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CHAPTER 10
Career development in later working life: implications for career guidance with older workers 189

circumstances, needs and demands of older people. This reflects the
ʻchoosersʼ, ʻjugglersʼ and ʻsurvivorsʼ identified by Flynn and McNair (2004),
and the dimensions of emotional and financial wellbeing portrayed in an
orthogonal relationship in the New Zealand Department of Labourʼs (2006)
study of motivators and inhibitors to working.

10.2.1. Time
Time is a complex concept. That single word encompasses meanings that
stretch from the aeons of universal time, to human life-spans, to the time
pressures of each day. There is shared human realisation across cultures that
life is short and time is precious, but the meaning attributed to this realisation
is both individually and culturally shaped.
Zimbardo and Boyd (1999) demonstrate that, at individual level, people have
their own personal time perception towards past, present or future, and that such
perception may have a positive or negative aspect. For example, a person with
a ʻpastʼ orientation, a tendency to draw on the past more than look to the future,
may tend towards a ʻpast-positiveʼ (nostalgic) or ʻpast-negativeʼ (bitterness) view.
Similarly, those with a ʻpresentʼ orientation may bring a hedonistic (positive) or
a fatalistic (negative) approach to their present experience.
Western individualistic worldviews create an emphasis on linear lifespace
from infancy to old age. Progression along this line is perceived through a
dualism of cognition and affect, with strong negative connotations of old age
in some cultures. Non-western cultures may ʻcreate an impression about time
experimentally rather than purely cognitivelyʼ (Abi-Hashem, 2000, p. 342).
Connections between life cycles and generations lead to a perception that is
more global and cyclical, leading Abi-Hashem to argue that non-western
people ʻseem to be more relaxed in timeʼ (2000, p. 343) rather than
constrained by it. By contrast, Zimbardo and Boyd (1999) found that people
of Asian background were disproportionately represented in the ʻpresent-
fatalisticʼ category, with a helpless and hopeless feeling that life is controlled
by forces greater than the individual can influence. These contrasting views
emphasise the need for careers advisers to be attuned to individual existential
endeavours, understanding these to be shaped both culturally (Western,
Eastern, etc.) and situationally (including those of eastern ethnic origin now
located in western society, as in Zimbardo and Boydʼs (1999) study.
Despite these differing viewpoints, both Abi-Hashem (2000) and Zimbardo
and Boyd (1999) share the view that future time perspective alters with age.
For Abi-Hashem: ʻas physical health and career decline, people normally
become more reflective and more existential in nature. They long to make a