The life of Steve Jobs: a psychobiographical study

[摘要] This study constitutes a psychobiography of the late businessman and entrepreneur, SteveJobs (1955-2011). The primary aim was to explore and describe the psychosocialdevelopment of Steve Jobs across his lifespan in terms of Levinson's (1996) theory. Thisobjective demonstrates an inductive approach and reflects the exploratory-descriptive natureof the study. The secondary aim of this study was to test the relevance of the content and erasof Levinson's (1996) theory, demonstrating the deductive approach and reflecting thedescriptive-dialogic nature of the research. The study employed a single casepsychobiographical research design, which utilised psychological theory in a systematicfashion in order to illuminate the life of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was the co-founder of theApple Inc. company and the founder of Pixar and NeXT. He was selected for this study bymeans of a non-probability sampling procedure, known as purposive sampling. Theresearcher found one existing psychobiography on Jobs by Ndoro (2014), with the emphasisfalling on the way in which Jobs's personality influenced his career, and vice versa. Thisstudy, however, made use of Levinson's (1996) theory to study the psychosocial lifespandevelopment of Jobs. Jobs's life history was uncovered through the systematic and consistentcollection, analysis and interpretation of the available biographical and historical data. Thedata were collected from both primary and secondary sources and it consisted mainly ofpublished materials. Alexander's (1988, 1990) model was used to identify and extract salientthemes for analysis from the collected biographical data. Furthermore, data were organisedand integrated in a conceptual matrix which also guided the categorisation, analyses and thepresentation and discussion of the findings. The findings of this study supported theapplicability and relevance of Levinson's (1996) theory to gain psychological understandingof Jobs as an individual. There was a'fit' between Jobs's life and the eras and transitionalperiods as proposed by Levinson et al. (1978). The findings also confirmed the assertion by Levinson et al. (1978) that the central components of an individual's life have a significantimpact on life structure development. Jobs developed through the on-going process ofindividuation, as proposed by Levinson et al. (1978), which guided his development as aman, entrepreneur, businessman, creator, innovator, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), husbandand father. Furthermore, recommendations are made future psychobiographical research.

[发布机构] University of the Free State