The Traditional and Modern Views of Careers

Posted on May 06, 2024 by Martin Hahn, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

The traditional view of a career crystallized during the era of prosperity in the decades following the end of World War II. As the industrialized world experienced unprecedented economic growth, demand for human capital soared, and individuals had an abundance of job opportunities. Working under a relational psychological contract, wherein there was a presumption of mutual loyalty between the employer and employee, a career in the latter half of the 20th century was viewed as a relatively stable and consistent undertaking. Put simplistically, you took a job with a solid, respected employer, kept your “nose to the grindstone” and your mouth shut, enjoyed regular promotions that allowed for linear, upward advancement within the organization, and retired with a nice pension when you reached the age of 65. This idealized vision of a traditional “organizational career,” in which one expected advancement and stability within one’s career, became an anachronism in the 1980s as large-scale corporations began shedding human resources in mass numbers as a means to increase competitiveness in a global economy. Beginning in the 1980s and accelerating in succeeding decades, career paths within organizations became more unstructured and unpredictable because of the increasing likelihood that jobs would be eliminated, outsourced, or substantially changed to ensure that organizations could move in different strategic directions if necessary.

Career Contexts and Stages

Even with the uncertainty in employment and careers over the past four decades, the theme of advancement and stability remains a central theme within many definitions of a career. Such definitions are limiting because they imply that a person is pursuing a career only if he or she exhibits steady or rapid advancement in status, money, and the like, essentially with just one or two employers or within a particular industry.

In addition, another aspect of this theme revolves around the career as a source of stability within a single occupational field or closely connected fields. In this context, we often hear of the “career accountant” or “career police officer,” or we hear of a career “lifer” with a particular organization. Similarly, a person’s pursuit of closely connected jobs (teacher, guidance counselor, dean of students) is often thought to represent a career, whereas a sequence of apparently unrelated jobs (novelist, politician, advertising copywriter) violates a neat consistency of job content and would not necessarily constitute a career.

Incorporating stability into the meaning of a career is also limiting, especially in today’s world in which organizational and occupational mobility are likely to be the norm rather than the exception.

Another traditional theme places an emphasis on the career as a profession. A profession is typically distinguished from an “ordinary” occupation based on the belief that a profession represents a more desirable career choice and involves work that is of high economic status, allows for a substantial degree of autonomy, and can provide an enhanced level of compensation. As examples, professionals such as doctors and lawyers are thought to have careers, whereas clerks and machinists typically are not. This traditional emphasis on the career as a profession is also restrictive, because it suggests that one must achieve a certain occupational or social status for one’s work activities to constitute a career.
A career can also be seen as a calling, whereby one primarily works for the fulfillment that the job or profession brings into one’s life. In this sense, a person is “called” to a career based on a strong attraction to (and passion for) particular work, such that the nature of the work fulfills personal values and satisfies the person’s “prosocial” need to make the world a better place. Occupations typically associated with a calling are those where there is a helping or nurturing component to the work, although any type of a profession or job could be seen as based on a calling. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to think that all careers are based on a calling because people have many different motives for entering a career field.

Modern Perspectives on Careers: The Protean and Boundaryless
Themes

The combined effects over the past few decades of the mass downsizings of numbers of workers, the resultant loss of job security, and the well-documented decline in loyalty between employers and employees have wreaked havoc on traditional organizational careers where the expectation of job stability, security, and advancement had been the norm.

In addition, ongoing market pressures for organizations to be flexible in the deployment of human resources in order to stay competitive creates an environment where the psychological contract between employers and employees will remain primarily transactional, where a long-term linear career within a single organization will continue to be the exception rather than the rule, and where many workers are employed in nonpermanent, short-term alternative work arrangements. In organizations that adopt dominant transactional orientations and pursue a workforce based on alternative and contractual employment relationships, their employees are presented with opportunities to remain employable, but they must develop new, more portable skills that hopefully allow for continued professional development.

In reaction to this new world of work, the nature of careers has changed, resulting in new and nontraditional ways of looking at careers and career management. These new conceptualizations recognize the need for individuals to be proactive in managing their career, to view their career in broader terms than their current organization, and to be adaptable as they navigate the uncertainties that exist not only in the general business environment but within particular companies as well.

Protean and Boundryless Careers

In his book Careers in Organizations, Douglas T. Hall described the protean career as managed by the individual rather than the organization, and guided by the search for self-fulfillment. Named after the mythological Proteus, the Greek god who could change his shape at will, the protean career has been characterized as self-directed, flexible, adaptable, versatile, and initiated by the individual to achieve psychological success; that is, success in reaching goals that are personally meaningful to the individual. Hall and his colleagues have elaborated on the protean career and explored the implications of protean careers for individuals and organizations.

Most of the recent research has focused on a protean career orientation (PCO), which is an employee’s disposition or preference to enact a protean career or a career designed to achieve subjectively defined success through autonomous career management. An employee’s PCO is an attitude or preference that guides the employee’s behavior in two

respects. First, employees who adopt a PCO prefer to self-direct their career rather than depend on others to direct their career for them. Individuals with a strong PCO take responsibility for managing their career and take the initiative in exploring career options and making career decisions. Second, employees who adopt a PCO are values-driven in that they make career decisions to meet their personally meaningful values and goals, in contrast to striving to achieve values and goals imposed upon them by other people, organizations, or society.

Moreover, the personal values and goals that protean-oriented careerists often attempt to achieve are not exclusively tied to their job but rather are relevant to the individual’s “whole life space” or “life’s work,” a “whole-life perspective” in which a career decision is made with an awareness of the impact of the decision on other parts of life. In short, a protean perspective on careers emphasizes the active role of employees in defining what is personally meaningful to them in their career and life, and in taking the initiative to manage their career to achieve these important values.

Boundaryless Career

Michael Arthur and his colleagues introduced the boundaryless career concept in the 1990s. Unlike a traditional organizational career, a boundaryless career, or more accurately a boundary-crossing career, is detached from a single employment setting and is not bound by traditional organizational career paths and expectations. In other words, employees who pursue boundaryless careers go beyond the boundaries of their current organization for employment opportunities, social contacts, indeed their very identity. And if they stay in their current employment setting for a period of time, their actions may depart from the organization’s traditional norms and expectations

A boundaryless career is thought to have six different elements or meanings, each of which, in its own way, involves “nontraditional” boundary-crossing.

1. Moving frequently between employers is the most prevalent way of characterizing

a boundaryless career because the boundary-crossing (from one organization to another) is an obvious departure from the “traditional” practice of staying with a single employer for an extended period of time.

2. Drawing validation from outside the organization is another form of nontraditional boundary-crossing because employees derive their identity primarily from their profession (e.g., IT, marketing, consulting) rather than from their current employer.

3. Sustaining the career through external networks of relationships involves nontraditional boundary-crossing in the sense that individuals rely on social relationships outside the organization (in their profession, other employers, neighbors, and friends) rather than relying exclusively on networks or sources of information in their current

organization, such as their manager or mentor.

4. Departing from traditional mobility expectations in one’s current organization, such as opting for a lateral move (nontraditional boundary-crossing) rather than a promotion.

5. Rejecting career opportunities for family or personal reasons, a form of nontraditional boundary-crossing because family or personal considerations cross boundaries to influence a career-related decision.

6. Perceiving that one’s career is without boundaries and is independent of traditional organizational career arrangements.

The emergence of boundaryless careers is due to changes in the worldwide economy (increased global competition and advances in technology) that have produced significant alterations in organizational practices, such as acquisitions, reorganizations, reductions in force, and the widespread establishment of alternative work arrangements, all within the context of an increasingly transactional psychological contract with employees.

If these forces increase the likelihood that employees move from one organization to another (voluntarily or involuntarily), it is understandable why many employees derive their work identity from their profession or occupation rather than from their current organization, and why they develop networks of relationships that extend beyond the border of their current employer.

Arthur and his colleagues also propose that pursuing a boundaryless career requires the development of three career competencies or strategies that are different from those used in a traditional career in that they necessitate looking outside the organization. Knowing why competencies relate to self-awareness of motives and goals and the development of a work identity (often associated with a profession not a particular organization, as noted above) that guide career decisions. Knowing-how competencies reflect the human capital skills, knowledge, and experiences employees accumulate that are portable in the sense that they can be transferred from one employment setting to another. Knowing-whom competencies are the networks of personal relationships (often outside the current organization) that provide information, guidance, and support in navigating one’s career.

With these career competencies, the individual psychologically or physically crosses the boundary from one organization to another by pursuing job contacts or leads, expanding knowledge and skills, and establishing connections with a wide network of influential people outside the employing organization.