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The purpose of the present paper is to offer a career concept and culture framework for measuring and managing the alignment between people, strategy and culture and especially the motivational capital as the fit between people's motives and the organization's reward and appraisal systems.

A survey of 312 respondents in a multinational manufacturing firm using two questionnaires about their individual career concepts, motives, and their views about the organizational strategy and culture.

The results suggest that the career‐ and culture‐based motivational capital is positively associated with how effective the people view the strategy, how well‐functioning the structure is experienced, how relevant the performance appraisal is considered, how satisfied the people feel, and how long they stay in the organization.

Future research should add more multi‐item‐dependent variables, use more translated questionnaires into the respondents' own languages, and study more organizations in different industries to make further use of the career concept and culture model's ability to capture the fit between different persons and their organizations and the importance of this alignment.

Career and organizational development can improve the fit between individual career concepts and motives as well as organizational career culture and thereby contribute in several ways to higher performance, such as greater motivation, more positive views of the organization, and higher retention.

The paper provides a unique approach to understand and manage the alignment of different persons, HR systems, and organizational culture with greater precision.

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.

This special issue honors the life and legacy of Michael J. Driver, a renowned scholar whose contributions to research on careers, decision‐making, and cognitive style made an indelible impact on these fields. His often‐groundbreaking work spanning more than 40 years impacted the lives of those whom he taught, mentored, consulted and collaborated with. Dr Driver's impact continues to be felt, as can be seen in the pages of this special issue, which highlights the Driver‐inspired research of several former students who later became colleagues.

Over the last four decades, Mike Driver has helped shape the way we think about and research careers and career‐related issues. To illustrate some of this impact, we provide a first broad retrospective of his life and career and then four articles – written by former students and colleagues of his – that build on Mike's work in careers, decision making and cognitive style. Reflecting on this collection allows the reader to take stock of Driver's research that is responsible for shaping some of the careers research that continues now and in the future.

As it would take several special issues to cover the breadth and depth of Mike's scholarly contributions, this collection of five articles is intended to showcase a sampling of Dr Driver's legacy. The articles – representing such fields as leadership, careers, entrepreneurship, and work‐family conflict – demonstrate the reach of Driver's work while providing new insights and offering new avenues for research and practice.

These articles are authored by individuals ranging from junior faculty to senior faculty, scholar to practitioner, and colleague to wife. Individually, each article contributes to our understanding of the many fields Driver's work influences. Together, this collection of articles provides important insights that it is hoped encourage even further research that informs career scholarship and its impact on the development of individuals and their careers within and beyond national boundaries.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of the recent (2008‐) economic crisis on information communication technology (ICT) spending. The empirical findings are discussed within a broader theoretical framework of technological trends/diffusion and economic cycles.

First, the paper introduces the innovation diffusion theory and theories of economic cycles. Next, it presents the analyses of the data from official statistics, international agencies and research companies. Finally, it summarizes the empirical findings within theoretical contexts.

In general, crises always reduce spending and therefore also ICT spending. However, focusing on the recent crisis, it affected the ICT market selectively and also much less than other sectors. In addition, the empirical findings indicate that after decades of fast ICT expansion (1971‐2000) we are now in the period of slower sectoral growth, which is in line with theories of super cycles, although, the authors also propose alternative explanations.

The impact of the economic crisis on the ICT market strongly depends on countries' economic situation and development stage. Nonetheless some ICT segments that allow cost savings, greater productivity and efficiency, have been strengthened during the latest (2008‐) economic crisis, which also pinpoints the directions for further transformation of ICT.

Despite usually reduced budgets during the crisis, managers should put increased attention to new/alternative ICT solutions (e.g. virtualization, outsourcing, cloud computing) and lowered prices of ICT products/services to increase competitiveness. The crisis can be thus an opportunity to re‐examine the contribution of ICT to productivity, workflow efficiency and introduce new methods for better exploitation of ICT capital.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding about the transformation of ICT in economic crises. It also demonstrates that recent crises caused another microwave within the last super cycle.

The paper provides empirical insight into the link between economic situation and ICT spending in past 15 years, with special attention to the changes observed during the latest (2008‐) crisis. The analysis is also put into a broader theoretical framework, where it proposes alternative explanations supported by empirical evidences.