Organizational Careers

An organizational career is located within an organization and consists of the positions held by an employee within its structure. The management of organizational careers has been well studied. Career management strategies and approaches had originally assumed that employees wanted not only to remain in their organization but to progress upward in its hierarchy. However, more recent research has noted that this was not true for all individuals; some people were content to remain at a certain level and others were open to moving between organizations. Thus, a view of careers needs to allow for a variety of career motivations and include the possibility of frequent movement across organizations. In this chapter, the authors discuss different patterns and orientations of organizational careers. They also discuss the choice of professions and work experiences of Asian women in the past and the career environments they are likely to experience in the future.