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The present study has two purposes. One is to investigate the relationship between an Inter‐Organizational Career Orientation (IOCO) of employees and their career strategies. The second is to investigate the effects of the career attitudes that an IOCO has on employee career strategies.

The facts and conclusions presented in this paper were obtained from a study of 365 employees from 16 companies. A multiple regression analysis was adopted for testing hypotheses.

With regard to the first objective, it was determined that IOCO has a positive effect on inter‐organizational career strategies (career exploration) and a negative one on organizational career strategies (self‐nomination). With regard to the second objective, the moderating effects of career attitudes toward the relationships described as follows became clear: job involvement of employees with regard to the relationship between IOCO and creating career opportunities; job involvement of employees with regard to the relationship between IOCO and self‐nomination; job involvement of employees with regard to the relationship between IOCO and career insight; and career goal commitment of employees with regard to the relationship between IOCO and challenging work behavior.

An analysis according to demographic factors and the implementation of longitudinal research are suggested as future research subjects.

This paper showed that IOCO contributed not only to the rejection of organizational career strategies but also to that of organizational and inter‐organizational career strategies. “Domain fit hypothesis” was verified in new organizational behavioral concepts between career orientation and a career strategy.

In this study, the concept of career, which is one of the most significant functions of human resources, is examined. Toward the end of the twentieth century, restricted models, in which individuals work in a workplace in a classical manner, have been replaced by more flexible models. Due to certain reasons such as changing environmental conditions, increasing education levels, and the impact of employee’s values on his/her work life, individuals’ work life have been dramatically changed. Therefore, some career approaches oriented for these changing conditions and current requirements have been proposed by both academicians and professionals. These approaches mostly include removing workplace limits, offering the opportunity to work from anywhere, using various skills at different departments without any limitations. Basing on the aforementioned changes in theory and practice, this study investigates up-to-date career approaches in a holistic manner. In this context, the background and practicability of these theoretically framed approaches are also discussed in the present study

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new conceptualization of the boundaryless career – a widely acknowledged contemporary career concept – that reflects its original description more fully than previous literature has done, and to apply this conceptualization in an empirical investigation of career behavior and intentions of a large sample of European information technology (IT) professionals.

As part of a large study of IT professionals in Europe (N=1,350), the paper had three research objectives. First, the paper developed and empirically tested a new operationalization of a person’s boundaryless career orientation (BCO) that reflects the originally proposed boundaryless career meanings more closely than existing approaches. Second, the paper used this to identify in a holistic manner different patterns of BCO. Third, the paper examined the nature and extent of links between BCO and self-reported career behavior and intentions.

The paper identified five BCO factors that differentiate individuals into three distinct clusters. Although organizational boundaries appeared to be salient for most individuals, they did not differentiate the clusters. Instead, geographical mobility preference and rejection of career opportunities emerged as highly differentiating but hitherto rarely examined types of career boundaries.

The findings can help HR managers to gain a better understanding of different mobility preferences among different groups of employees, which could lead to the development and implementation of more refined reward schemes and career development practices in organizations.

This study provides a new operationalization of the BCO that is grounded in its original definition and offers a new empirically tested 15-item BCO measure. It contributes to career research with scarce empirical findings regarding the components of the BCO, their salience for individuals, and the connections between BCO and behavior.

Hybrid career has been discussed in the literature for some time but is still an emergent concept. The study investigated the careers of university professional staff working in universities in Australia and the UK to better understand the careers of this underresearched cohort of staff. The findings were used to extend the theory of the hybrid career.

A total of 139 career stories were collected via an open-ended question in an online survey. Inductive thematic analysis was used to create themes and theorise career pathways relevant to the participants' careers.

It was found that participants had a hybrid career orientation (HCO) based on their essential values and their reciprocal relationship with their employer. Four career pathways emerged from the data: intra-organisational advancement, inter-organisational advancement, work–life balance and dead end.

There is a need for future research to investigate the HCO, both to add depth to the understanding of careers for university professional staff in universities and to examine the hybrid concept in other settings.

It is suggested that by grouping staff into career pathways, human resource practitioners could provide more targeted interventions to ensure that staff are motivated and productive for the benefit of the organisation.

The research has extended the concept of the hybrid career and discovered four career pathways relevant to university professional staff.

The aim of the current article is to clarify whether the staff of Estonian university libraries has enough possibilities for self-realization and variety in their everyday work; whether employees see any relationship between their personal performance improvement and their intra-organizational career and, whether they see any possibility and/or necessity for promotion within their library.

The data used in this paper are based on reviewing of relevant literature to provide an overview of the concept of intra-organizational career as well as on the results of the original online survey, created by the paper's authors, held in 2011/2012 in Estonian university libraries governed by public law in Estonia. The analysis of the results is interpreted on the basis of the literature, authors' opinions, based on long-term working experience in Estonian academic libraries and on the legislation of Estonia.

Estonian university librarians are relatively pessimistic about career opportunities within their libraries, and, unfortunately do not see any relation between performance improvement and their career. The biggest problem is that the younger librarians do not see any opportunities for promotion. In Estonian university libraries, there does not exist an adequate grading system for promotion.

Based on the current study, it can be said that the biggest challenge for university libraries in Estonia is to keep young professionals in libraries and in this way prevent the continuing growth of the average age of employees in the organization. This challenge would require from managements of the university libraries: to take bolder action in analyzing personnel and staff developments and promotion plans; to build up an adequate and clear career system; and pay more attention to the organizations' internal reserves.

The majority of the literature in library science in Estonia has focused – and rightfully so – on the user: what do users and patrons want and/or need, how do they use it, how can librarians best provide it to them, do the users feel themselves comfortable in library building, etc. No research has been previously carried out in the Estonian library context to determine employees' attitudes towards librarians intra-organizational career development opportunities. The issues that emerge from this survey could be helpful for library managers, but also for employees.

Although research has shown differences between self-initiated experiences and expatriation, this differentiation has rarely been made when it comes to more long-term global careers. The purpose of this paper is to identify similarities and differences between repeat expatriates and international itinerants in their career paths, subjective experiences, and narratives of how they relate to their context.

A narrative approach was used and interviews were conducted with ten repeat expatriates and ten international itinerants. The career paths of the 20 Swedish global careerists and how they narrate their careers are analyzed, and the two types of global careerists are compared.

Results show that the repeat expatriates and international itinerants differ in their subjective experiences of global careers, and how they narrate them. Three broad domains are identified that integrate a range of issues that are important for global careerists. These domains are the organization and career domain, the country and culture domain, and the family, communities, and networks domain. The repeat expatriates and international itinerants differ in how they relate to these and what is important to them.

The differences found have implications for organizations in terms of recruitment, management, and retention of a global talent pool.

This research contributes to the understanding of subjective experiences of global careers and integrates a range of aspects in the context of global careerists that are important to them. Moreover, it contributes to the understanding of global careers by differentiating between those with intra- and inter-organizational global careers.

The purpose of this empirical study is to make a contribution to career theory in general, and to the literature on high‐potential careers in particular, by examining the careers of real high potentials, taking place in the twenty‐first century world of work, from the perspectives of the high potentials themselves as well as those of their organizations.

A total of 34 interviews were conducted within three study samples: high potentials (n=14), organisational representatives employed by the same organisations that provided the high‐potential participants (n=8), and organisational representatives employed by organisations that did not allow for interviewing of their high potentials (n=12).

The current study suggests that high potentials still have organisational‐traditional careers. High upward mobility, low inter‐organisational mobility and career self‐management emerged as key features of real high‐potential careers.

Implications are spelled out with respect to the “streaming” of different types of employees in the workforce and the importance of expectations management.

Not only are the viewpoints of individuals largely absent in the literature on high‐potential careers, the majority of publications on the subject‐matter are also non‐empirical and take a rather normative stance. The interview study presented in this paper looks into the assumptions of real high‐potential careers from the perspectives of the high potentials themselves as well as those of their organizations, providing empirical data that are interpretive and descriptive rather than normative.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and role of the politico‐administrative institutions on career development in the Greek state employment. It attempts to achieve this by exploring the extent to which such institutions are still fitted within the Napoleonic and Weberian traditions and how these may affect the policy implementation of career progression within one public organisation in Greece.

The study takes an interpretivist inductive perspective and its nature is qualitative with an exploratory and explanatory aim. It adopts a case‐study strategy and data were collected through documentary evidence, structured questionnaires and semi‐structured interviews with key informants.

The emerging career model in the Greek public sector is still embedded within a highly bureaucratic yet clientelistic system. It frequently overlaps with employment due to external institutional influences and though being bureaucratic thus objective at national level it is political manifested thus subjective at organisational level. Objective careers have by no means disappeared while subjective careers are seen as a political vehicle for inter‐organisational advancement.

Despite the in‐depth and rich qualitative analysis of this study further case‐examples are required in similar national and industrial contexts.

The study provides a useful real‐life practical example on the interlocking of career progression and political clientelism in a national context in which politico‐administrative mechanisms have traditionally oiled the wheels of the civil society.

The paper adds to the limited body of scientific and academic debate engaging with public sector management issues and the emerging state career models in European Mediterranean countries. It also contributes to the impartial knowledge on the traditional career mechanisms, underpinned by a relational psychological contract, that have long been an implicit feature of state employment in bureaucratic public sector organisations.

A major function of personnel management is to help individuals and organisations cope with change. Managerial career development provides a practical example of this concern as effective action requires an understanding of how individuals and organisations initiate and are affected by change. These changes can also be considered from the more theoretical viewpoints of organisational mobility. The practical concerns of the personnel manager and the theoretical models of the student of organisational mobility should both benefit from the two‐way flow of insights, and some of these potential links are explored in this article.