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In today's turbulent business environment leaders must be able to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. For this research the authors aim to focus on the issue of adaptability defined as the ability to work effectively within a variety of changing situations, and with various individuals or groups. They also aimed to examine how variables of career complexity affect development of adaptability.

The authors draw on a unique database containing the career histories of 52 senior executives in a major global corporation. They use the term career complexity to represent the degree of variety in these individuals' career experiences, and they test the degree to which career complexity contributes to the development of adaptability later in their careers.

Findings from this study shed light on the relationship between specific career experiences and executive adaptability. Executives who had the experience to serve in an executive assistant role developed higher levels of adaptability. For executives without the executive assistant opportunity, job rotations through different types of roles provided a boost to their adaptability. Three role type changes (e.g. line, staff, or matrix) is optimal; 100 months is an optimal time to spend in each role type.

While the field of leadership development has generated substantial insight into the competencies required by executives, there are few models and empirical studies that describe the process of how specific competencies are developed. The authors' study highlighted the utility of the career complexity construct for both prospective understanding of career actions and processes and retrospective understanding of paths, patterns, and outcomes. The authors demonstrated the predictive value of the career complexity construct by presenting results of the statistical analyses of the hypothesized relationships between career complexity and career outcomes.

Externalities influence the career trajectories of self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) and their respective career crafting. This study aims to explore the international career crafting of SIEs (encompassing their proactive career reflection and construction), taking the combined external influences of complexity, chance and change into consideration.

The authors employ a qualitative (interpretative) approach, combining career crafting and the chaos theory of careers (CTC) to further understand, from an individual standpoint, the impact of externalities on the career crafting strategies of 24 SIEs who have relocated within the European Union.

The authors show that SIEs' proactively craft their careers to varying degrees and with varying frequency. The CTC – incorporating complexity, chance and change – allows for a more nuanced understanding of SIEs' career crafting.

This paper applies the concept of career crafting to an international context, exploring the impact of externalities on SIEs' careers. In this way, the authors combine two previously separate theories, extend the application of career crafting to an international career context and emphasise the role of temporality and the whole-life view of career in SIEs’ career crafting approach.

Drawing on proactivity literature, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between employee’s proactive career planning (taking initiative to prepare for one’s career) and proactive career enacting (taking initiative to act on career plans). This study also looks into the influence of proactive personality and cognitive complexity in the relationship between proactive career planning and proactive career enacting.

Survey data were collected in Australia (study 1; n=271) and were tested using structural equation modeling. Another set of survey data were collected in a different cultural context in the Philippines (study 2; n=215) for cross-cultural validation.

Results show that proactive career planning and proactive career enacting are positively and significantly related in both cultural contexts. Results also show that proactive personality or the stable disposition of an individual to take initiative and be involved in future-oriented actions plays a significant role in moderating the relationship between proactive career planning and proactive career enacting. In addition, results show that cognitive complexity which pertains to an individual’s capacity to construe social behaviors in multidimensional ways moderates the relationship between proactive career planning and proactive career enacting.

In today’s turbulent environment, employees need to be proactive when developing their careers. This study highlights the importance of being proactive when managing one’s career. Employees’ proactive personality and cognitive complexity also help in strengthening the link between proactive career planning and proactive career enacting, hence, these individual-level characteristics need to be developed and enhanced in organizations.

This study is valuable as it extends and advances the understanding on how proactivity (proactive career planning, proactive career enacting, proactive personality) and cognitive complexity can contribute to career development of employees.

The purpose of this paper is to call for an integrative approach to career research aiming to avoid both fragmentation and closure of the field through the discussion of a wide range of perspectives on career or career situations. The paper discusses the specificity of this integrative approach vs others, like the traditional approach or the multi or transdisciplinary approaches.

The work is based on a review of the career literature, and an analytic comparison of existing research approaches across this body of literature.

The paper shows the tendency of career theory to stick to narrow views of a career. The paper highlights the importance of taking into account the wide variety of career situations, which results from the fact that careers are necessarily located in time and space. The paper provides examples that invite to better explore career differences and seek for alternative explanations to career experiences. Because career dynamics are marked both by individual agency and different levels of structures, a more integrative kind of career research should thus trigger richer conversations among researchers regarding the complexity of the inhabited world.

The specific added value of the integrative approach suggested in this paper is to open new routes for a career theory that could become stronger and enhance its power to illuminate a wide range of issues.

This research aims to explore the role of values, family, and non‐family influences on career choice in management among a sample of US MBA students.

Data were collected using self‐reported questionnaires from 109 students in a mid‐sized university located on the west coast of the USA. The respondents were in the first semester of their MBA program. Males and females were almost equally represented in the sample.

This study did not find people (family and non‐family) to be a predictor of career decisions. Instead, these decisions reflect the independent‐self among US students in the career choice and exploration process. In particular, the students placed a strong emphasis on self‐development (i.e. education). Most of the respondents aspired to careers, and not jobs or callings, reflecting a desire for career benefits and becoming wealthy. Men and women, with few exceptions, appear to have similar patterns in the factors affecting their career choice. Many of the factors found to have relationships with variables related to career choice in management also have strong cultural influences.

The predictor variables generally accounted for modest variance on most career outcomes, suggesting complexity of the career choice process. There were country differences in several predictor variables associated with a career choice in management. The US sample was different from other countries, suggesting the importance of national cultures and values in career choice and career expectations.

This study builds upon the factors previously reported to influence career choice in management.

Virtually all contemporary scientific papers studying careers emphasize its changing nature. Indeed, careers have been changing during recent decades, for example becoming more complex and unpredictable. Furthermore, hallmarks of the new career – such as individual agency – are clearly increasing in importance in today’s labor market. This led the authors to ask the question of whether these changes are actually visible in the topics that career scholars research. In other words, the purpose of this paper is to discover the trending topics in careers.

To achieve this goal, the authors analyzed all published papers from four core career journals (i.e. Career Development International, Career Development Quarterly, Journal of Career Assessment, and Journal of Career Development) between 2012 and 2016. Using a five-step procedure involving three researchers, the authors formulated the 16 most trending topics.

Some traditional career topics are still quite popular today (e.g. career success as the #1 trending topic), whereas other topics have emerged during recent years (e.g. employability as the #3 trending topic). In addition, some topics that are closely related to career research – such as unemployment and job search – surprisingly turned out not to be a trending topic.

In reviewing all published papers in CDI, CDQ, JCA, and JCD between 2012 and 2016, the authors provide a unique overview of currently trending topics, and the authors compare this to the overall discourse on careers. In addition, the authors formulate key questions for future research.

Dual-careers are an increasingly common typology among professionals yet very few studies have considered how two potentially competing career trajectories are managed in relation to the broader aspects of life, such as family and personal life. This article addresses the gap through an exploration of the strategies adopted by dual-career professional couples as they seek to navigate these challenges whilst satisfying individual and shared goals and aspirations.

Semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were carried out with 18 couples (dyads) from a range of professional occupations. Interviews were conducted individually, and then responses analysed and compared for key themes.

Rather than focusing on how couples manage work–life balance on a day-today basis this study shows how couples incorporate a more strategic approach to dual-careers so that both careers are able to progress, albeit within situational constraints.

To satisfy personal, business and economic performance goals, organisations and governments will need to find more creative ways to support employees as they seek to navigate careers while balancing the work and nonwork needs of themselves and their partner. The challenges faced by dual-career couples have implications for human resource managers as they seek to attract and retained talent within their organisations.

Demographic and social changes at the household level will ultimately require changes at an organisational and broader societal level to meet the work and family needs of this growing cohort.

Rather than focusing on how couples manage work-life balance on a day-today basis this study shows how couples incorporate a more strategic approach to dual-careers so that both careers are able to progress, albeit within situational constraints.

This paper aims to examine the interplay between self-efficacy and career inheritance and its influence on career commitment in the hospitality sector. High labour turnover, unclear career paths and the transient nature of the work available in hospitality render it a suitable industry context that allows us to explore career commitment patterns.

Drawing on life history methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with hospitality professionals holding a relevant degree but no longer employed in the hospitality industry.

The findings revealed the interplay between self-efficacy, career inheritance and career commitment, as well as the speed of decline of career commitment, visualised as patterns of the leaving process. Although an infinite number of variations are possible, data unveiled the three main patterns.

The schematic illustrations of the patterns of the leaving process are not representative. The purposive sample comprises only ex-hospitality professionals, and generalisations can be considered in future studies.

This newly conceptualised understanding of career commitment enables researchers to reconsider the fundamental reasons why individuals leave the hospitality industry, whilst also offering hospitality managers deeper insights into how the three identified patterns could inform recruitment and selection.

This paper contributes to the literature through its meaningful theoretical extension in the context of career development studies. The unique concept of the leaving process addresses the prevalent issue of turnover and generates important implications.

Research on job precarity and job instability have largely neglected the labor market trajectories in which these employment and non-employment situations are experienced. This study addresses the mechanisms of volatility and precarity in observed work histories of labor market entrants using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1997. Several ideal-typical post-education pathways are modeled for respondents entering the labor force between 1997 and 2010, with varying indicators and degrees of precarity. A series of predictive models indicate that women, racial-ethnic minorities, and lower social class labor market entrants are significantly more likely to be exposed to the most precarious early careers. Moreover, leaving the educational system with a completed associate’s, bachelor’s, or post-graduate degree is protective of experiencing the most unstable types of career pattern. While adjusting for these individual-level background and education variables, the findings also reveal a form of “scarring” as regional unemployment level is a significant macro-economic predictor of experiencing a more hostile and turbulent early career. These pathways lead to considerable earnings penalties 5 years after labor market entry.