Boundaryless career and career success: the impact of emotional and social competencies

Abstract

Even though, over the last two decades, the boundaryless career concept has stimulated a wide theoretical debate, scholars have recently claimed that research on the competencies that are necessary for managing a cross-boundary career is still incomplete. Similarly, the literature on emotional and social competencies has demonstrated how they predict work performance across industries and jobs but has neglected their influence in explaining the individual's mobility across boundaries and their impact on career success. This study aims to fill these gaps by examining the effects of emotional and social competencies on boundaryless career and on objective career success. By analyzing a sample of 142 managers over a period of 8 years, we found evidence that emotional competencies positively influence the propensity of an individual to undertake physical career mobility and that career advancements are related to the possession of social competencies and depend on the adoption of boundaryless career paths. This study also provides a contribution in terms of the evaluation of the emotional and social competencies demonstrated by an individual and of the operationalization of the measurement of boundaryless career paths, considering three facets of the physical mobility construct (organizational, industrial, and geographical boundaries).

Career boundarylessness and career success: A review, integration and guide to future research

“…Studies taking this approach found that among executives, the variety of roles and responsibilities (e.g., contributor, manager, lead strategist) in past working experiences positively predicted their strategic thinking competency (Dragoni, Oh, Vankatwyk, & Tesluk, 2011), and the composite indicator of career boundarylessness (e.g., the number of positions, firms, industries in their career histories) positively predicted executives' pay (Custodio, Ferreira, & Matos, 2013). Similarly, it was found that overall career boundarylessness predicted more promotions among a sample of Italian MBA alumni (Gerli, Bonesso, & Pizzi, 2015), higher levels of knowing-why and knowing-how competencies, career autonomy, career satisfaction and lower levels of career insecurity among American MBA samples (Colakoglu, 2011;Stumpf, 2014), as well as higher levels of career adaptability and competencies among Chinese HR professionals (Guan, Yang, Zhou, Tian, & Eves, 2016).…”

“…Although it was found that the overall career boundarylessness and the number of employer changes positively predicted managers' status and promotions (Cheramie et al, 2007;Gerli et al, 2015), researchers among CEOs and top managers suggested that their promotions were more based on steady progression within the company but not external mobility between firms and industries (Blair-Loy, 1999;Koch et al, 2017). It was also found that in the UK IT industry, job candidates' past inter-organizational mobility and industrial mobility had negative effects on the probability of being shortlisted for permanent positions (King et al, 2005).…”

The relationship between work environment and career success among nurses with a master's or doctoral degree: A national cross‐sectional study

“…In our study, the level of career satisfaction was the highest, which Hierarchical regression showed that the more satisfied the nurses were with their income, the higher the career success rating. Income is an objective evaluation index of career success (Gerli, Bonesso, & Pizzi, 2015). Many researchers have shown that higher incomes for nurses are closely related with higher job satisfaction (Atefi, Lim-Abdullah, Wong, & Mazlom, 2015;Sansoni et al, 2016).…”

The Relationship between Extraversion and Boundaryless Career Attitudes on Millennial Employees

“…This individual competence would make someone be more noticeable than the others. Competence is also needed so an individual can change his / her job (Gerli, Bonesso, & Pizzi, 2015). Poor individual competence can mean low expectation to gain opportunities for a new job that will make it harder for an individual to tend to change organizations easily.…”