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A work orientation represents a person’s beliefs about the meaning of work – the function work plays in the person’s life and the constellation of values and assumptions the person holds about the work domain. Research has suggested that adults tend to favor one of three primary work orientations: job, career, or calling. Empirical studies have shown that adults with different primary work orientations tend to experience different work and career outcomes; however, scholars have not analyzed how or why an individual first develops a work orientation. In this study, we take a first step toward investigating the origins of adults’ work orientations.

We propose hypotheses drawing on extant literature on the development of work values and occupational inheritance. We test hypotheses using a retrospective research design and survey methodology, with a sample of working adults.

Work orientations are developed through socialization processes with parents during adolescence. There are different patterns of development across the three work orientation categories: stronger calling orientations are developed when both parents possess strong calling orientations; stronger career orientations develop in accordance with fathers’ career orientations; and job orientations are related more to the nature of the adolescent’s relationship with parents than with parents’ own work orientations.

This research provides the first empirical study of the origin and development of work orientations.

This research offers insight into ways generations are connected through the perceived meaning of their work, even as the nature of work changes. We encourage future scholars to use this as a starting point for research on the development of work orientations, and to continue exploring these questions using additional methods, particularly longitudinal study designs.

This research examined the presence of career orientation profiles by investigating how young workers combined protean career orientation attitudes, motivation to learn to develop one's career and an optimistic future perspective on their career. It explored how a differentiated endorsement of these attitudes and motivation (i.e. career orientation profiles) were associated with the adoption of multiple career-enhancing behaviors, namely proactive career behaviors (i.e. career planning, networking and skill development) and learning behaviors with technologies.

Latent profile analysis was conducted among young individuals starting their career (N = 767) and found four distinct profiles.

The first profile revealed that 17.2% of workers in this sample were displaying low levels in protean career orientation, motivation to learn and optimistic future time perspective (profile 1). Two differentiated profiles showed either low levels of protean career orientation and high levels of motivation to learn (profile 2) or high levels of protean career attitudes and low levels of motivation to learn (profile 3). These profiles presented an average level of future time perspective and represented 13.8 and 40.6% of the sample. Finally, 28.4% of the sample showed high levels on all these variables (profile 4).

Only young workers who showed high levels on all these indicators also presented high levels of proactive behaviors and learning with technologies. The other three profiles were associated with suboptimal levels on these outcomes. Taken together, these results offer new insights into the psychological state of mind of workers most adapted to succeed in a modern career.

Protean career orientation is a key element that helps explain why workers plan and manage their careers. In the field of nursing, a protean career orientation assists nurses in job search, career mobility and adapting to changing demands. Few studies have explored how nurses’ protean career orientation will lead to job search and how to make better use of the protean career orientation. This study aims to explore how a protean career orientation influences job search via career optimism and the moderating role of mentoring relationships.

This study conducted a cross-sectional survey of 309 frontline nurses from China. The questionnaire was distributed to nurses through the snowball sampling method. Jamovi 1.2.2 was used for descriptive analysis and Pearson’s correlation analysis. The relationships between the variables and their significance were tested using Process Macro 3.3.

Results show that protean career orientation was significantly related to career optimism and positively related to job search. Career optimism was significantly related to job search. The indirect effect of protean career orientation on job search through career optimism was significant. The interaction between protean career orientation and mentoring relationships was also significantly related to career optimism.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate how nurses’ flexible career orientation significantly impacted job search through nurses’ career optimism. If nurses work in supportive mentoring relationships, the positive effect of the nurse’s protean career orientation on the job search is decreased.

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.

Investigates how Korean women employees define their success at work, and how those definitions differ by demographic variables, such as age, years of work experience, marital status, and education level. The instrument used is the modified Career Success Map Questionnaire, which was originally developed to measure people's career success orientation. A sample survey was conducted with a sample of Korean women employees in a large Korean bank. Implies, when comparing the results with other studies sampling both men and women (or women only) in either a US or Korean context, that women's career perceptions and career success in a specific culture could differ from those in the same culture, as well as in another culture. Therefore, it is advised that theories should not make the same assumptions regarding career phenomena cross‐culturally, in addition to cross‐gender. Moreover, the managerial implications of this study indicate that organizations can motivate employees with different incentives and options according to their internal orientations, which may differ by gender and cultural background.

Contemporary careers research suggests that individuals are more likely to be proactive about their careers when they possess an internal, rather than an external locus of control (LOC). The purpose of this paper is to adopt the view that individuals can be both external and proactive depending on whether or not they possess an incremental implicit theory.

Self-administered surveys were completed by 127 employed individuals in Nigeria. These surveys were used to gather information on individuals’ external LOC, protean and boundaryless career orientations and implicit theory beliefs.

Results indicated partial support for positive relationships between external LOC and contemporary career orientations and that an incremental implicit theory can have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between an external LOC belief in chance and the values-driven protean career orientation.

The study was based on a cross-sectional study in one time period and all information was self-report.

The results suggest that HR managers that operate in global environments should consider the importance of individual implicit theory and on career orientations and take a broader view of the role of internal and external LOC.

The study questions whether predominant perspectives of the relationship between proactive career orientations and internal LOC applies to contexts where external LOC predominate.

This study is unique in the examination of positive relationships between implicit theory, external LOC and contemporary career orientations. Furthermore, the study examines these relationships in an unstable and unpredictable work environment context, Nigeria, where such positive relationships are highly necessary to improve the career self-management of individuals.

The protean and boundaryless career concepts have dominated recent career research. Demographic groups are posited to differ on these “new career orientations,” with implications for career development and social equity. The purpose of this paper is to test these hypotheses by systematically reviewing research on demographic differences in new career orientations.

This paper meta-analyzes demographic differences in protean, boundaryless, and proactive career orientations using data from 29,605 individuals (74 samples).

Demographic differences in new career orientations are generally negligible to small, with organizational mobility preferences showing the largest differences across demographic characteristics. Age showed curvilinear relations with new career orientations. National economic development moderated new career orientation-educational level relations.

Results support the construct validity of “proactive career orientation” as a unifying construct encompassing protean and psychological mobility boundaryless orientations (cf. Wiernik and Kostal, 2017). Future research should continue to explore career development in diverse economic/cultural contexts.

Small demographic differences suggest that potential benefits of new career orientations are not limited to members of particular groups. Age and education relations were large enough to indicate that large population segments may benefit from additional interventions to support career mobility and development.

This paper uses meta-analytic techniques to investigate demographic differences in career orientations with larger samples than possible in a single primary study. The meta-analytic design permitted investigation of a variety of methodological and cultural/economic moderators not previously considered in career orientation research.

This study investigated the joint impact of organizational and individual career management on employees' ideal self-discrepancy. Drawing on the identity literature, the authors aimed to uncover the mechanism and boundary condition of this impact, focusing on how organizations influence ideal and actual selves of employees with different protean career orientation.

The authors conducted a four-wave time-lagged study over eight months, with a sample of 331 employees from various organizations.

Perceived organizational career management negatively influenced ideal self-discrepancy via organizational identification, and such relationship was strengthened by protean career orientation. Employees with stronger protean career orientation saw a stronger moderating effect of individual career management on the relationship between organizational identification and ideal self-discrepancy, whereas their counterparts saw an opposite effect.

This study highlighted the essential role of organization in narrowing employees' ideal self-discrepancy in the protean career era. It suggested that organizations should set differentiated career practices depending on employees' protean career orientation levels.

By integrating vocational psychology and organizational scholarship, this study extended the ideal self-discrepancy literature by offering a nuanced understanding of the mechanism and boundary condition of the role of organizational career management in narrowing ideal self-discrepancy in the protean career era. It identified the joint efforts of organization and employee as a fascinating avenue for future studies.

Takes a random sample of 156 respondents from municipal and rural police forces in Canada to examine the relationship between various factors concerning their careers. Finds that a significant number of officers perceive their career orientation to have changed over time. Presents findings on social activists, enforcers, careerists, specialists and self investors. Differs from previous research linking career orientation to personality type by seeing career orientation as changing with time, stages of career and circumstances. Remarks that policing needs to be technically sophisticated, cost‐effective, community‐based and sensitive to the realities of a multicultural society. Recommends that police departments consider the career orientation of recruits and establish a reward structure suited to the varied career types

This article aims to examine the role of boundaryless career orientation in influencing Internet professionals' strategies toward workplace problems in China's Internet companies, which feature prominent problems including excessive overwork. It addresses one question: how do Chinese Internet professionals make grievance strategies?

This article draws on qualitative data based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 134 employees from 6 representative Chinese Internet companies. The data were collected during 2018-2021 and analyzed with a grounded theory approach.

This article highlights the role of boundaryless career orientation in explaining Chinese Internet professionals' strategies toward workplace grievances. The author develops a comprehensive model to illustrate how boundaryless career orientation influences four grievance strategies namely, strategic compliance, exit, dissent expression and resistance that correspond to four different motives to advance the professionals' boundaryless career: learning, transferring, relieving and resolving. Internet professionals choose different grievance strategies based on how each option can benefit their boundaryless career goals.

This article is one of the first to bring in boundaryless career orientation as a key factor in explaining Chinese Internet professionals' grievance strategies. It provides a fuller picture than previous studies by showing wide varieties of professionals' grievance behaviors. The finding of high-level boundaryless career orientation among Internet professionals offers insights on how companies can improve employment relations by improving career management practices.