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The purpose of the present research is to test the hypothesis that hiring decisions are influenced by the perceived femininity and masculinity of candidates as inferred from their career history.

Two job selection simulation studies were conducted in which students with and without personnel selection experience assessed the suitability of male and female job candidates for male and female sex‐typed jobs. The candidate's CVs varied with regard to the gender typicality of the candidate's career history.

As predicted, when they previously had occupied another gender atypical job, both men and women were perceived as more suitable for a job that is more typical of the opposite gender. These decisions were mediated fully for women and partially for men by the impact of the gender typicality of the candidate's career on their perceived masculinity or femininity. In addition, men who had a gender atypical career history were perceived as less suitable for gender typical jobs. Thus, for men a gender atypical career history can serve as a “double edged sword.” Importantly, experienced and inexperienced decision makers were equally subject to this effect.

Career history provides individuating information about a candidate over and above the skills and experiences they are likely to have. Gender type is one such information that is pertinent in a job market that divides jobs into male and female typical and makes hiring decisions on this basis. Previous research has largely ignored this aspect of career history.

The purpose of this paper is to present a retrospective of the career life of Michael Driver, from the time of his Princeton graduate studies and early faculty years at Purdue University through the over three decades he spent at USC.

The history and development of his theoretical and research interests are presented, as well as the many contributions he made to both management consulting and the education of MBA students. His 1970s role in the founding and development of the Careers Division of the Academy of Management and his contributions to career research are highlighted and illuminate one of the critical periods in the renewal of the field. His orientation towards complexity and integration stand out as characteristics that positively impact theory building and research.

Michael Driver's career life was one of depth, scope, growth, and continuity. As a humanist, he would want us to not only continue our pursuits to better understand the complexities of human behavior, but to integrate them into something more meaningful.

This retrospective provides insight into the history and development of Mike Driver's theoretical and research interests and underscores his many contributions. The essay also highlights the history of career studies during the renewal period of the 1970s and 1980s. Hopefully, Mike Driver's legacy will inspire younger scholars to extend the field and carry it forward.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how the transition into entrepreneurship is constructed in the context of the boundaryless career. The paper focuses on a particular type of career transition driven by dismissal or unemployment.

The research material is collected in life‐story interviews with three Finnish female owner‐managers. In the study, a narrative analysis of the career move into entrepreneurship is conducted.

The results demonstrate how the concept of the boundaryless career and career discourse as such, and the personal career history and the larger employment setting in particular, are applied in making sense of the transition into entrepreneurship. The significance of dismissal or unemployment is not uniform, but is dependent on the participant's interpretation of the boundaryless career and work‐based security. Entrepreneurship is constructed both as a gender‐neutral and gendered process.

The career perspective could be more widely applicable to research into entrepreneurship, and perceiving entrepreneurship as work could offer an interesting avenue for future interdisciplinary study within career research.

By portraying the transition from unemployment/redundancy into entrepreneurship as a normal career shift, entrepreneurship is potentially made accessible to a broader group of people including unemployed women. Narratives have potential to be applied as career management tools.

The paper provides a contextualised view of the transition into entrepreneurship after unemployment and demonstrates how the entrepreneurship process is connected to the individual work history, employment setting, and gender.

This paper presents the results of a participative psycho‐biographical study that investigated the effect of spirituality on career behavior. This study shows that spirituality influences career purpose, sense‐making and coherence. Spirituality was found to inspire four purposes of “developing and becoming self”, “unity with others”, “expressing self”, and “serving others”. Spirituality was also found to influence an ongoing process of sense‐making through discovering, prioritizing and balancing the four purposes over a lifespan, in response to ongoing tensions between “being” and “doing” as well as “self‐ versus other‐orientation”. Spirituality furthermore influences perceived career‐coherence as individuals align their careers with perceived spiritual orderings outside of themselves. The paper concludes with suggestions for practice and future research.

The study examines the career motivations, paths and challenges of convention and exhibition (C&E) industry professionals in Asia.

The paper reviews the key literature relating to life and work history research, career profiles and human capital, which is followed by a discussion of findings of an online survey of C&E industry professionals in Asia.

Findings indicate that there is no specific career route/path into the industry, with experience being generated in a wide variety of sectors, and primarily gained in management, sales and marketing roles. Professionals show a high level of career commitment and face a variety of challenges relating to environmental, customer and job demands.

Data were collected from industry professionals from four South‐East Asian destinations only, thus it is important not to generalize study findings to Asia. Practical implications are discussed in relation to career development and employee retention, specifically in view of the variety of entry points into the industry, potential for job mobility, and challenges to motivate and retain a committed workforce composed of different generations.

Appropriately educated and trained labor is essential for the success of the rapidly growing C&E industry. Yet, despite the recognized value of superior staff and the wealth of employment opportunities, there is little understanding of careers in the C&E sector to date. The research addresses this gap in the research.

Individual employability has become a crucial element in ensuring labor security in flexibilizing labor markets. The importance of agency-side factors as antecedents of employability has been emphasized in the relevant literature, spurring the criticism that some worker groups may be more restricted than others by contextual factors in respect to their employment prospects. The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically how labor market groups differ in what shapes their employability.

The authors used a representative sample of 1,055 employees to detect differences in the impact of career self-directedness (agency-side) and several contextual factors (structure-side) on employability, comparing workers with and without higher education and workers in and outside managerial positions. Confirmatory factor analysis with subsequent tests of invariance was used.

Results confirm that employability is affected both by contextual factors and by self-directedness. No significant differences were observed between the compared groups in the extent to which self-directedness and the contextual factors influence employability. An important finding is that self-directedness itself is affected by preceding career history (career mobility and previous unemployment), which may suggest a vicious-circle relationship between past and future career precariousness.

The findings support the view prevailing in policy circles that fostering agency-side factors such as self-directedness is instrumental toward achieving higher employment security. At the same time, individual agency cannot replace traditional policy measures in tackling structural labor market inequalities.

This study uses robust methodology and a representative respondent sample to statistically disentangle the effects of agency and context on employability. Its key contribution pertains to the explicit comparison of different worker groups, with separate contrasts on each model parameter.

To investigate the career experiences of women professors in order to gain an in‐depth understanding of factors contributing to their present status of profession.

Data were generated from career history method on 31 women professors who have been identified as high‐flyers. They were selected based on a criterion that they achieved professorship at the age of 48 years and below. Each respondent was interviewed on questions addressing topics across the entire life stages. Constant comparative analysis of data was conducted to generate themes.

Reveals the factors associated with their fast performance in academia that were divided into two stages, i.e. career exploration, and career establishment and maintenance. Factors dictated at the career exploration stage are early exposure to learning, entrance to boarding schools, first degree experience and personal qualities, while factors that contribute during their establishment and maintenance stage are graduate study experience, career centrality, family support, uniqueness of academic role, health consciousness and sense of religiosity.

It involved women professors only in order to understand the complexities of women academicians and their careers.

Provides evidence and information on the subjective interpretation of a career in academia, which should be taken into consideration in promotion and selection exercises, especially re women academicians. It also enhances women's understanding of their own careers and the interplay of other aspects of life as well as organizational environments in their careers.

This paper offers practical information to inspired individuals, especially women academicians, in order to achieve professorship.

The purpose of this paper is to explore individual approaches to career and employability through the career stories of a group of mid‐level to senior managers in career transition. Career patterns are identified and then compared with traditional, boundaryless and protean models of career. The study aims to consider the extent to which individuals in this group had adopted behaviours supportive of future employability as opposed to behaviours more in line with traditional careers.

The research adopted an interpretive and qualitative approach. In‐depth interviews were conducted with people currently going through a career transition program. The interviews were recorded and then transcribed, coded and analysed using NVivo, a qualitative research software tool.

Career patterns appeared to be shifting away from traditional careers and more towards protean and boundaryless models. There was evidence of increased responsibility for career self‐management and of behaviours supportive of ongoing employability. Self‐perceived employability could be linked to degree of job mobility and having a future career orientation.

Despite the small sample size and the subjective nature of self‐reported career histories the study provides insights into the relationship between career patterns and employability. Both organisations and individuals need to work towards developing attitudes and behaviours supportive of employability such as flexibility, adaptability and a future career orientation.

Individual level career management will need to focus more on the development of attitudes and behaviours appropriate to contemporary employment relationships than on the development of formal career plans. At an organizational level support can be provided by encouraging flexibility through activities such as job rotation, short‐term projects and opportunities for both internal and external networking.

The study provides empirical evidence of how careers are being managed within contemporary employment relationships.

The major purpose of this paper is to examine how gender differences impact the enactment of careers. An additional goal is to examine whether, as suggested by recent conceptualizations, careers are indeed becoming more boundaryless.

This paper is based on the results of two in‐depth qualitative studies (n=52; n=27).

Two major patterns were found that describe the careers of professionals in the contemporary workplace. One pattern is called the alpha career pattern: over the life span, people with this pattern first focus on challenge, then authenticity, and then balance. The second pattern is called the beta career pattern: over the life span, people with this pattern first focus on challenge, then balance, and then authenticity.

This paper offers a framework that HR managers and other organizational leaders can use to increase the authenticity, balance and challenge experienced by their employees in order to enhance organizational effectiveness.

This paper addresses the numerous calls for the development of a model to explain the complexities of women's careers as well as to recognize gender differences in career enactment. It was found that, in general, men followed the alpha career pattern while women followed the beta career pattern. However, a limited number of women had career experiences that were more consistent with the alpha career pattern more closely aligned with men while some younger men consciously developed more family‐driven beta patterns.

This study examines the impact of employment gaps on career success for men and women managers. Women have had concerns about their ability to achieve career success in managerial careers that had required uninterrupted commitment.

The study analyzes mail survey data collected in early post‐MBA career from men and women MBAs. Two cohorts of alumni were sent surveys containing questions on career and demographic factors. Career success was assessed using an objective measure (yearly income) and a subjective measure (career satisfaction).

MBAs with employment gaps earned less than those continuously employed for both the early and recent cohorts. This income penalty appears to be worse for men. Career satisfaction is not impacted by an employment gap for the recent cohort.

Since the sample is geographically limited, the findings may not apply to other regions of the US or other countries.

There is still a bias against managers with discontinuous work histories. While the managers themselves have accepted alternate career patterns, employers have not. The nature of career paths is changing and organizations need to accept this.

The study contributes to the career literature by providing analyses of two data sets from different decades with the same controlled educational background. It seems that women and men can achieve a satisfying managerial career even with time out of work although there are still some income penalties.