The Career Worlds: A Socio-cognitive approach to objective career success

Career success is traditionally defined as objective or subjective (Boudreau, 2001). Subjective career success is the appreciation that one may make about his/her own career. Objective career success is assessed with economic variables such as hierarchical progression or wages growth. In a complex and changing economy, it is more and more important to understand the determinants of objective career success. Human capital (the stock of skills and knowledge gained through education and experience embodied in the ability to perform labor; Becker, 1993) and cultural capital (symbolic knowledge, skills and education; Bourdieu 1979) are predictors to objective career success. But organizations have changed to cope with the new economy. Organizations tend to be less bureaucratic and less integrated. The "iron cage (Weber, 1994) tends to disappear. Such new economic and organizational environments make careers unfold in new, ambiguous and fuzzy environments. Individuals have to manage by themselves their "boundaryless" careers (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996). Thus, determinants to career success may have changed too. This research project is dedicated to develop a clearer understanding of the determinants to objective career success. It is based on a socio-cognitivist paradigm related to the notions of "sensemaking", frames and framing. The constructs of "career frame of reference" (or "career worlds") is developed. Its influence on objective career success is the key hypothesis and the key results of this work.