To move or not to move?. The relationship between career management and preferred career moves

Date04 January 2008
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/01425450810843348
Pages156-175
Published date04 January 2008
AuthorAns De Vos,Koen Dewettinck,Dirk Buyens
Subject MatterHR & organizational behaviour
To move or not to move?
The relationship between career management
and preferred career moves
Ans De Vos and Koen Dewettinck
Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Gent, Belgium, and
Dirk Buyens
Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School & Faculty of Economics and Business
Administration, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore professional employees’ career move preferences
and the impact of both individual and organizational career management. Departing from theoretical
work on the “new career”, different types of career moves employees can make on the internal labor
market are discussed and related to the literature on both organizational and individual career
management.
Design/methodology/approach – To test the hypotheses, a cross-sectional survey of 472
professional employees from one company is presented.
Findings – The preferences for both vertical career moves and moves relating to job enrichment and
temporary moves are significantly affected by individual career management, but not by
organizational career management practices. The preference for making lateral moves could not be
explained by our antecedent variables.
Research limitations/implications Future research should involve a larger sample of
organizations in order to collect empirical data about the extent to which OCM practices impact
career preferences. Our results provide evidence for the relationship between individual career
management and career move preferences and thereby adds to the literature on the “new career”.
Practical implications This study has a number of practical implications that relate to the ways
in which organizations can stimulate different career moves among their employees through the
enhancement of personal career initiatives.
Originality/value – The value of this paper is the contribution it makes to the career literature by
relating to different streams of research, about career mobility on the one hand and individual and
organizational career management on the other.
Keywords Careers, Careerdevelopment, Job mobility
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Practitioners and researchers generally agree that effective career management
policies are important for organizations and for their employees (Baruch, 2004; Baruch
and Peiperl, 2000; Collin and Young, 2001; Eby et al., 2005; Doyle, 2001; Eby et al., 2003;
Sullivan, 1999; Van der Heijden, 2003). Over the past decades, changes in the
socio-economic environment have dramatically changed the concept of a career and
have contributed to the development of new models for career management (Arthur
et al., 1999). New career concepts such as the boundaryless career (Arthur and
Rousseau, 1996) and the protean career (Hall, 1996), have emerged. Central to the notion
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
ER
30,2
156
Received 6 March 2007
Revised 13 August 2007
Accepted 13 August 2007
Employee Relations
Vol. 30 No. 2, 2008
pp. 156-175
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/01425450810843348
of the so-called “new career” is that organizations can no longer offer employees
careers structured along a well-defined and fairly predictable linear upward trajectory
that parallels their increasing tenure within the organization (Arthur et al., 2005; Hall,
2002; Hallier and Butts, 1999). Lateral or horizontal movements, temporary
movements, and movement “in place” by job enrichment are gaining importance as
valid alternatives for the traditional linear career trajectory (Arthur et al., 1999).
Indicators of subjective career success, such as increases in competence, recognition
from peers and learning opportunities hereby become more important than the
traditional indicators of objective career success such as status, income or level of
responsibility (Arthur et al., 2005). Taken together, this new perspective on careers
implies increased prospects for inter-organizational mobility and a broader definition
of intra-organizational mobility (Arthur et al., 1999; Valcour and Tolbert, 2003). Stil l, in
many organizations vertical career paths are the only formal career structures that
exist and in many company cultures moving up the (managerial, technical or
professional) ladder is still valued more highly than horizontal career trajectories.
Previous research has made it clear that a number of individual factors, such as
career ambitions, values, individual career management initiatives, and
socio-demographical characteristics such as age, gender or marital status impa ct
individuals’ career mobility (e.g. Beehr and Juntunen, 1990; Stroh et al., 1992; Valcour
and Tolbert, 2003). However, careers are usually made within organizations and,
therefore, career dynamics are influenced to a considerable degree by organizational
factors. Research has shown that characteristics of the internal labor market structure,
the type of career system, organizational size, structure, and technology shape mobility
patterns and the career development opportunities an individual can have (Garavan
and Coolahan, 1996; Hurley and Sonnenfeld, 1998; Sonnenfeld et al., 1988). What is
missing in this line of research, however, is the extent to which both organizational
career management (OCM) and individual career management (ICM) initiatives affect
the type of career moves that individuals are willing to make. A better understanding
of the role of ICM and OCM processes in impacting employees’ career moves is
important in environments where opportunities for vertical promotion are becoming
scarce and organizations are seeking for alternative ways to offer their employees
perspectives for career development.
This paper reports the findings of a study which examined the impact of:
.employees’ experiences with regard to different bundles of OCM initiatives; and
.employees’ career self-management behavior on their willingness to make both
vertical and non-vertical career movements.
In the career literature there is currently a shortage of research that addresses
employees’ willingness to make diverse types of internal career moves in addition to
the traditional vertical career moves and that relates career moves to both individual
and organizational career management. This study fills this gap by examining the type
of career moves employees are willing to make on the internal labor market and by
investigating the extent to which these preferences can be explained by both ICM and
OCM factors. By exploring these relationships, this paper makes a contribution to the
literature on career management and on career mobility. First, as far as we are aware,
this study is one of the first to operationalize employees’ preferences regarding career
mobility on the internal labor market in line with the notion of the new career. By
To move or not
to move?
157

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