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The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which the concept of career success has been subject to reification, and identify potential implications for individuals, organizations, and societies.

The current paper offers an in‐depth analysis of the different contextual forces contributing to the reification of careers (i.e. history, culture and ideology), and how these have impacted on the social reality of career and the definitions of career success held by different relevant actors.

In total, eight research propositions are identified that need to be addressed in future research in order to advance knowledge and understanding of career success in context.

One manifest outcome of career reification is the establishment of collective norms prescribing what a “normal”, “successful” career is – and what is not. Consequently, all careers not conforming to these norms are devaluated, which is inappropriate given the present‐day climate of workplace diversity.

Career theory, in general, has been criticized for overemphasizing individual agency while neglecting contextual issues. Furthermore, more conceptual development is necessary in relation to the career success construct. The current paper aims to address both of these gaps by presenting in‐depth analyses of the historical, cultural, and ideological contexts impacting on the meaning of career and career success.

The purpose of this paper is to explore notions of career success from a process-oriented perspective. The authors argue that success can be usefully conceptualized as a subjectively malleable and localized construct that is continually (re)interpreted and (re)shaped through the interaction between individual agency and macro-level structures.

The paper employs a qualitative methodology drawing on 32 in-depth semi-structured interviews with female academics from eight countries in the Arab Middle East.

Findings of this study provide an empirical validation of the suggested Career Success Framework and moves toward an integrative model of objective and subjective career success criteria. More specifically, the findings showed that women's definitions of success are: first, localized in that they capture considerations relating to predominant institutions in the region (i.e. family and gender ideology); second, subjectively malleable in that they capture women's agency embedded in specific macro-level structures; and finally, process oriented in that they reflect a dynamic interaction between the structure agency as well as the subsequent actions, strategies, and behaviors women adopt to alleviate tension and reach their personal notions of career success.

The authors suggest that there may be value in customizing human resource management policies in the region around the salience of family and community service. Moreover, organizations can play a pivotal role in supporting women to work through the experienced tensions. Examples of such support are mentoring programs, championing female role models, and designing corporate social responsibility initiatives geared toward shifting mandated gender structures in the region. Finally, the authors argue that organizations could benefit by supporting women's atypical patterns of career engagement to allow for interactions with wider circles of stakeholders such as the community. This requires organizations to rethink their career success criteria to allow for the integration of non-traditional elements of career.

Adopting a more process-oriented view of career success avoids reification by drawing attention to local macro-level structures as well as individual agency. It also suggests that existing norms for how “success” is understood are only one element in a wider process of what it means to be “successful”, thereby opening space for more diverse and localized conceptualizations.

This paper provides a more process-oriented consideration of career success, highlighting the importance of understanding how perceived tensions shape an individual's behaviors, actions, and career strategies. The value of this contribution is that it allows us to better understand the complex interaction of structure and agency in shaping an individual's notions of career success.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how women academics from the Arab Middle East enact their careers with reference to double-bounded contexts: academia as an institution encoding organizational career scripts and gender as another institution encoding specific gender roles. It is hoped that this cross-cultural perspective would broaden the understanding of careers beyond the economically advanced industrialized countries and better inform the current debate on the boundaryless career model.

The study is qualitative and exploratory in nature. It draws on one-to-one interviews with 23 female academics in early, mid and late careers, working in research universities in the Arab Middle East region.

The choice of academia as a profession is mainly driven by the subjective perception of an academic career as a calling, the lack of attractiveness of other career options in the region, and the appeal of the flexibility of academic work. Furthermore, the findings highlight both organizational (lack of mentoring and university support) and cultural factors (Islam, patriarchy, and family centrality) that shape/bind women's careers choices and patterns allowing thus for a better understanding of local constraints to the boundaryless career view in the Arab Middle East context.

The paper contributes to the boundaryless career theory development by addressing one of its major shortcomings, namely the lack of attention to context. It provides fresh insights from the Arab Middle East to the ongoing debate whether careers are boundaryless and subject to individual agency or whether careers are shaped by wider institutional factors and support existing calls in the literature to conceptualize careers at the intersection of several influencing factors.

This paper focuses on the relatively unexplored link between international experience and academic careers. Drawing on a study of 30 British academics in four countries, it reports how they accounted for their decision to take an overseas appointment and how they evaluated that appointment. The contemporary career literature is used as a framework for analysis connecting the findings with “traditional” and “new” career themes. The desire to travel was found to be a key driver in taking the overseas appointment. When it came to evaluating the overseas appointment, however, upward career mobility in the context of increasing internationalisation was a major concern. The paper offers a number of key concerns for managers in institutions of higher education, particularly those concerned with the management and recruitment of international faculty.

Organizations profoundly create development paths of individual’s careers. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to gain understanding about how organizational context (shaped by the complex relationship between trade union strength and HRM strength) influences the application of organizational career management (OCM) practices seen through the lens of the theory of cooperation and competition (Deutsch, 1949; Tjosvold, 1984).

Inferential statistical analyses (Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney tests) were applied to test the CRANET survey data collected from 92 large-sized private-sector organizations within an EU country characterized by a medium to high-trade union density.

Results offered consistent empirical evidence that a comprehensive set of OCM practices are applied differently across four distinctive modalities of the union-HRM relationship. Specifically, the “union-HRM synergy” relationship (high-HRM/high-unionization) has been recognized as the most promising for adopting such developmental practices, providing an evidence of complementarities between trade unions and HRM professionalism.

The research suggests that synergistic collaboration between trade unions and HRM might provide employees with even more career development opportunities than when organizations pursue the asynchronous single-sided “Total HRM strategy.”

This study rejuvenate a traditional career management research agenda by introducing a new theoretical lens for studying the interplay between trade unions and HRM and have put an emphasis on how their strength is related to the incidence of OCM practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether four different generations (Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y) hold different beliefs about career. Career type, career success evaluation and importance attached to organizational security are to be scrutinized for each generation.

A total of 750 people completed a vignette task, rating the career success of 32 fictitious people. Each vignette contained a different combination of five career features (functional level, salary, number of promotions, promotion speed, and satisfaction) at two levels (low and high). Furthermore, several items were added in order to determine each participant's career type and the extent to which they attached importance to organizational security.

The majority of participants still had rather “traditional” careers, although younger generations seemed to exhibit larger discrepancies between career preferences and actual career situation. Overall, satisfaction appeared to be the overriding criterion used to evaluate other people's career success. No significant differences were found between generations. With regard to importance attached to organizational security, the Silent Generation and Generation Y scored significantly higher than the other generations.

The convenience sampling strategy led to large differences in sample size per generation. Using a vignette design limited the amount and richness of information that could be offered to participants. Perhaps other criteria relevant to real‐life career success evaluation should have been incorporated in this study.

The study raises questions about the validity of career success operationalizations frequently used in research. It is the first study to examine career success evaluation by means of vignettes.

This study aims to advance a holistic and integrated view to understand the relationship between career capital and career success among knowledge workers.

The study examines the associations of three forms of career capital – human, social and psychological capital – on career success. Career success is measured through a subjective evaluation of career satisfaction and an objective evaluation of promotion. The data are drawn from 624 knowledge workers from Finland with an academic degree in business studies. The model is tested through structural equation modeling.

The results stress the importance of psychological capital as an important career resource among knowledge workers. Therefore, our findings contribute to career research by supporting the argument that context and/or occupational group matters in the relationship between career capital and career success.

The cross-sectional data partly restrict our ability to delimit an impact. Further research using a longitudinal design would be required to confirm longitudinal effects. The respondents were a relatively homogeneous group of knowledge workers, and thus, the results are not generalized to other samples. The Finnish context (e.g., a high-quality education system, welfare society, dual-earner model) may also include special aspects that may have an effect on results limiting generalization to different contexts rather than Nordic ones.

Career capital is an important element of taking charge of one's career, which is expected in current working life scenarios. Given psychological capital has an impact on employees' career success, employees' psychological capital could be supported in organizations to help them to adapt to career changes. Employers benefit from individuals who are willing to invest in their work, and therefore, the employers should be aware of the individual factors that affect employees' career success.

The meaning of career success may be context and culture related, as might its predictors. Hence, perceived career success may benefit and spill over to several stakeholders such as employers, family members and friends through its effects of positive energy and well-being. Career counselors could place more emphasis than currently on developing the psychological capital of their clients. The findings are important for other practitioners as well, such as human resource (HR) professionals who might consider dedicated programs fostering psychological capital qualities, which seem to relate to career success among knowledge workers.

A research model that considers career capital as an integrated entity is presented rather than focusing on a single form of career capital. Contextual issues were included by focusing on knowledge workers who represent careerists in a welfare society. These findings could advance career theory and provide developmental guidelines to help employers, HR and career-oriented individuals to build successful careers.

Career shifts and talent shortages in supply chain management (SCM) are evident at most occupation levels and need further attention and understanding. The purpose of this paper is to present factors that shape SCM career expectations, choices, and satisfaction and to advance career theory and research that is currently absent in SCM literature.

This study administered open‐ended surveys to individuals educated and working in SCM to elicit the satisfaction and dissatisfaction that professionals derive from various aspects of their SCM careers. Resulting data were content analyzed and categorized into major themes representing career satisfiers (likes) and dissatisfiers (dislikes).

This exploratory study found evidence of traditional career components and the presences of objective and subjective components that transcend organizational boundaries. The results indicate an emergence of the boundaryless career concept in SCM, as the SCM career appears less dependent on a single employer. From the data emerged six major career satisfiers and seven major career dissatisfiers. Challenge is the most satisfying aspect of a SCM career. Challenge, however, may have limits, as the most dissatisfying aspect of a SCM career is the overload that can overwhelm a SCM professional in his or her career.

Career satisfaction can be readily measured and categorized to explain SCM career expectations and choices that may lead to positive or negative work outcomes. Supply chain managers could utilize the information to understand employee perceptions and behaviors that may influence performance and to contend with disruptive career shifts and looming talent shortages in SCM.

This paper introduces contemporary career theory concepts and is a first of its kind in the field that explores attitudes and perceptions toward careers in SCM, as it focuses on career satisfiers and dissatisfiers described by SCM professionals.

To apply and develop Stephen Barley's model of career structuration to offer insights into the transition into portfolio working.

A qualitative case study methodology is used. Interviews were conducted with managers who had left the National Health Service to develop portfolio careers.

The adoption of the Barley model of career structuration as a sensitising device has made it possible to show how individuals have drawn from existing scripts embedded in institutional forms but have also contributed to developing new career scripts, such as portfolio working. Their enactment of career scripts is a dynamic process whereby they impact back on those scripts in both intentional and unintentional ways. Thus the transformative capacity of individual career actions is asserted but, critically, alongside awareness of constraints as bound up in structures which have salience for individuals and for collectives.

This is a study based in one large public sector organisation. Further exploration of the potential role of career as a way of understanding socially embedded action and its capacity for change is required, which takes account of different occupational settings.

The study outlines some of the frustrations experienced by portfolio workers and has practical implications for the ways in which they should be managed.

The paper contributes to the debate concerning structure and agency in career theory.

The influence of trade unions and the cross‐cutting of gender and ethnicity on career development is a neglected area of study. By drawing on research in four UK trade unions, this paper engages with the career impact of unions on black and minority ethnic women trade union activists. In particular, it explores the career impact of three key areas of analysis: the gendered and ethnicised order, union networks and the career indeterminacy of union women. The experience of the women in our study demonstrated how careers are constrained by a complex set of racist and gendered forms. Union networks are shown to be an important arena for union involvement and personal development. Such networks facilitate the development of personal resources to challenge injustice in the workplace but they also provide a range of knowledge and skills that provide greater degrees of freedom in the way that an individual's career may unfold.