The Building Career Foundations Project is a multi-media longitudinal project that focuses on the careers and career decision-making of MBAs of the Harvard Business School Class of 1996. Professor Monica Higgins and HBS Graduate Adam Richman began the project in the spring of 1996. Ten individuals were chosen from this class to follow, over the course of their careers, and, in addition, a sample of students were surveyed from the class to provide insight into the broader social context in which individuals were making career decisions. The focal ten were interviewed in the spring of their second year at HBS and again, at several points post-graduation including and, in many cases, beyond their five-year mark out of HBS. The five cases that are introduced here were developed to highlight a variety of career-related issues for people embarking on business careers postgraduate school. All of these cases are designed for use in either the first or second year of an MBA program. However, opportunities for learning may extend into different educational contexts as well since issues such as work-life balance, for example, which is covered in the Rodakis case, are not unique to the career decision-making of MBAs.
As a set, the cases are unique in that they incorporate a relational approach to career development. When teaching topics such as self-assessment and career development, we often focus on understanding individual-level values, interests, skills, and behavior devoid of the social context in which those factors emerge and later, make a difference to an individual's personal and professional development. A relational model is premised on the notion that the self is inseparable from interaction with others and that connection in meaningful relationships is essential to professional learning and development. This view stands in some contrast to more traditional career and adult development theories that have often conceptualized development as a progression through a series of stages in which the individual graduates from dependency on others toward an increasingly independent and autonomous self. By employing multimedia and longitudinal data, the cases highlighted below allow students to consider not just the individual case protagonists' own career issues but also the many important others - whether those others are family members, spouses, children, friends or mentors - who impact and are impacted by their career decisions.
The major value in the multimedia nature of the cases is that they bring to life the issues the case protagonists face in a very compelling manner. For example, the Rodakis and Sloane cases chronicle the career decision-making and work-life issues these individuals face over the course of six years. Therefore, students have the opportunity to witness the protagonists' career decision-making as second-year students and then to follow these individuals, "live," since we interview them over the course of several years since graduating. Since none of these cases are retrospective and particularly since these are interactive cases, students have the wonderful ability to place themselves into the shoes of the case protagonists, which fosters a more thoughtful case discussion in class. Students watch the cases the night before and engage in class discussion as a collective following their viewing and analyses. In the Williams, Chen, and Malone video cases, students watch the videos in class, after reading an orientation note to each case the night before. This affords the opportunity for experiencing the case protagonists' career issues as a collective in class, yielding a different and complimentary kind of learning and teaching experience.
Some of these cases have follow-up components such as an in-class video that shows "what happened" to the case protagonists. Having these data is invaluable since it affords students the opportunity to witness the results of their own diagnoses and since it oftentimes raises new and interesting issues for students as the case protagonist's personal life unfolds (for example, after having children or getting married). Additionally, some of the cases may be supplemented with additional readings, such as a note on Work-Family Integration, for students to read following class. Indeed, for all of the cases, more than one form of media is recommended for teaching each case. These associated materials are all spelled out in the information entitled "What I need to Teach This Case" and "How to Teach this Case" which can be found under "Purchase Information" for each of the cases introduced below.