Organizational career management in the new career era: scale development and validation

Abstract

Despite the widely recognized change of career management in the new career era, little is known about whether current organizational career management practices differ from previous ones. Using an open-ended survey and literature review, this study develops a scale of organizational career management that shows some features of the new career era (e.g. boundaryless career, protean career, kaleidoscope career, etc.) in China. We conducted two independent studies (N = 320; N = 216) to examine the reliability and validity of the scale. The final organizational career management scale includes four dimensions: boundaryless work, work-life balance policies, training and development and diversification. Further, we tested both the possible bright side and dark side of organizational career management in contemporary organizations using 179 employees over a two-month interval. We found that both a bright side (i.e. higher organizational commitment and less turnover intention) and a dark side (i.e. higher career competency and more likely to leave organizations) exist. This article discusses the contributions, practical complications, limitations and future research directions.