Personal Social Support and Non-Support in Career Aspirations towards Senior Management amongst Women in Middle Management: Multiple Dimensions and Implications on Measurement

Women middle managers aspiring for senior management execute their career choices in a unique career context. They experience the influence of personal social support and non-support in executing their aspirations towards senior management. Yet, it is observed that measures available to capture personal social support and non-support of this cohort of careerist are not adequately comprehensive. It was felt that there is a considerable space to develop a measure on personal social support and non-support as a contextual factor that affects career choice of women in middle management aspiring for senior management. This paper aims to highlight possible multiple dimensions of personal social support and non-support that affect career aspirations towards senior management amongst women in middle management. Concurrently, it offers some recommendations to develop a measure to capture aforementioned phenomena. To fulfill above aims, a targeted literature review on main areas under discussion was carried out in leading scientific databases such as EBSCOhost, JSTOR, ProQuest, Science Direct, and SpingerLink with the use of key words: women, career choice, aspirations, management, leadership, social support, significant others , and measurement. It is believed that development of a measure to capture the influence of personal social support and non-support in career aspirations towards senior management amongst women in middle management might contribute to enhance the quality of research conducted in this area and intervention programmes taken up to support female senior management aspirants.


Introduction
Female underrepresentation in senior management has been proposed as a prevailing global experience (International Labour Organization, 2010;Carter & Silva, 2010).Highly masculinized and feminized occupations are termed as extreme-end gender dominant careers (Reyes, Kobus & Gillock, 1999) based on observations on gender distribution of a particular vocation.In that vein of understanding, senior management continues to be a highly masculinized level in management occupation.Some authors have reported that aspiration levels of females to enter corporate business are far less than that of males (Reyes etal., 1999).Literature provides ample of critical viewpoints that this low entrance of women in to senior management is caused by various contextual career factors (Lawrence,Poole, & Diener, 2003;Omar & Davidson, 2001;Betz & Fitzgerald, 1987).Personal social support and non-support are among such contextual factors (Levine, Lin, Kern, Wright, &Carrese, 2011;Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 2000;1994;Betz &Fitzgerald, 1987).
Career choice development in non-traditional careers for women has been long debated to be very much influenced by contextual reinforcements existing in her proximal environment.Here, non-traditional careers refer to careers that only a minority of women has selected to pursue throughout the history.Generally, as a source of support, positive reinforcements (e.g.social encouragement) transmitted by parents, partners/spouses, teachers, friends, co-workers, etc. have been pointed as a vital ingredient for successful choice of and persistence in careers (Lent et al., 2001;Lent, et al, 2000;Lent, et al, 1994) and as a buffering factor in the face of other career barriers (Lease, 2006).As an example, the influence of family members in establishing career choice goals is thoroughly discussed in career literature (Sellers, & Hunter, 2005;Flores & O'Brien 2002;Ferry, Fouad, & Smith, 2000;Byars & Hackett, 1998).Stated differently, dearth of such support resources can be highly detrimental if an individual is pursuing a non-traditional career within a mesh of other external constraints.To that extent, personal social support may act as a contextual career barrier that is generally termed as disapproval of significant others in career literature (Lent et al., 2000).Betz and Fitzerald (1987) advocates Fyre's (1984) speculation that one of the important dimensions of self-perceptions of success held by women is the evaluations of significant others (e.g.family, co-workers, peers).Therefore, in their model, perceived encouragement has been assigned a significant role in determining the career choice realism.On the other hand, since women's career decisions are relational in nature (Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005), they might pay attention to impact of their career choices on maintaining and enhancing valued relationships.For instance, female employees tend to be seeking for more spousal agreement in case of work interfering with family (McElwain, Korabic, & Rosin, 2005).It has been found that female leaders tend to consume support resources from multiple sources like spouses, parents and other family members in their career pursuits (Beaty & Pankake, 2001;Ballentine, 2000).Therefore, social support for career choice development stands a vital role in female's career development.
The main purpose of this paper is to elaborate the influence of personal social support and non-support in shaping career aspirations of women in middle management towards senior management as a construct with multiple dimensions.Secondly, it attempts to make recommendations in relation to adapt or innovate measurement instruments to capture the comprehensive influence of personal social support and non-support towards career aspirations for senior management.In identifying the gap in literature and developing suggestions, a targeted literature review on main areas under discussion was carried out in leading scientific databases such as EBSCOhost, JSTOR, ProQuest, Science Direct, and SpingerLink with the use of key words: women, career choice, aspirations, middle management, leadership, social support, significant others , and measurement.It is believed that the introduction of a measurement, as proposed by this paper, in the field of career development is timely and would contributes to the enhancement of the utility value of research in this area.

Defining Personal Social Support and Non-support
This paper focuses on two critical aspects of social support namely, personal social support and personal social non-support in relation to career aspirations of female middle managers.

Personal Social Support
Some prevailing definitions on social support can be utilized to define personal social support for women in middle management aspiring for senior management.According to Lent and Brown (2006), supports are 'facilitative influences that people anticipate that will accompany their goal pursuit' (P.18).In some occasions, they have employed the term 'social support' (Lent et al., 2007;Lent et al., 2001) to convey this encouraging assistance received from proximal social members.In stress research, it has been identified as the overall configuration of relationships and the stream of resources circulated by such relationships (Greenhaus & Parasuraman, 1994) that facilitates dealing with stress.
Concurrently, some additional factors that characterizes social support also can be considered in the process of defining personal social support for aspiring female middle managers.The social support is dependent on the characteristics of networks people establish with others around them.In fact, if the support senders are related to non-work domains it is identified as 'personal social support' (Marcinkus, Whelan-Berry & Gordon, 2007).These senders include the spouse or partner, parents, siblings, children, extended family, and friends (Marcinkuset al., 2007;Beaty & Pankake, 2001).
Generally, social support is subject to personal assessment of the receiver whether it is instrumental supportdirect contribution to solve a problem or expressive support -providing the context to manage the emotional aspects of a problematic situation or ' positive affective experience' that includes caring, sympathetic listening and empathy (Shaffer et al., 2005;House & Kahn, 1985).
At this point, it should be made clear that amongst many other sources of social support, the focus of this paper is on the personal sources of support and non-support in relation to career choice behaviour.Hence, the definition proposed for personal social support would be, any instrumental or emotional assistance women in middle management gain from their personal sources of support in non-work domain that will facilitate their career aspirations for senior management.

2.2Personal Social Non-support
In identifying the nature of personal social non-support, there are few clarifications to be provided.In total agreement with Betz (1989), Lent and associates (2000) delineated that the absence of support or 'null environments' does not indicate that social support is a contextual career barrier per se.Instead, if there is an expressed disagreement on the career choice that comes into effect, in a form of disapproval, it can be considered as a contextual career barrier.To make it more clear, social support becomes a contextual barrier only when it can be identified as a conscious disapproval towards a career choice by anticipated sources of support.As such, when they operationalized contextual career support as a contextual career barrier, their aim was to capture discouraging reactions received or to be received from significant others or felt pressure received or to be received from significant others or negative reactions of significant others in the career choice process (Lent et al., 2008;Lent et al., 2003a).
As an important aspect in relation to conceptual clarity, they do not deny the possibility of the support and barrier dimensions of social support to be inversely related as independent variables or to be placed on a negative-positive continuum (Lent et al., 2003a;Lent et al., 2001;Lent et al., 2000, P.42).Therefore, it can be seen that both personal social support and non-support are mirroring concepts that can be measured independently.As Lent, Brown, and Hackett (2000) suggested, it should be measured together in the same research context to capture the complete influence of the proximal context on career choice behaviour.
For the purpose of this paper, personal social non-support is defined as any instrumental or emotional resistance women in middle management experience from their anticipated personal sources of support in non-work domain that will discourage their career aspirations for senior management.This paper would address both personal social-support and non-support in giving its suggestions following the proposal of Lent and colleagues (2000).

The Relationship of Personal Social Support and Non-support with Career Aspirations
The role of personal social support and non-support in career choice development are elaborated in following sections with the use of few theoretical underpinnings and empirical findings.These elaborations might be helpful to establish possible influence of personal social support and non-support on career aspirations of female middle managers.

Theoretical Underpinnings
An individual's surrounding of existence is viewed by Bronfrenbrenner (1979) as an ecological system which is comprised of an array of nested systems.Bronfenbrenner (1977) clarifies that human behaviour is subject to the influence of four ecological structures namely, microsystems, mesosytems, exosystems, and macro systems (as cited in Vondrasec, Lerner, & Schulenberg, 1986).Microsystem is comprised of interactions of the individual within the inner most context such as home, school and the support senders like family and friends (Lent et al, 2000;Fouad & Bingham, 1995).This approach has been embraced by contexualists in career development theories (Lent et al, 2000;Vondrasec, Lerner, & Schulenberg, 1986).In line with this contextual view point, Cook, Heppner, and O'Brien (2002) presented an ecological model of the career development, which conceptualizes career behaviour in a backdrop of individual, interpersonal, and socio-cultural ecological layers.Bronfrenbrenner (1979) claimes that in the center of ecological system there contains the dyad of two partners which can be identified as the family system.As per the family systems theory, attitudes and experiences of family members have a sway in attitudes and experiences of the rest of the members (Streich, Casper, & Salvaggio, 2008).To this extent, the mutual influence of a couple on vital dimensions of life such as work and family is inevitable (Hammer, Bauer, & Grandey, 2003) and it is important how the two members, for instance in a dual career family, agree on their perceptions (Streichet al.,2008) regarding those dimensions.
Simplifying nested systems perspective, Lent et al., (2000) elaborated that the context of the person can be disintegrated into different layers that can be portrayed as concentric circles.The family, friends and such immediate factors that affect their career development belong to immediate, proximal context within their Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) framework for career choice development.They insist that the immediate proximal context channels information about the career barriers in larger societal contextual layer, creates the background for coping with them, and buffers the career choice process.Bussey and Bandura (1999) clarifies within a social cognitive learning framework that when an individual is not complying with assigned societal norms they are sanctioned in numerous ways.In anticipation of such resistances, individuals may avoid such pursuits that are not approved by influencing others.Rather, there is a tendency to pursue career paths encouraged by others.This condition can be expected to come into clear existence when a person is choosing between gendered vocations.
In sum, these theories and models cited above highlights the importance of social support and non-support in shaping career choices.In the same line of argument, it can be proposed that as a career choice variant, career aspirations may also be characterized by personal social support and non-support experienced by female middle managers.

Empirical Evidence
The influence of personal social support and non-support can be explained using some empirical investigations.In assessing three dimensions of motivation: aspiration, mastery and career achievement motivation, Farmer (1985) found that parental support, teacher support and other supportive attitudes would predict career aspiration.Otto (2000) was interested to know the sway of parents in career development of young men and women.They collected survey data from 362 high school juniors that consisted of both majority and minority groups.The results indicate that the parents are very much influential in approving and facilitating career aspiration decisions.Young and McLeod (2001) accessed twenty female educational administrators and educational administration students to understand the factors that determine their decision to become educational administrators.They found that endorsement and support contribute to the choice of administration career paths.They discussed that the disapproval or lack of support were found to bear negative effects on career choice.Flores and O'Brien (2002) employed SCCT career choice model to examine the influence of contextual and social cognitive variables on career aspiration, career choice prestige, and traditionality of 364 Mexican American adolescent women.They found that parental support was significantly and positively related to career aspirations.They asserted that Mexican American adolescent women may choose highly prestigious careers depending on the approval of others, their family obligations, and parental support which can off-set negative effects of other career barriers.Another study conducted by Lent et al. (2005) revealed that social barriers significantly explained the engineer major choice of 487 male and female students in two university types.
The Hudson leadership survey (McGowan, 2007) encompassed 200 female business professionals in USA.The managers in middle management revealed that the support rendered by their husbands/life partners is critical in advancing their career.About 77% of the overall female middle managers covered in the study were aspiring for senior management.Successful seven senior women in the Chinese IT industry were interviewed by Xian and Woodhams (2008) to investigate their career experiences, employing personal narrative method.They found that husband's support was an enabling mechanism to sustain their non-traditional career goals.Lent et al., (2008) employed SCCT to understand the predictive capability of social support and social barriers, amongst three other variables, towards career interests and choice development of students in the computing disciplines.The sample represented 1208 university male and female students in different educational levels attached to two types of universities.Social barriers, which included felt pressure from significant others significantly accounted for career choice.Empirical investigations compiled so far indicate the influence of personal social support and non-support in determining career aspirations.

Women Middle Managers Aspiring for Senior Management
It is important to understand some contextual aspects of women middle managers at this point.Female middle managers come into close proximity of senior management career dynamics and generally, are in the selection pool for senior management.The average age of women in middle management has been reported to be more than 33 years in most of the research settings (Wentling, 2003;1996;Hornsby, Kuratko, & Zahra ,2002) .The age range between 35-50 is identified as midlife stage in terms of life stage (Levinson, 1996;Levinson, Darrow, Klien, Levinson, Mckee, 1978).Nonetheless, individual's perceptions on contextual influences, for instance contextual career barrier perceptions, might vary across life stages (Murtagh, Lopes, & Lyons, 2007;Russell & Rush, 1987).Women in mid-life are confronted with simultaneous pressure which occurred due to high expectations of performance in mid-career and increasing family responsibilities in mid-life (Marcinkus, Whelan-Berry & Gordon, 2006).Child care, elderly care, spouses, managing marriage life, managing between roles, and keeping up with competency requirements are the key challenges faced by mid-life working women (Wallen 2002;Whelan-Berry and Gordon, 2000).Additionally, they tend to be renewing their life priorities in this stage (Gordan & Whelan-Berry, 2004).
How individuals exchange social support is dependent on their specific life stage i.e. young adult to old and spouse, friends, colleagues, and neighbours are the main sources of personal social support in mid-life (Schulz & Rau, 1985).Marcinkus and colleagues (2006) contested that working women in midlife, particularly, are in need of drawing upon social support available in both work and non-work domains very much.

Multiple Dimensions of Personal Social Support and Non-support for Women in Middle Management Aspiring for Senior Management
A literature review conducted for an intersection of women in management and career choice behaviour revealed that personal social support and non-support in their career aspirations might be constructed of multiple dimensions and sub-dimensions (Ogden, 2006;Gordan & Whelan-Berry, 2004;Glick & Hilt, 2000;Lent et al., 2000).Therefore, below section is dedicated to discuss those dimensions and sub-dimensions in brief.

Attitudes of Support Senders on Women's Role
The disapproval towards women pursuing a non-traditional career might be expressed in subtle manners in the form of strongly held attitudes by support senders on various aspects of her role in family and work domains.The assigned sex-typical roles for women in society have been long concentrated on homemaking while the men's have been breadwinning (Wharton, 2006;Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000).Support senders attitude could be such that the conventional role assignments has to be sustained for the wellbeing of the family and women's work should not interfere with family.In case of interference they also might expect that women should prioritize family (McElwainet al., 2005) or the husband's career (Deutsch, Kokot, & Binder, 2007;Larwood & Gutek, 1987;Markham & Pleck, 1986).That type of attitude might operate as disapproval for a non-traditional career pursuit as such careers generally demand more focus on work related activities.On the other hand, if support senders hold much flexible egalitarian attitudes there is more potential to translate those attitudes into career choice supportive behaviours.
Men in society have been entrusted with more power to control important resources and dependency of women upon them is expected (Glick & Hilt, 2000).As such, men had been considered as the powerful and protective agent of women.When a woman pursues a high prestige position, the support senders might hold an attitude that this pursuit is challenging husband's status in the family (Connell, 2002;Linehan & Walsh, 1999).That attitude might have higher tendency to convert to explicit disapproval for ambitious career goals.In contrast, if the beliefs of support senders are not male patriarchal in nature, there is more tendency to offer career support irrespective of the shifting status of women in the family.
On the other hand, corporate management is a cross-sextyped occupation for a woman (Schein, 2001) in relation to widely held stereotypical beliefs and empowers her with 'exercising public power', which is considered as unfeminine (Xian & Woodhams, 2008, P. 421).If the support senders hold similar stereotypical attitudes, there would be higher tendency to disapprove a career goal towards senior management.Therefore, the lesser support senders are restrained by such limiting attitudes the higher will be the probability to extend support for goal pursuit of a women manager towards senior management.
Therefore, attitudes of support senders about women's role may be reflecting three sub-dimensions: women's role in the family, women's status in the family, and appropriate careers for women.

Work-family Facilitation Behaviours
It has been pointed out in literature that career performance of women is contingent upon how they manage the conflict between work and family.For instance, in case women find that it is difficult to manage the work and family commitments successfully, they tend to sacrifice their career to cater for family roles at a higher rate compared to men (Guillaume & Pochic, 2009;Hooks, 1998).Further, as Perna (2001) found, parental and marital responsibilities restrict career aspirations of females in higher education.
In many research it has been discussed that women devote more time on domestic activities than men in dual earner careers (Gerstel & Sakisian, 2006) even in contemporary societies.As a result, if spousal support is sufficiently rendered to share domestic labour and to fulfill expressive needs to buffer work-family conflict (WFC) (Kim & Ling, 2001;Grzywacz & Marks, 2000), it will be a positive reinforcement to lead a progressive career (Gordan & Whelan-Berry, 2004).However, if such support is not granted to manage WFC, it can be considered as a mean of disapproval towards an even more challenging career option that probably will further intensify WFC (Lo, 2003).If a woman manager does not receive required support currently, it implies that she will neither receive it in future and as a result it is likely that her WFC might be intensified.Support senders may attribute a current WFC experienced by a women manager to her non-traditional career aspirations that in turn can be considered as disapproval of further career progression.
According to cross-over effect analysis (Westman, 2005), the higher level of work demands in spouses job roles may impose a restriction of career development of women.Because, as the partners' ability to accommodate domestic needs decreases, a females' anticipation to access more challenging career options might be restricted.This scenario might contribute to pay more attention on prime role assignment as a homemaker or compel her to scale back (Bowes, 2005).Anderson-Gough , Grey, and Robson (2005) found that one of the informants clearly indicate that his focus on career could be maintained because of delegation of familial responsibilities to his wife.Hence, the spousal work-family conflict might spill over to female career development as a natural restriction or as an expressed disapproval.If it does not lead to compromises on female's career, but rather if spouse facilitates to maintain female's career goals it can be treated as a form of personal social support rendered for a progressive career.
Female career has been much debated to be affected by interruptions due to child bearing and rearing (Deedar-Ali-Khawaja, & Khan, 2010;Rönsen&Sundström, 1996).Family friendly policies have contributed to inculcate a conducive environment to minimize adverse effects of WFC (Sutton & Noe, 2005;Dulk, 2005).If the partner is not willing to utilize such facilities, a female partner might have to compromise her optimal career options.For instance, whether the male partner is not willing to consume paternity leave granted will lead to career compromising decisions on female's side.This tendency will operate as a disapproval of continuing career aspirations towards senior management that requires clear focus and investment of resources.
Therefore, Work-family facilitation behaviours may encompass three sub-dimensions: sharing domestic roles, managing crossover effect, and partners' consumption of family friendly facilities.

Career Decision Making Support
When an aspirant is aspiring towards a non-traditional career the encouragement offered by support senders will raise the self-confidence of the aspirant to maintain their aspirations and mitigate career barriers (Lent et al., 2000).This encouragement may be provided to reduce the guilt feelings associated with trade-offs (e.g identity dilemma between motherhood and professional) (Linehan & Walsh, 1999), by extending instrumental and emotional support to manage other career barriers, by granting the freedom to set optimal career goals that can minimize the ability-achievement gap, and by facilitating the career decision making process (Gordan & Whelan-Berry, 2004).If the support senders withdraw themselves from offering such support, it can be considered as a form of disapproval.
Therefore, career decision making support as a dimension of personal social support and non-support may carry two sub-dimensions: career choice efficacy building behaviour and instrumental support required for career choice decision making.

Support on Career Development Activities
A careerist has to invest in career development activities that make the career progression a reality.For instance, networking with useful individuals has been pointed out as one of the critical determinants of managerial career success (Forret & Dougherty, 2004;Davidson & Cooper, 1992).Yet, there is resource (e.g.time) and cultural limitations that hinder women investing in this type of activities (Omar & Davidson, 2001).The support senders can facilitate women managers' career choice by creating opportunities and space for such activities.If they discourage such efforts, it can be considered as a form of disapproval.
On the other hand, limited career mobility of women has been pointed out as a restraining factor for woman assuming challenging work assignments (Ogden, 2006) in preparation of senior management.Women are found to be more sensitive to career needs of their husbands rather than vice versa and tend to adopt their career involvement according to the attitudes of the husband (Cleveland, Stockdale, & Murphy, 2000).If there is an unwillingness of male partner to mobile along with a female career moves or to adjust effectively, it can be identified as a form of disapproval.It should be noted that senior management positions require former cross-functional, cross-organizational, or international exposure (Linehan & Walsh, 1999).
Therefore, the dimension of support on career development activities may contain three sub-dimensions: cultural freedom, resource allocation and relocation flexibility.
In conclusion, the dimensions of personal social support and non-support of women middle managers to aspire towards senior management so far identified can be summarized in a structure as in Figure 1.

Measuring Personal Social Support and Non-support for Career Choice
Any evolution of a concept should be converted in to a measurement to yield its optimal utility in an empirical setting.Because, "many areas of science measure things derived from theory.Until subatomic particle is confirmed through measurement, it is merely a theoretical construct" (DeVellis, 2003, p.6).Therefore, if the experience of personal social support and non-support for women middle managers aspiring senior management could be different from other cohorts, the sequential question is whether there is adequate vocational measurement instruments to capture this phenomena.The utility of personal social support and non-support as a construct is materialized in research only if the concurrent measurements are constructed.
Two of the most prominent instruments recently utilized to measure personal social support and non-support in career choice behaviour are Career Barriers Inventory developed by Swanson and colleagues (Swanson & Woitke, 1997;Swanson & Daniels, 1996;Swanson & Tokar, 1991a;1991b) and contextual career support/barrier instrument invented by Lent and associates (2008;2005;2003a;2003b;2001).There are common characteristics that can be observed in the two instruments.First, they captured domain specific data from student samples.Second, they are vehemently validated with student samples (Lent et al., 2008;2005;2003a;2003b;2001;Swanson & Woitke, 1997;Swanson & Daniels, 1996;Swanson & Tokar, 1991a;1991b).Third, the instruments are adapted to match contexts of student samples and their career choice dynamics.Finally, they have not addressed many dimensions and sub-dimensions of personal social support and non-support in relation to career choice of women middle managers elaborated in the previous section.Therefore, if a researcher is interested to capture multiple dimensions of personal social support and non-support for female middle managers, those instruments cannot be utilized and they have to be significantly adapted.On a different note, a cursory review in Mental Measurement Year Book (Plake, Impara, & Spies, 2003) revealed that there is no closely applicable measurement to capture these phenomena under consideration.In some circumstances, for instance Rowe (2003) in developing the work potential profile for individuals seeking employment, attempted to incorporate social resources as a dimension.However, it is very much doubted that whether this measurement is broad enough to capture personal social support and non-support experienced by women in middle management aspiring for senior management.Nevertheless, in its four volumes of Comprehensive Handbook of Psychological Assessment (Goldstein, Beers, & Hersen, 2004;Hisenroth, Segal, & Hersen, 2004;Haynes, Heiby, & Hersen, 2004;Thomas, Hersen, 2004) there was no measurement instrument detected that can cater for this measurement requirement sufficiently.Therefore, it can be pointed out that there is a considerable space for developing a measure to capture dimensions of personal social support and non-support for women in middle management.

Recommendations for Developing a Measure on Personal Social Support and Non-support for Women Middle Managers Aspiring for Senior Management
A few suggestions can be made to develop a measure on personal social support and non-support for women middle managers aspiring for senior management.
First, is the need to contextualize the measure in line with the domain of interest.A measurement that attempts to capture any social cognitive construct should secure domain specificity as an important characteristic in social research (Lent & Brown, 2006).Here, one has to contextualize measures, to draw a comprehensive domain sample in constructing the measure (Lent & Brown, 2006).Lent and Brown (2006) suggests to sufficiently represent the domain of interest, collaborating knowledge drawn from theoretical and empirical literature, interviewing domain participants, open-ended surveys directed at them, direct observation of the activities in the domain, or creating a position description of the ideal features if someone performs a specific role in a particular domain are some avenues to consider to reach this objective (Lent & Brown, 2006).In their scale development they adapted a pre-developed measurement specifying the context for instance, for students' career choice in engineering majors (Lent et al., 2007;Lent et al., 2005;Lent et al., 2003b), computing (Lent et al., 2008;Lent et al., 2005) and math and science subject streams selection (Lent et al., 2001).
Second, is to take multiple approaches grounded on literature review to capture multiple dimensions of personal social support and non-support.The process followed by Lent and associates in deriving their career social support and non-support can be cited as a case study.They reviewed prevailing literature in the general area of social support that led to find some existing measures.They found that prevailed measures were of lesser applicability in the selected domain (e.g.career choice and contextual support and barriers).Therefore, they opted to initiate a qualitative study in the specific domain and then did a content analysis that contributed to construct the quantitative measurement (Lent & Brown, 2006).Subsequently, Lent and associates (2003a) adapted Lent and associate's (2002) interview outcomes on influence of significant others as both support and barriers.This included types of positive and negative reactions that one might receive from important others in one's life (supports and barriers) for different types of career choices (e.g.agricultural).
Third, is thorough verification of the measure in different research settings.Lent and colleagues (2008;2005;2003a;2003b), as explained in above paragraphs, consecutively adapted their measures in various research settings for student samples, further validating and verifying the measurement.A similar process can be suggested to construct a comprehensive measure on personal social support and non-support experienced by women middle managers aspiring for senior management.It is expected that the structure depicted in Figure 1 would provide a guideline for developing attributes and questions in such an exercise.Once the measures are developed, they can be factor analyzed for internal consistency between different categories so that their predictive utility can be further enhanced.

Conclusion
This paper attempted to propose possible multiple dimensions of personal social support and non-support in relation to career aspirations of women middle managers towards senior management.The dimensions proposed are: attitudes of support senders about women's role, work-family facilitation behaviours, career decision-making support, and support on career development activities.The first dimension, attitudes of support senders about women's role, is proposed to be containing three sub-dimensions: women's role in the family, women's status in the family, and appropriate careers for women.The second dimension, work-family facilitation behaviours, is suggested to encompass three sub-dimensions: sharing domestic roles, managing crossover effect, and partners' consumption of family friendly facilities.The third dimension, career decision making support, is expected to envelop two sub-dimensions: career choice efficacy building behaviour and instrumental support required for career choice decision making.The fourth dimension, support on career development activities, is proposed to contain three sub-dimensions: cultural freedom, resource allocation and relocation flexibility.
The root cause of proposing such dimensions and sub-dimensions was the observations made in relation to limited applicability of widely used measurement instruments of personal social support and non-support to assess a cohort of women in middle management aspiring for senior management.Additionally, it was discussed that theoretical explanations put forth by Bronfrenbrenner (1979), Lent and colleagues (2000), and Bussey and Bandura (1999) in contextual and social cognitive viewpoints reinforces the influences of personal social support and non-support in career aspirations of women middle managers.Hence, this paper recommended consideration of suggested dimensions and sub-dimensions in devising a comprehensive measure to capture aforementioned phenomena.It is very much anticipated that such grounded approach would immensely facilitate support-building interventions (Lent & Brown, 2006) particularly, to raise the status of career aspirations of women middle managers towards senior management.Ultimately, it is expected that such effort would necessarily contribute to close the gender gap in senior management in time to come.

Limitations
It should be noted that the arguments of this paper is not absence of limitations.It would have been ideal if the authors had resources to broaden the key words and data bases in the literature review.To that extent, there can be more dimensions and sub-dimensions that are not included in this paper.It is also to be noted that the other recommendations and conclusions arrived at this paper inherits this limitation.The paper advocates measurement development procedures adapted by renowned authors in the field.There might be viable alternative measurement development procedures that are worthwhile considering in such a task but not discussed under the purview of this paper.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.A structure of multiple sources, multiple dimensions and multiple sub-dimensions of personal social support and non-support for women in middle management aspiring for senior management