Shoshana Dobrow
Organizational Behavior PhD
Dissertation Chair: Prof. J.R. Hackman
Having a Calling: A Longitudinal Study of Young Musicians
Why do so many young musicians make the seemingly irrational decision to pursue the extraordinarily competitive, challenging professional music career path? Despite the widespread piece of career advice communicated by music teachers to their students, "Do music if it's the only thing you can do," and very low job availability, the job market for musicians in all genres is characterized by an extremely high supply of talented, motivated people. My dissertation investigates the nature of a subjective orientation-having a calling-that sheds light on musicians' paradoxical career paths.
This is a longitudinal survey study, covering a span of 3 1/2 years, 2001-2005, and my analyses are conducted on four waves of data collected from 567 talented young musicians. I examine multiple facets of the sense of calling through addressing the following four questions in the context of musicians:
(1) What is having a calling?
(2) Can having a calling be measured?
(3) What are the antecedents of having a calling?
(4) What are the consequences of having a calling?
On the theoretical front, my research develops a new, integrated view of the calling construct and advances our understanding of the subjective side of careers, career success in general, and careers in non-traditional occupations. My research makes methodological contributions by establishing a psychometrically robust survey scale to measure having a calling and offering a rare longitudinal study, including leveraging a powerful and underutilized statistical method, individual growth modeling.
