'With or Without You: Career Capital Development as Experienced by MBA Alumni' Leadership, Organisations, Behaviour and Reputation Research Seminar

Dr Houldsworth leads Henley Business School's work in the advancement of business education research (ABER). She has 30 years' international experience in the design and delivery of research, teaching and learning in adult development, personal and career development, management learning and aspects of human resource management (HRM).

Her research focuses on management learning and personal and career development, predominantly on post-experience management learners. She serves as a reviewer for the Journal of Management Education and is a member of the British Academy of Management's working group on Post-Experience Management Education.

Having worked internationally in HRM and management consultancy, Dr Houldsworth also writes on aspects of international HRM, particularly performance management. She is a member of the authoring team for the Chartered Institute of Personal and Development (CIPD) textbook International HRM.

Dr Houldsworth received the prestigious title of University Teaching Fellow in 2022 in recognition of her contribution to teaching and learning. She is also an Academic Fellow of the CIPD, an Associate Certified Coach of the International Coaching Federation and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Dr Tresidder's research investigates transformative learning in a careers context, reflecting her lifelong passion for learning and a need to understand how individuals learn. Her doctoral research focused on managers meaning making of career events in the UK.

Having spoken at academic conferences in the UK and internationally, Dr Tresidder has also been involved in research at Henley Business School, focusing on the MBA learning experience in particular. She is currently the module convener for Organisations and People, work-based projects one, two and three for the Degree Apprenticeship programme at Henley Business School. Her teaching portfolio covers undergraduate and postgraduate modules in organisational behaviour, project management, research methods and the Degree Apprenticeship programme.

Dr Rowson's research interests are the topics of ageing at work and the experiences of older workers, exploring how life, work and career transitions from midlife impact health and wellbeing, labour force participation and economic activity in later working life. She also studies how individuals make sense of, and respond to, changing circumstances at identity and behavioural levels.

Her work is multidisciplinary, informed by psychology, sociology and social gerontology theories. Dr Rowson's recent projects explore inequalities between groups, cumulative advantages and disadvantages, precarious work conditions, age discrimination (e.g. gendered ageism) and disrupted trajectories (i.e. transitions). She has published in prestigious journals and is on the Work, Employment and Society journal editorial board. Her area of practice includes executive assessment, executive coaching and leadership and management development programmes. She brings her expertise to her personal development and professional excellence teaching and is a member of the Centre for Euro-Asian Studies and the Centre for Business Ethics and Sustainability.

Before joining academia, Dr Rowson worked for 12 years as an organisational psychologist, consulting high profile organisations in the UK, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates at national and international levels and in both public and private sectors. The industries covered included banking and finance, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, media, energy and manufacturing.

The topic of this presentation is 'Organisational Resilience and the Future of Business Schools: a Systematic Literature Review and Conceptual Model'. The seminar will focus on understanding the qualitatively different experiences of career development reported by the MBA alumni of UK business schools. Although the potential of the MBA to support career capital development has been previously identified, a thorough investigation into how this is experienced has been lacking and this seminar offers a chance to reflect on the implications for management educators, MBA teachers and researchers.

The research Dr Houldsworth, Dr Tresidder and Dr Rowson conducted contributes to career capital theory in the context of post-experience management education in three ways. Firstly, the findings report the development of career capitals, with a description of how these are manifested within the context of an MBA. Secondly, five different experiences of career capital development were identified, with the labels of applying, achieving, collaborating, believing and transforming. These five different experiences contribute to theory by revealing the interrelationships and interdependencies between different forms of capital. Finally, the research highlights that while it is possible to develop certain forms of career capital either with or without others, this is not the case for those involving personal transformation, which cannot be achieved alone.

The seminar is for an internal audience and will be held on 24 April 2025, 1:30pm, in room 108 of the Henley Business School building, Whiteknights campus. For those unable to attend in person there is also the option to dial in remotely via Microsoft Teams. If you are interested in joining, please contact Alex Baker on a.j.baker@henley.ac.uk

The seminar will also feature a 'How We Did It: Publishing in Management Learning' follow-up session with Dr Houldsworth, where she will discuss the publication process for the paper and share insights from the journey of publishing in Management Learning.

LOBR research seminars are co-ordinated by Professor Bernd Vogel and Dr Anastasiya Saraeva.