scheme (ABP),
• a wide range of sports facilities which staff may use at a modest charge, contribution to commuting expenses

The ambition of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is clear: to contribute to a better world through outstanding education and ground-breaking research. We strive to be a university where personal development and commitment to society play a leading role. A university where people from different disciplines and backgrounds collaborate to achieve innovations and to generate new knowledge. Our teaching and research encompass the entire spectrum of academic endeavor – from the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences through to the life sciences and the medical sciences.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is home to more than 31,000 students. We employ over 5,000 individuals. The VU campus is easily accessible and located in the heart of Amsterdam’s Zuidas district, a truly inspiring environment for teaching and research.

Diversity
We are an inclusive university community. Diversity is one of our most important values. We believe that engaging in international activities and welcoming students and staff from a wide variety of backgrounds enhances the quality of our education and research. We are always looking for people who can enrich our world with their own unique perspectives and experiences.

School of Business and Economics
The School of Business and Economics (SBE) provides high-quality education and excellent research in business administration and economics with a focus on contributing to the social, economic and ecological challenges of our time. Whether it is the use of robots in society or big data, labour market participation or flexibility in the labour market, traffic jams or the housing market, flash crashes in the stock market or choice behaviour in gambling, leadership or change management: we believe in goal-oriented scientific research and understand that progress in academics, the business community and society is achieved through cooperation, openness and social responsibility.

At SBE, all of our highly-motivated colleagues work together closely in a stimulating, dynamic and international environment to achieve our collective goal of encouraging society to make informed choices. Approximately 7,000 Bachelor’s and Master’s students and 1,700 executive students are enrolled at the School, and employs roughly 600 people.

Department of Management and Organization
The Department of Management and Organization of SBE at the VU is engaged in a wide range of Bachelor’s, Master’s, Executive and MBA programs in the broader Business domain. Its mission is to lead scholarly and practitioner conversations on the topic of organisation and organizing in the globalized world. The department is organized around four research areas: Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship, HRM/OB and Organization Theory. These research areas are closely connected to the VU theme of ‘Governance for Society’, as they all deal with the way organizations are governed to reach particular goals. The Department’s members are involved in both fundamental and applied research, as well as valorization activities.