Attitudes towards career: an explicative typology of Evaluative dispositions for employee[Les attitudes à l’égard de la carrière : une typologie explicative des dispositions évaluatives des salariés]

Professional mobility is an important issue for managers to increase companies' adaptation to their environment. There has been a lot of research on this subject, but the conceptual tools have been subject to criticism. In this paper, we propose the concept of attitude towards a career. We define it as an evaluating disposition for employees that is favorable (or unfavourable) to a type of professional project and trajectory, including occupational mobility and stability. An employees attitude towards his/her career is developed through the cognitive and emotive evaluation activity about their past experiences and their life project, which includes information about the content of their work that is used to build their identity. We justify this concept by treating information collected in three social sector entities. Four types of career attitudes are deduced: independence, authenticity, honorability and stability. We also explain this typology by identifying three determining factors: employment and work conditions, professional project and recognition. Finally, we propose several sequences of attitudes towards a career, exceeding the limits of the Super career stage model.