Forging paths: the role of cultural identity in Latino career self-management

This dissertation examines how cultural identity shapes Career Self-Management (CSM) among Latino professionals and advances a culturally grounded extension of Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT). Although Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs remain important, many organizational approaches fail to address the culturally specific challenges Latino professionals describe, including language discrimination, cultural stereotyping, representational burden, assimilation pressure, and constrained pathways to leadership. In response to increasing political resistance to DEI initiatives, this research reframes career self-management as a culturally responsive framework for understanding and strengthening professional agency under structural constraint.Using a mixed-methods design, Study One employed a cross-sectional survey distributed via Qualtrics, reaching more than 7,000 professionals and yielding 236 complete responses from Latino (non-White), White, and non-Latino minority participants. The survey measured SCCT-informed CSM domains, including antecedents (e.g., self-efficacy, contextual support), self-management processes (e.g., goal setting, resilience, adaptability), and outcomes (e.g., perceived autonomy, career satisfaction). While cultural identity did not consistently predict outcomes across all domains, patterns suggested that Latino professionals placed heightened importance on cultural navigation, identity alignment, and contextual forces while reporting comparatively reduced perceived control and self-efficacy—indicating both cultural strengths and systemic obstacles within organizational environments. Study Two extended and contextualized these quantitative patterns through five culturally responsive, synchronous virtual focus groups (N = 23) with Latino/a professionals across diverse industries, career levels, generational statuses, and national-origin backgrounds. Guided by SCCT and identity-work scholarship, data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, combining theory-informed coding with openness to emergent sequencing and developmental patterns. Qualitative findings showed that contextual factors (e.g., family socialization, migration histories, discrimination, and representational pressure) dominated participants’ narratives and consistently activated identity negotiation. Identity work emerged as the central interpretive mechanism through which participants translated contextual constraints into agency, including strategic code-switching, authenticity calibration, stereotype reframing, and the construction of cultural legitimacy. Contrary to traditional SCCT assumptions that treat agency and efficacy as distal outcomes, autonomy surfaced early and prominently as an identity achievement—constructed through self-definition, boundary setting, and values-based decision making. Learning and process efficacy were tightly coupled, with participants describing how mentorship, exposure, failure, and cultural navigation produced culturally situated efficacy and narratable competence. Together, these patterns culminated in a revised Latino career self-management pathway: Context → Identity Work → Autonomy → Learning → Efficacy → Competence → Well-Being. Additionally, a developmental staging model of identity work emerged (constraint recognition, provisional experimentation, integration/voice claiming, and generativity/system shaping), with meaningful patterning by career level, generational status, and gender. Collectively, the findings extend SCCT by explicitly modeling identity work as a catalytic mechanism that mediates contextual influence and reshapes the sequencing and lived meaning of core CSM constructs for Latino professionals. This dissertation contributes an empirically grounded framework that more accurately reflects culturally situated career development and offers actionable implications for career counseling, leadership development, and organizational inclusion strategies that recognize identity work as both labor and leadership, supporting sustainable agency, effectiveness, and well-being among underrepresented professionals.