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The purpose of this study is to examine the development of a protean career orientation. In doing so, the paper also aims to assess how work experience, parents and peer networks co‐influence the development of a protean career orientation.

The paper uses semi‐structured interviews with young adults and explores their past, present and future work and career experiences. They were also asked them to explain what career success meant to them. Interview transcripts were reviewed and coded based on two main categories representing protean orientation: self‐directed career management and the expression of personal values as a mechanism for career decisions. The paper also process mapped how a protean career orientation developed in the interviewees. Those who reported a protean career orientation were interviewed two‐and‐a‐half years later so as to further explore their career experiences and the extent to which self‐directedness and value congruence influenced career decisions.

Results suggest that some reported a protean career orientation and of those that did they reported experiencing an image violation based on their personal values. Two types of personal values appeared important to the protean group, they were, making a contribution to society and maintaining work‐life balance. Those that were categorised as having a protean orientation also engaged in critical reassessment by interrogating the basis of their career values and strategies and this distinguished them from the rest of the interviewees who exhibited a more traditional career orientation. These findings are consistent with image theory's concept of a progress decision. This concept encapsulates the idea that individuals decide whether a career plan is moving them towards achievement of a career goal and if it is not, new or modified plans need to be taken up.

The exploratory findings have important implications for understanding the career strategies of protean careerists. Specifically, they elucidate how violations of values, goals and plans lead to career reappraisals. This paper provides important insights into reframing career choice and change in terms of image violations.

The paper provides a process map of the mechanisms that contribute to the development of a protean career orientation. Specifically, it focuses on image violations that appear to distinguish protean careerists from the remainder of the interviewees. Thus, the paper links protean careers with image theory as a means of understanding the underlying processes involved in early career decision making.

The under-representation of women working in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers is a persistent problem worldwide. This dilemma is exacerbated by the fact that an insufficient number of women enroll in STEM studies, and a significant proportion of those who do join then opt out of their STEM careers at different points in their lives. The protean attitude emphasizes agentic individual control over one’s career, and thus offers women substantial potential for developing and enhancing career outcomes. Therefore, this study aims to investigate coping self-efficacy as an antecedent and career identity as a consequent of a protean attitude for women working in STEM.

Using a questionnaire survey, data were collected from 482 women working in STEM in the Middle East region. Multiple regression and bootstrapping methods were used in the analysis of the data.

The findings indicate that coping self-efficacy positively affects both protean attitude and career identity. The results also show that a protean attitude mediates the relationship between coping self-efficacy and career identity.

This research presents organizational management and government policy recommendations aimed at increasing the recruitment and retention of women in STEM careers.

The study addresses some of the main challenges related to identifying antecedents and outcomes of protean attitude.

The increasing complexity of global labor markets and work environments has made the school-to-work transition more difficult. We explore factors that influence important career outcomes for young adults in China as they transition from their university to the labor market. Specifically, we examine how protean career orientation, self-perceived employability, mother’s and father’s career support and human capital (English language proficiency) may influence career satisfaction and employment status during adulthood.

We collected survey data in two waves, six months apart, and obtained English proficiency ratings from university records.

Father’s and mother’s career support was significantly associated with protean career orientation and protean career orientation was significantly related to self-perceived employability. Self-perceived employability was significantly associated with career satisfaction and employment status. The career support-career satisfaction and career support-employment status relationships were fully mediated by protean career orientation and self-perceived employability. Contrary to expectations, the human capital variable of English language proficiency did not moderate the serial mediation involving either career satisfaction or employment status.

By integrating protean career theory, human capital theory and research on parental support, we offer an interdisciplinary contribution to the school-to-work transition literature. We also advance protean career theory by studying it as a mediating variable and by examining parental support as an antecedent of it.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the structural relationships between protean career attitude, career resilience, proactive career behavior and external employability.

This study sampled 212 training apprentice employees who participated in training programs using a proportional stratified sampling in South Korea. The study tested the research model using structural equation modeling.

This study revealed that protean career attitude influenced external employability through career resilience and proactive career behavior. Career resilience fully mediated the relationship between protean career attitude and external employability and partially mediated protean career attitude and proactive career behavior. Proactive career behavior also mediated the relationship between protean career attitude and external employability.

This study has a limitation by relying on cross-sectional data. In terms of theoretical implications, this study can add new knowledge to the protean career research by demonstrating that the protean career attitude influences perceived external employability through career resilience and proactive career behavior for the sample of young training apprentice employees.

This study uncovers the dynamic processes between protean career attitude and perceived external employability. Moreover, this study’s sample is significant because training apprentice employees are mostly young in their 20s and 30s with less than three years of working experience and working in small and medium-sized enterprises in South Korea.

This study aims at analyzing the impact of perceptions of the fourth industrial revolution (crisis and opportunity) in the relationship between workers’ career attitudes and future learning intentions.

This study analyzed the multiple mediating effect of the perception of the fourth industrial revolution in the relationship between career attitudes and future learning intention using data of 305 Korean workers. As career attitude variables, boundaryless and protean career orientation variables were used, and perception of the fourth industrial revolution was analyzed (opportunity and crisis perception).

Both workers’ boundaryless career orientation and protean career orientation influenced future learning intention through the perception of opportunity for the fourth industrial revolution. This result suggested that flexible career attitudes positively recognized the changes of the fourth industrial revolution and had an effect on promoting attitude toward future learning.

The study confirmed that workers’ flexible career attitudes could promote perception of opportunity rather than crisis in changing situation and strengthen their intention to prepare for the future by mediating this perception. These results suggest that lifelong learning and competency development can be reinforced by facilitating perception of an opportunities for external change for individual career development.

Insights for personal career development were provided by analyzing the relationship between flexible career attitudes, which are increasing in importance in the modern society, and perceptions of changes in external environment.

With the change in global and local markets and the emergence of new types of careers such as protean careers (which are values‐driven), individual values (i.e. citizenship behaviors, altruistic standards, and helping activities) seem to have a growing effect on decisions people make about significant choices in their lives such as the choice of a career. The authors apply a theory of protean career and citizenship/altruistic behavior to study career choices and career development amongst an international sample of MBA and MPA students. It is expected that values may lead to career choices in early stages of vocational search, but career choices and development may also affect one's values during the training process, especially during educational and professional schooling. This paper aims to focus on the issues surrounding career choice.

The study focuses on the first stage of the process of career choice at the beginning of MBA/MPA studies. A quantitative research design was applied by using a survey instrument that draws on a cross‐national study.

A positive relationship is found between good citizenship of altruistic behavior and protean career. This relationship is solid and generic beyond the effect of gender, age, or culture/national setting.

The findings point to some meaningful relationships amongst the studied variables and emphasize the need to direct MBA/MPA students to a value‐oriented educational program in their fields of expertise. The paper ends with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications for future studies in career development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of individually related variables and the moderating role of career strategies on protean career among professionals in Malaysian Electrical & Electronics (E & E) industry.

Research data were gathered from a sample of 306 of professional employees in 18 E & E multinational corporations in Malaysia. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was employed to examine the influences of individually related factors and the moderating role of career strategies on protean career.

The results demonstrate that individually related variables, namely, self-efficacy, outcome expectation, goal orientation and locus of control are viewed as potential predictors of protean career. There are significant moderating effects of career strategies on the relationship between goal orientation and protean career among professional employees.

This paper provide an empirical framework to explain protean career based on the review of career-related literatures.

The findings provide implications to both individuals and human resource development (HRD) practitioners on new career trends of protean career. Practical interventions are suggested to assist individuals and organizations towards protean career development.

This paper supports individual protean career development.

This paper offers new insight into the predicting factors of protean career and its moderating role on career strategies.

This paper aims to investigate the role-play of Protean Career Attitude (PCA) and Career Success (CS) in Affective Organizational Commitment (AOC).

A cross-sectional study on 376 employees from 55 hotels in Malaysia were conducted. The co-variance-based structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the data to test the direct and indirect relationships of PCA and CS with AOC.

The findings reveal that self-directed career attitude (SDCA) has a positive direct influence on AOC as well as indirect influence through the mediation of OCS and SCS. However, the value-driven career attitude (VDCA) neither influences AOC nor the OCS.

This is a first paper to body of knowledge in Asian context which identify mediating role of career success (SCA and OCS) to PCA and AOC. The findings of this research are the workplace learning in hospitality management. The authors argue that hotels should not assume spontaneously PCA with diminishing AOC, but rather hotels' attention is required to identify the most important preferences of these butterfly career attitudes such as OCS and SCS. Most importantly the research negates many negative labels of PCA and adds new perception to the contemporary career literature. Higher education institutions, government, and primary, secondary, and post-secondary education departments can play a significant role in developing PCA dispositions like SDCA and VDCA toward career success. Therefore, further study should examine PCA and their relevance to career outcome like job searching and employability of students in Malaysia. The paper is the first, to one's knowledge, to assess organizational commitment with specific measures of PCA. While the results are simple, they refute many stereotypes of the new career and, in that sense, add an important perspective to the career literature.

This paper aims to understand women's careers better in order to help organizations make changes to increase female retention. Two specific questions are addressed: Are women adopting a protean career orientation by becoming career self‐agents?; and Are women's career decisions guided by the kaleidoscope values of challenge, balance, and authenticity? Results are used to discuss changes that organizations can make to better attract and retain female talent.

Open‐ended semi‐structured interviews were conducted by telephone with 25 women graduates of a top ranked international business school located in the USA who had voluntarily left the workforce at some time in their career and had since returned to work.

Results show that 17 of the women interviewed followed a protean career orientation when they returned to the workforce, finding part‐time or reduced‐hours positions or completely changing careers. Of the women, five returned to work following a traditional career orientation and three chose to return to a job rather than reinitiating their careers. The vast majority of the women who adopted a protean career were driven to do so in order to satisfy their need for balance in their lives. Overall, eight of the women expressed a need for authenticity in their careers and only two mentioned a desire for challenge. Many of them felt they had already satisfied their need for challenge earlier in their career, as the KCM suggests.

As with protean careers, protean organizations adapt to evolving circumstances. Companies that recognize and respond to the need to reshape how work gets done and how careers are built will achieve a competitive advantage by attracting and retaining valuable female talent. Organizations should shift their focus from an emphasis on face time to an emphasis on results, giving employees more control over how, when, and where they work. They also need to move away from the traditional career model that emphasizes full‐time, continuous employment and instead embrace arc‐of‐the‐career flexibility that allows women to adopt a protean orientation, managing their own careers in order to align them with their personal values.

The paper helps to explain the motives behind professional women' career moves and makes suggestions on how organizations can better attract and retain female talent.

Using latent profile analysis, the authors explored the career profiles of young adult tertiary students (N = 468, 73.9% women; mean age 20 years) to determine the relative importance of traditional career orientation (TCO) and protean career orientation (PCO) beliefs for them.

Young adults studying at university can aspire to traditional career experiences as they believe organizations will support their professional and career development. However, since the development of newer career models, the TCO model has received little research attention compared to the PCO.

The authors found that the dominant profile exhibited average levels of TCO, PCO and career competencies, and that this mixed profile was associated with more mature career identity development and greater organizational commitment. A second profile, with low TCO, average PCO and career competencies, showed a similar level of career maturity to the mixed profile, but exhibited less organizational commitment. A third profile, with average TCO, low PCO and career competencies, especially vocational identity awareness, was related to less career development and organizational commitment.

The findings suggest that a mixed traditional-protean orientation is common in young adult tertiary students and that the development of a vocational identity is important for positive career outcomes, regardless of orientation.