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The purpose of this paper is to employ intelligent career theory to simultaneously explore the relationships between three types of entrepreneurial career capital (i.e. motivations, human, and social capital). It illustrates the interconnectedness of these three forms of capital as an important way to study entrepreneurial careers and provide a new lens for understanding both personal and venture success.

This qualitative study of 22 in depth semi-structured interviews explores career stories of entrepreneurs in the high tech industry. The interviews focus on examining three aspects of their career, motivations to become an entrepreneur, ways of learning and developing their human and social capital. Interviews were transcribed and coded using grounded theory approach.

The findings describe how entrepreneurial careers as simultaneously shaped by three types of career capital: motivations (knowing-why), knowledge (knowing-how), and relationships (knowing-whom). It also illustrates the accumulation of career capital as a continuous cycle of interrelationships between these three types of capital.

In sum, the findings add to the knowledge on entrepreneurial careers and the role that the three types of capital play in venture formation and success. It also points to the importance of a more integrated view of these careers, embedded in a web of motivational, social, and human capital.

The study’s findings suggest that entrepreneurs should paid equal attention and nurture each form of career capital throughout their careers. It also has implications for entrepreneurship programs as well career advisers to.

Prior entrepreneurship research has examined aspects of entrepreneur’s career capital (e.g. intentions, social, and human capital) typically in isolation from one another and little is known about their reinforcing relationships in entrepreneurial careers. This study provides novel insights for understanding the three types of career capital and the importance of this more integrated view in entrepreneurship education and career counseling.

This study aims to investigate the influence of creativity and resource availability on career competencies (CC) and career success (CS) of entrepreneurs in Nigeria using the intelligent career framework.

Data was obtained using answers to questionnaires given to 348 successful entrepreneurs. The data was analysed using non-parametric software (Smart-PLS).

The results indicate that entrepreneurs who possess “know-why”, “know-how” and “know-whom” can access the required resources and are doing well in their careers. It is suggested that these competencies were significantly related to entrepreneurial CS. Resource availability moderates the relationship of knowing-how, knowing-why competencies and CS, whilst creativity moderates only the link between knowing-whom and entrepreneurial CS.

The results help us to comprehend better the nature of successful entrepreneurial careers and the prominent role of tripartite competencies in achieving a successful career. Also emphasised here is the prominence of a more holistic perspective of these components based on a mix of social, motivational and human capital.

These findings hinted that entrepreneurs should pay uniform consideration in fostering each CC. There are implications for career advisers, practitioners and entrepreneurship programmes.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this is first-of-its-kind research that used primary source data in understanding CC – “knowing-how, knowing-whom and knowing-why” – with entrepreneurs’ CS in Nigeria.

The purpose of this study is to empirically test the intelligent career framework in a public sector setting in a country with a clientelistic culture to inform human resource management strategies.

Based on a qualitative methodology and an interpretivist paradigm, 33 in-depth interviews were conducted with Greek civil servants before the COVID-19 pandemic. The interview recordings were subsequently transcribed and coded via a blend of inductive and deductive approaches.

Outcomes of the study indicate that in a public sector setting in a country with a clientelistic culture, the three dimensions of knowing-whom, knowing-how and knowing-why are less balanced than those reported by findings from private sector settings in countries with an individualistic culture. Instead, knowing-whom is a critical dimension and a necessary condition for career development that affects knowing-how and knowing-why.

The theoretical contribution comes from providing evidence of the dark side of careers and how imbalances between the three dimensions of the intelligent career framework reduce work satisfaction, hinder career success and affect organisational performance. The practical contribution offers recommendations for human resource management practices in the public sector, including training, mentoring, transparency in performance evaluations and fostering trust.

This study aims to empirically examine the career competencies of global managers having world‐wide coordination responsibility: knowing‐why, knowing‐how and knowing‐whom career competencies.

Based on in‐depth interviews with 45 global managers, the paper analyzes career stories from a content analysis approach. Data were collected in three organizations operating in a transnational environment.

Knowing‐why competencies sought for in the position of global manager relate to work‐life balance, international exposure, professional identification, center of decision making, career progression and search for challenge. The knowing‐how competencies developed from the position of global manager relate to operational skills and general business understanding. In terms of knowing‐whom competencies, the findings indicate that respondents used their professional networks and personal networks to obtain the position of global manager.

The study is limited by its reliance on global managers' career stories and the restriction of the sample to global managers working at headquarters.

The study concludes by discussing managerial implications that match the findings in terms of the three career competencies.

The study suggests that global managers' career competencies act as motivators, outcomes as well as means to make career moves. It also indicates the primacy of knowing‐why competencies in global managers' career capital.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of SIEs’ career development through international assignment. In particular, the research focus is on career capital acquirement and development of SIEs through their international assignment in China.

We review studies on SIEs and comparative studies between SIEs and OEs. We apply the career capital theory to discuss SIEs’ career capital development in terms of knowing-how, knowing-why and knowing-whom through expatriation assignment in China.

This chapter focuses on SIEs’ career capital accumulation through international assignments in China, and we develop three propositions that will guide future studies: the knowing-whom career capital development of SIEs through expatriation is increased more in network quantity than network quality in China; the knowing-why career capital development of SIEs through expatriation is influenced by the age and career stage of SIEs; and the knowing-how career capital development of SIEs through expatriation — task-related skills and local engagement skills — is influenced by the SIE’s intercultural ability and organization support respectively.

In practice, a better understanding of SIEs’ career capital development in terms of knowing-how, knowing-why and knowing-whom help companies make the decision to select the relevant staffing pattern. This study also has practical implications in relation to the design and selection of the training, learning and development activities provided to the employees.

The chapter contributes to the expatriate management literature by focusing on SIEs’ career development through their international assignment in China. SIEs’ career development is related to their cross-cultural adjustment and has impacts on the completion and success of the expatriation assignment.

The purpose of this literature review is to critically analyze, synthesize and integrate the currently fragmented literature concerning the factors affecting the international transfer of individual career capital (CC).

This paper is a systematic literature review of the factors affecting the international transfer of individual CC from/for expatriates, repatriates and other employed highly skilled migrants and return migrants. The findings are classified based on the Social Chronology Framework (SCF) proposed by Gunz and Mayrhofer (2015).

This systematic literature review suggests that the international transfer of individual CC, which can be expressed both as (1) individual-level transfer across different organizations located in different countries as the direct use and application of CC and (2) individual knowing-how transfer to other individuals within organization, is affected by the individual, organizational and broader contextual-level factors that are bound by the aspect of time. The authors summarize the findings by presenting a model of the factors affecting the international transfer of individual CC.

The authors align the CC framework (Defillippi and Arthur, 1994) to the SCF (Gunz and Mayrhofer, 2018) by explaining the factors affecting the international transfer of individual CC that go beyond the qualities of CC, including the Being, Space and Time domains. Moreover, the authors critique the current focus on the international CC transfer in the present suggesting that future research should explore this phenomenon as a more dynamic process. Finally, the authors contribute to the literature on the global mobility of highly skilled employees' by highlighting gaps in the knowledge of the international transfer of CC and presenting a future research agenda.

Focusing on an international trainee- and internship programme, this paper aims to propose a new framework that links organisational strategies regarding ethnic diversity with career competencies of the programme participants.

The paper adopts a case study design. It examines the interplay of the perspectives of the organisation, which is an Austrian bank, and of the programme participants, who are university graduates from South-Eastern Europe. It draws on the typology of diversity strategies by Ortlieb and Sieben (2013) and the categorisation of individual career competencies by DeFillippi and Arthur (1994).

The bank benefits from the programme participants’ competencies with regard to South-Eastern Europe and increased legitimacy gained from the public. Programme participants acquire many knowing-how, knowing-why and knowing-whom competencies, especially if the bank pursues a so-called learning strategy towards ethnic diversity. On the other hand, individual knowing-how competency supports an organisation’s antidiscrimination strategy, whereas knowing-why and knowing-whom competencies benefit the organisational learning strategy.

Although the paper builds on a single case study and the ability to generalise is limited, the findings imply that future human resource development concepts should jointly consider the perspectives of both organisations and individuals.

Owing to their high strategic relevance, organisations should look into the competencies of skilled migrants and evaluate the critical resources they offer. Both organisational learning and an organisation’s strategic development are key concerns. The proposed framework helps to effectively design trainee- and internship programmes and simultaneously anticipate organisational and individual consequences thereof at an early stage.

The proposed framework concerning the interplay between organisational and individual perspectives as well as the regional focus on South-Eastern Europe present novelties.

The purpose of the present study is to explore the effects of early life international exposure on the career capital (CC) of adult third culture kids (ATCKs).

The study adopts a qualitative research design based on 34 semi-structured interviews with ATCKs who have had international exposure in their childhood as members of an expatriate family.

The results show that a globally mobile childhood has extensive long-term impacts on ATCKs' CC in the areas of knowing-why, knowing-how and knowing-whom. Additionally, their early international experience also had several negative impacts across these aspects of CC.

This paper provides a novel understanding of the long-term impacts of early life international exposure on ATCKs' CC, and this paper is the first study to use the CC framework among an ATCK population.

Skilled migrants' careers are heterogeneous, with existing theories capturing only some of their diversity and dynamic development over time and circumstance. This paper aims to draw out the multilevel (macro, meso and micro levels) influences impacting skilled migrants' careers by using the lens of the intelligent career framework. Furthermore, structuration theory captures the agency of skilled migrants facing different social structures at and across levels and explains the idiosyncratic nature of skilled migrants' careers.

Following an abductive approach, this paper examines the career influences for a sample of 41 skilled migrants in three different host countries. Individual career stories were collected through qualitative interviews. Important career influences from these narratives are categorised across the intelligent career competencies (knowing why, how and whom) at the macro, meso and micro levels.

Findings illustrate the lived reality for skilled migrants of these interrelated multilevel career influences and go some way in elucidating the heterogeneity of skilled migrants' careers and outcomes. The interplay of individual agency in responding to both facilitating and challenging social structures across the multilevels further explains the idiosyncratic nature of skilled migrants' careers and how/whether they achieve satisfying career outcomes. Some potential policy implications and options arising from these findings are suggested.

By considering multilevel themes that influence skilled migrants' career capital, the authors were able to better explain the complex, relational and idiosyncratic shaping of their individual careers. As such, the framework informs and guides individuals, practitioners and organisations seeking to facilitate skilled migrants' careers.

The purpose of this paper is to report on perceptions of an Executive MBA (EMBA) experience to the development of Chinese managers’ careers.

This qualitative research drew on in‐depth interviews with a sample of alumni from two business schools in China. Narrative analysis focused on career competency development.

Chinese managers perceived the career outcomes of undertaking the EMBA and reported “knowing‐whom” benefits such as sharing information, building reputation and exchanging acquired knowledge, “knowing‐how” namely as a source of learning and “knowing‐why” namely work‐life balance.

The research presents a small sample and so cannot be applicable to the wider population. It is exploratory in nature and intended to encourage debate over the perceived importance of career competencies accrued from EMBA studies in an Eastern context.

The paper adds to existing research on career competency development through the EMBA experience. It offers insights into Chinese managers’ networking ability to put people together and to acquire information, opportunities and resources for career management and development purposes.