Although managers and professionals still compete in a career tournament for advancement and pay, the career boundaries that they cross in order to compete have changed. Traditionally, such individuals came up through the ranks within the same company by specializing in one functional area and changing, as needed, the geographic location of work…

Building on diverse influences from critical perspectives in vocational psychology and the relational movement in contemporary psychological discourse, this article introduces the relational theory of working. Attending to the full array of people who work and who want to work, the relational theory conceptualizes working as an inherently…

This article summarizes what is known about the "active" management of affective organizational commitment (AOC) through a review of 58 studies employing longitudinal research designs. The review yields six broad categories of antecedents that have empirically demonstrated effects on AOC: socialization practices, organizational changes, human…

This paper presents case study evidence of evolutionary changes in business support functions resulting in a fundamental hollowing out of the professional space over time and distance, creating the "hourglass" profession. In an IT-enabled, boundaryless world, many professional activities can now be undertaken, in the manner of the Martini slogan,…

Rousseau (1989 and elsewhere) argued that a defining feature of psychological contract breach was that once a promise had been broken it could not easily be repaired and therefore that the effects of psychological contract breach outweighed those of psychological contract fulfillment. Using two independent longitudinal surveys, this paper…

Based on the theoretical frameworks of the career enactment and the stress perspectives, this study develops and tests a model in which career boundarylessness affects subjective career success through its effect on three career competencies--knowing-why, knowing-how, and knowing-whom--and career autonomy and career insecurity. The results…

During organizational restructuring and downsizing, employees often worry about being redundant, actually are redundant, and/or feel unsatisfied with their jobs. Employees, in turn, often react with poor loyalty to and high voluntary exit from the organization. The current study addresses this process from a careers' perspective, showing that…

This study examines the association between negative mentoring experiences and protege intentions to leave the mentoring relationship. The role of perceived mentoring alternatives and fear of mentor retaliation was also examined as moderators of the relationship between negative mentoring experiences and intentions to leave. Results indicate that…

The cross-cultural generalizability of vocational interest structures has received significant attention in recent years. This article adds to this research in four respects. First, data from a context that has not previously been investigated (Germany) was analyzed. Second, students at different stages of their educational career were examined.…

Over the past 25 years, numerous researchers have studied the effects of mentoring on work outcomes. However, several reviewers have noted that many of the observed relationships between mentoring and its outcomes are potentially spurious. To summarize this widely dispersed literature, a quantitative research synthesis was conducted focused on…

Researchers have called for an examination of the roles that alternatives to traditional mentoring play in individuals' career success. This study tests how important, but less examined factors, such as employees' direct leader, personal and work factors such as ability and the formality of the organization, and employees' engagement in career…

Results from a pretest-posttest randomized field experiment study with a control group comparing the impact of high- and low-level-facilitated mentoring programs on new employees' performance and perceptions about their jobs and organization were reported in this paper. Results indicated increases in job satisfaction, organizational commitment,…

The WOrk-reLated Flow inventory (WOLF) measures flow at work, defined as a short-term peak experience characterized by absorption, work enjoyment, and intrinsic work motivation. Results of Study 1 among 7 samples of employees (total N=1346) from different occupational groups offer support for the factorial validity and reliability of the WOLF.…

Much of the responsibility for managing careers is shifting from employers to adaptive and proactive employees. A career management intervention based on action regulation theory trained 205 white collar employees to engage actively in their own career building by increasing their self-knowledge, career goal commitment, and career plan quality. As…

This paper presents a theoretical model showing how managerial adaptability develops from career variety over the span of the person's career. By building on the literature of career theory, adult learning and development, and career adjustment, we offer a new conceptualization of managerial adaptability by identifying its behavioral, cognitive,…