From boundaryless to boundary-crossing: Toward a friction-based model of career transitions and job performance

Abstract

The portability of performance for individuals during a career transition is not straightforward. Differences between jobs can create a drag on performance; alternatively, the differences can be an input to creativity and innovation. In this paper, we develop a model of career transitions that centers around the concept of career frictions, which we define as the disrupting differences felt by individuals between a new role and career attributes accumulated through their prior work experience (i.e., knowledge, social relationships, and imprints and identity). We argue that experienced individuals bring their accumulated career attributes into new jobs, and that the relationship between these attributes and their post-transition routine and creative job performance is mediated by career frictions. Furthermore, we theorize that the way in which movers experience career transitions is moderated by cognitive fixedness, which influences how much friction an individual feels, and by socialization practices, which can smooth or leverage friction in order to determine an individual’s post-move routine and creative job performance. Our friction-based theory of career transitions holds that individual characteristics like cognitive fixedness and also contextual conditions like socialization practices affect the portability of performance, or the prospect of generating creative performance.