This paper aims to move the research field on sustainable careers forward by building conceptual clarity about what a sustainable career means and delineating what distinguishes sustainable from non-sustainable careers, thereby providing key indicators of a sustainable career. Moreover, we approach sustainable careers from a systemic and dynamic perspective and address influential factors associated with stakeholders situated in multiple contexts and evolving over time. We elaborate on core theoretical frameworks useful for enhancing our understanding of what makes careers sustainable and present three key dimensions that can help to analyze and study sustainable careers: person, context, and time. Finally, we propose a research agenda that we hope will spur scholars to examine the topic in more detail in future empirical work.

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Orientation: This article addresses the interplay between individual agency and contextual factors in contemporary career development processes. In light of the prominence of the former in the contemporary scholarly debate, we present a case for a more comprehensive approach by heeding the latter as well. Research purpose:The main aim of this article was to provide a definition and conceptualisation of career shocks, as well as an agenda for future research on this topic.Motivation for the study: Most of the contemporary careers literature has overemphasised the role of individual agency in career development. While certainly important, we argue that we also need to address the role of context -in this case, career shocks -in order to gain a fuller appreciation of career development processes. Main conclusions and implications:We provide a definition of career shocks based on the existing literature related to chance events and turnover. In addition, we provide an overview of attributes of career shocks, potentially valuable theoretical perspectives and key issues for future research.Contribution: This article brings together several existing streams of literature related to career shocks and provides an integrative definition and conceptualisation. We hope that this will ignite future research on an important but often overlooked topic.

This study aimed to investigate whether career competencies could enhance an employees subjective career success in terms of perceived employability and work-home balance via job crafting behaviors. Based on Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Theory, we examined a potential motivational process in which career competencies, as a personal resource, would enhance career success through expansive job crafting. The results showed that job crafting mediated the positive relationship between career competencies and both internal and external perceived employability. In addition, job crafting mediated the positive relationship between career competencies and work-home enrichment. We expected a negative association between job crafting and work-home interference, yet our results indicated that career competencies are indirectly and positively related to work-home interference via job crafting. With our findings, we add to JD-R Theory by (1) showing that career competencies may be considered a personal resource, (2) empirically examining the role of job crafting in motivational processes, and (3) showing that enhanced subjective career success can be an outcome of motivational processes. Organisations may use these findings to implement developmental HR practices aimed at increasing career competencies and job crafting.

Purpose Virtually all contemporary scientific papers studying careers emphasize its changing nature. Indeed, careers have been changing during recent decades, for example becoming more complex and unpredictable. Furthermore, hallmarks of the new career – such as individual agency – are clearly increasing in importance in today’s labor market. This led the authors to ask the question of whether these changes are actually visible in the topics that career scholars research. In other words, the purpose of this paper is to discover the trending topics in careers. Design/methodology/approach To achieve this goal, the authors analyzed all published papers from four core career journals (i.e. Career Development International, Career Development Quarterly, Journal of Career Assessment, and Journal of Career Development) between 2012 and 2016. Using a five-step procedure involving three researchers, the authors formulated the 16 most trending topics. Findings Some traditional career topics are still quite popular today (e.g. career success as the #1 trending topic), whereas other topics have emerged during recent years (e.g. employability as the #3 trending topic). In addition, some topics that are closely related to career research – such as unemployment and job search – surprisingly turned out not to be a trending topic. Originality/value In reviewing all published papers in CDI, CDQ, JCA, and JCD between 2012 and 2016, the authors provide a unique overview of currently trending topics, and the authors compare this to the overall discourse on careers. In addition, the authors formulate key questions for future research.

This study investigated the role of career competencies as a mediator in the Job DemandsResources model. Structural equation modeling with data from 305 young employed persons aged 16-30 years showed that career competencies are positively related to job resources and work engagement, but not to job demands and emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, career competencies had a partially mediating effect on the relationship between job resources and work engagement, and job resources had a partially mediating effect on the relationship between career competencies and work engagement. These findings suggest that career competencies may act in a similar way as personal resources in fostering work engagement. Our results underline the importance of combining research on job design and career development, and suggest that career competencies may have a role in stimulating employee wellbeing. Career counselors and HR programs may benefit from this insight by simultaneously increasing job resources and career competencies to increase employee wellbeing.

In this paper, we provoke the strong focus on personal agency in employability research. We counter three dominant assumptions in the literature, namely, (a) that employability is an individual asset, (b) that employability is owned by the individual, and (c) that employability leads to positive outcomes. A key observation is that the three dominant theories that are being used in employability studies, namely, human capital theory, conservation of resources theory, and social exchange theory, also question these core agency assumptions that form the basis of those studies. Based on these theories, we identify three blind spots in employability research: Employability is (a) contextual, (b) relational, and (3) polarising. Taken together, we make the case that the agency perspective overlooks a potential dark side of employability: The winner takes it all, the loser has to fall. We outline a future research agenda on this potential dark side of employability.

Despite the established view that investing in developing one's career competencies would lead to career success and employability, little is known about the role of career shocks (i.e., positive and negative unexpected career-related events) in this relationship. To examine the role of career shocks in the relationship between career competencies, career success and employability, we analyzed data from 704 Dutch young professionals (21-35 years). Results showed that young professionals who have developed high levels of career competencies reported higher levels of perceived employability. The relationship between career competencies and perceived employability was partially mediated by subjective career success (i.e., career satisfaction). Negative career shocks undermined the mediated relationship between career competencies and perceived employability, via early career success, whereas positive career shocks strengthened this relationship. This study contributes to the literature on employability by demonstrating that career shocks play an important role in young professionals' early career development in tandem with career competencies and career success.