Devika was a star student at school. However, she chose to opt out of university and get married to her long-term boyfriend instead. Six years lates she was a mother of two. Once the girls started their school career in a prestigious private institution in Colombo, Devika came to realise that most mothers were professionals.

Indeed, this was different from when she went to school. In Devika’s words:

I felt bad that I didn’t have anything to say about myself.

This is when I started to think about doing a degree.

After careful thought and consideration, Devika decided to read for the Chartered Institute of Management Accounting

(CIMA) examination which is considered as equivalent to an undergraduate honours degree. She decided to do this since CIMA took only two years to complete as opposed to a three-year degree. Moreover, CIMA was very popular in Sri Lanka where most jobs on the paper were for CIMA-qualified accountants.

Devika completed the CIMA examinations and decided to get into developmental finance since career paths in developmental finance are shorter than traditional management accountancy. In her words:

In management accounting you work for about two years as a trainee then another four to five years as an accountant before being a finance manager. In developmental finance the structures are flat which is advantageous for late starters – you start as a project officer and get promoted to senior project officer based on your performance. I wanted to be a manager as soon as possible since I was 32 years old.

Devika secured a job as a project officer in a leading developmental finance company known as EFCC, through her uncle who knew the CEO of the company.

According to Devika, most jobs in Sri Lanka were publicised through word-of-mouth and awarded on the basis of personal contacts. As project officer, Devika was involved in assessing prospective business ideas and recommending loans for them. Within a year she was promoted to senior project officer and transferred to the company’s head office in Colombo. As senior project officer, Devika networked with the assistant director of the department maintaining a close relationship with him. In return, he put Devika in charge of projects of significance. In her third year at EFCC Devika came to a turning point in her career:

In my third year at EFCC a project they had funded –

a plant manufacturing soft drinks – collapsed. EFCC had to decide whether to liquidate the plant or run it ourselves, develop it and sell it for a higher price. Anyway EFCC put together a team of people to evaluate this project. I was also assigned to this team. I recommended that we run this plant while all the others recommended liquidation. By talking to a few people, I found out that the owners hadn’t paid the workers on time on many occasions, so most of the skilled workers had left. Basically they had experienced inefficiencies, delays and lost production orders due to lack of experienced personnel – this was a key insight I got from chatting with some of the workers in an informal manner. I wrote this on a report and the CEO was very interested in my synthesis. Although my recommendation was quite risky, he approved it.

Soon afterwards EFCC put together a cross-functional team to turn this plant around. I was a made a member of this team. I wasn’t the project manager, but I eventually took over that role. We spent nine months on this plant, turned it around and sold it for profit.

The CEO instantly made me manager of special projects and moved me to corporate restructuring – this designation was made especially for me.

As soon as she got into management, Devika enrolled in a postgraduate master’s programme, since this was vital for career advancement in Sri Lankan organisations.

She completed the programme in two years, when she encountered another challenge in her career. EFCC took over the DEK bank and Devika was given the task of integrating the two hostile institutions.

The CEO appointed a special integration team – I was made the team leader. In the beginning we just concentrated on getting to know the DEK people, trying to get them integrated to the EFCC philosophy, but they weren’t agreeable to anything we proposed.

They had a lot of grievances with EFCC – I always listened to whatever they said. I let the DEK team do a lot of things the way they wanted to do it – delegated more authority than my team thought appropriate.

Anyway this got the DEK team to cooperate with us.

They were not like the citizens of conquered country who were bitter towards their conquerors, and they slowly got to trust me. We finally proposed both companies coming under a common philosophy – not EFCC or DEK bank – but the Nautica philosophy.

Now this was successful. Although it wasn’t too different to the EFCC philosophy – the name made a big difference. We slowly managed to build citizenship through the name Nautica – we got Nautica T-shirts, pens, bags, numerous things for everybody. I was involved in this project for almost two and half years.

Devika did this excellent work despite the extensive demands of her three teenage children and motherin- law. While she was at work, Devika resolved regular clashes between her mother-in-law and domestic maids over the phone and checked up on her problematic younger daughter. She also took her work home often. Her effort was well recognised. As soon the integration team wound up, they were congratulated by the CEO and Devika was made director of special projects. Devika currently serves as a board director at EFCC. She is 46 years old.

Question

Having read Devika’s account, consider the following questions:
1 To what extent can extant women’s career models such as the KCM and/or O’Neil and Bilimoria’s (2005) model explain Devika’s career?
2 How does Devika conceptualize career success? To what extent does her definition resonate with findings of women in the West?
3 What are the career capitals important for individuals to progress in career in the Sri Lankan context?
4 In your view, what is the most appropriate theoretical perspective from which to explore Devika’s career? Justify your answer.