Career Pandemonium:

Realigning organizations and individuals

Kenneth R. Brousseau, Michael J. Driver, Kristina Eneroth, and Rikard Larsson
This paper is a pre-publication draft of an article later published in the Academy of Management Executive,
1996, Vol. 10, No. 4.

Widespread internal changes in organizations are wreaking havoc on traditional careers. Many people are
experiencing major difficulties in their attempts to adapt to the uncertainties of career life. Observing these
difficulties, writers on careers have begun to advise individuals to take personal control over their careers
by becoming more versatile in their skills, accepting of change, and proactive in shaping their life at work.
Increasingly, organizations are seen as freed from the responsibility of managing careers in their efforts to
remain flexible and ready to shift with environmental changes. However, both individuals and
organizations have needs for stability and for change. Organizations are better advised to adopt a
pluralistic approach to career management that embraces different definitions of career success. In so
doing, organizations will be better able to support the diverse needs of their employees and,
simultaneously, enable the organization to reward and maintain diverse competencies in their workforces.

Change requires change. Accordingly, organizations today are making abundant changes internally to cope
with a highly turbulent external environment. With frequent re-organizing, down-sizing, right-sizing, de-
layering, flattening the pyramid, teaming and out-sourcing among the many changes that are taking place in
organizations, careers and career opportunities are being altered profoundly. In many respects, the state of
careers these days is one of pandemonium resulting from progressive destabilization of relationships
between people and organizations.
Organizational writers have begun to address the consequences on careers of the current changes in the
structure and distribution of work in organizations. For instance, several leading business journals recently
have declared the job itself, as a vehicle for packaging work, to be on the endangered species list.
Moreover, they are writing, the constant re-organizations and down-sizings have fundamentally ruptured
the informal employment covenant between employer and employee. And, they observe, in a de-layered
organization "getting ahead" in one's career can no longer mean ascending a corporate ladder.
Various remedies are being offered to deal with the resulting havoc in careers. Typically, the
recommendations call for a shift to a new, more change-oriented definition of careers and philosophy of
career management. It is being said that responsibility for career development must now lie with the
individual, not the organization. Individuals should prepare themselves for a career involving frequent
changes in employers and in the very nature of the work that one performs. People need to be more flexible
and versatile in their skills and knowledge.
In such a world of flux and change, the ideal employee increasingly is portrayed as one who is willing to go
anywhere, at anytime, and at a moment's notice, to do anything. One must not cling to a job, organization,
or type of work. Those who still think of getting ahead in terms of moving up, and those who feel
commitment to a particular function or type of work, must get in tune with the times and learn to adapt and
to let go.
In terms of present day reality in organizations, such recommendations have real merit. However, we wish
to argue that this reality can be managed from a different perspective. Organizations even now need some
degree of stability and commitment and so do individuals. Organizations need growth and, consequently,
they need people who itch to drive and build the organization. And, yes, organizations need individuals
who are highly versatile and adaptive, just as there are people who thrive on variety and change.
Organizations have diverse needs, and so do people.
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Organizations change and they need to be able to adapt. However, in our view, the advisable course of
action is not merely to abandon past, static and narrow, concepts about careers in favor of new, more
change oriented career concepts that are equally narrow. That is, we argue against abandoning one
monolithic concept for another monolithic concept. In a world where change is the norm, this repeated
cycle of "out-with-the-old-and-in-with-the-new," is likely to increase rather than reduce pandemonium.
Instead, we suggest that a more powerful strategy is to incorporate older, more static career concepts along
with newer, more dynamic career concepts in a pluralistic strategy for dealing with careers and
organizational arrangements. We believe such a pluralistic framework will serve both as a means for
coping with change and the diverse needs of organizations and people, and, thereby, as a tool for realigning
individuals and organizations.

The End of the Job

In a recent Fortune magazine article, Bridges asserts that the concept of the job is an artifact of the
industrial era that is now becoming obsolete:
The reality we face is much more troubling, for what is disappearing is not just a certain number of jobs or
jobs in certain industries or jobs in some part of the country or even jobs in America as a whole. What is
disappearing is the very thing itself: the job (emphasis added).
The practice of organizing work into fixed sets of tasks that are assigned to specific people or groups of
people on a more or less permanent basis, that is jobs, is now being transformed and replaced by the
practice of organizing work into clusters of functions or general fields without specific, defined tasks or
fixed duties.
Commenting on the same phenomenon, Savage describes "the rigor mortis of the industrial era" where the
division of work and managerial supervision represented "structured distrust." As the industrial era is
replaced by the knowledge era, he predicts, both jobs and managers will be gone.
If accurate, these writers' predictions have broad-reaching implications for the structure of careers in the
near future.

The Broken Covenant Between Employer and Employees

According to Waterman, Waterman, and Collard, in previous decades there has existed an unspoken
covenant between employer and employee that basically assured continued employment in exchange for
performance and loyalty. Although these authors may have over-stated the case for there having been much
of a covenant during large portions of the twentieth century, it certainly is clear that downsizings, head-
count reductions, and large-scale layoffs have become so commonplace, even in the absence of major
business fluctuations, that whatever semblance of a covenant there may have been has effectively been
nullified. Employees can count on no bond with their employers beyond an immediate paycheck.

Decline of Hierarchy
Pursuing a traditional management career up an organizational hierarchy has become very difficult these
days, mainly because in many organizations there is no longer much hierarchy to climb. Middle
management layers have been sliced wholesale right out of the organization effectively eliminating the
career ladder and replacing it with a stepping stool.
Increasingly, organizations are building high involvement work teams which internally handle
coordination, scheduling, and work distribution functions without reliance on fixed supervisory positions.
Within these teams, work often is distributed as per the demands of the particular situations that the teams
face. Team members are expected to handle different kinds of tasks at different times and to share any
expertise that they may have. The ideal team member is one who has many diverse skills and who can
easily work without direct supervision.
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In such teams, there is little room for individuals who wish mainly to direct the activities of others. Nor do
these teams provide a friendly environment for those who wish to specialize in one function or specialized
set of activities. Consequently, there are no real jobs in the traditional sense and no stepping stones to more
senior positions.

Generation X and Changing Workforce Values

Writing from a different perspective, other authors point out that whatever the covenant may or may not
have been between employer and employee in the past, the new generation now entering the workforce has
values that do not favor organizational commitment. For instance, a recent Fortune article on the so-called
Generation X points out that the current group of twenty-something people now entering the workforce
appears not to have any particular interest in climbing a corporate ladder. Nor do they seem to want to
spend their careers in one type of work or job. Instead they appear to want to explore and do different kinds
of work in order to learn about themselves and to express their individual values.
This makes Generation X a very difficult generation to manage. Employers can't bribe them with fancy
titles; they don't care. They are unimpressed with the need to do specific tasks in specific ways merely
because a boss wishes them to. To capture their interest, work must have "meaning." And, because of their
insistence on individual expression, what has meaning for one may not have meaning for another. Thus, it
is argued, organizations will have to adopt creative or at least unorthodox methods of helping Generation
Xers find meaning in work if the organizations are to benefit from the energy and efforts of the new
generation.

Cross Currents and Flux

The picture that emerges here is one of shifting sands and cross currents. It is a picture in which older,
bewildered and disenfranchised workers search for a stable place to complete their careers in the midst of
constant change, in which others find their earlier successes in ascending a career ladder cut short by a free-
fall into an inter-disciplinary, self-managing team environment, and in which younger workers search for
meaning in a world lacking in commitment to anything beyond survival from one quarter to another. The
picture is one of pandemonium insofar as careers are concerned.

Monolithic Antidotes to Career Pandemonium

At first glance, a reasonable organizational strategy for remaining nimble and agile is to eliminate virtually
all vestiges of structure, along with jobs, functional departments and established career tracks. Therefore,
when the environment changes, there is nothing formal in the organization that needs to be changed. Some
organizations have already departed on this strategy, such as Ideo, a large Palo Alto, California, industrial
design firm, where reportedly no one has a title or boss.
However, to assure success in a fully de-jobbed organization, it becomes critical to staff the organization
with resilient and versatile employees. For instance, in the case of Ideo, the firm's head of marketing claims
that hiring the right people is the essential key to success. "If you hire the right people - if you got the right
fit - then everything will take care of itself." says Tom Kelly the firm's head of marketing.
Making the shift from a post-industrial, quasi-bureaucratic organization to a highly organic and flexible
organization represents a monolithic solution to the flux and pandemonium of the present. By this, we
mean that this solution essentially requires abandoning one narrow definition of career success (e.g.,
making it to the top of the ladder) for another definition, better suited for a changing world, but just as
narrow in its insistence upon change as the fundamental principle of career success.
From a career standpoint, this means discarding established career concepts in favor of newer and very
different career concepts. No longer will careers be linear, structured, or stable. Careers will involve
frequent change. Career management in the de-jobbed, de-structured organization will extend little beyond
assuring recruitment of appropriately adaptive employees.
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If organizations are to adopt this monolithic, change-oriented view of careers, then it only makes sense that
individuals trade in their old, linear, or stable visions of career success for a newer, more dynamic
conceptualization of career. Thus, to survive and thrive in the future, people must change. One must be
agile and quick, able to ride the tides of shifting career paths. One must prepare to fend for oneself, relying
on nobody and nothing but one's own capabilities. The more diverse one's capabilities, the better prepared
one will be to move quickly and surely as old opportunities fade and new ones arise. As Hirsch puts it,
individuals must "pack their own parachutes" and become "free agents" on their own.
Just as de-structuring is recommended as the monolithic solution to a shifting external environment, the
monolithic career solution is to encourage the development of what Waterman et al. call a "career resilient
workforce".
In other words, [individuals] should forget about clinging desperately to one job, one company, or one
career path. What matters now is having the right competitive skills required to find work when we need it,
wherever we can find it.
Instead of people dedicated to a particular discipline, function, job, or career path, the career resilient
workforce would be composed of employees who not only are dedicated to the idea of continuous learning
but also stand ready to reinvent themselves to keep pace with change; who take responsibility for their own
career management and, last but not least, who are committed to the company's success.
In this scenario, if organizations shoulder any responsibility for careers beyond recruitment, it may be to
help employees to regularly assess their skills, interest, and values so that they can figure out for
themselves what kind of work experiences to seek.
The common denominator in the fore-going monolithic organizational and individual strategies for dealing
with the present chaos in careers is that traditional concepts about careers and traditional career-related
human resource management practices be replaced by much more change-oriented and career self-
management-oriented concepts and practices.
For these strategies to work on any large scale for organizations and for the workforce, however, there are a
number of difficult requirements and conditions that would need to be satisfied.
First, there would need to be sufficient people in the workforce who in terms of skills and motives would
be capable of, and emotionally suited to, careers of constant change and continuous learning. By
"emotionally suited" to careers of constant change, we mean people who have very high levels of tolerance
for uncertainty and who generally feel confident of their ability to handle whatever challenges are thrown
their way. If a majority of the working population must fit this description, it is not at all clear that this
requirement can be met, especially in the near future. In the short term, the change-oriented solution is
liable merely to replace one group of career-winners with another. That is, people who prefer change and
whose skill sets are quite diverse are likely to become the new winners. In the past where careers were
more linear and stable, these are the people who are likely to have felt limited and stultified in their careers.
People who prefer stability and/or linear progress in their careers and who in the past have best fit the
available opportunities are liable to become the new losers, as pandemonium is transferred from one group
to another.
Second, there is the matter of expertise. Some work requires lengthy and highly specialized training. In a
knowledge and information-based economy, the skills and knowledge of people with special expertise
could replace physical and financial capital as the essential assets of the organization. In an organization
where everyone is expected to do anything and to be ready for change at a moment's notice, there is
unlikely to be much incentive or opportunity to invest in the development of highly sophisticated and
technical skills. The "jack of all trades" may be essential in some work situations, but not sufficiently
skilled or knowledgeable in many others.
Third, if employees are to be discouraged from staking any significant portion of their careers with any one
organization, who will care enough to drive organizations forward toward growth and prosperity? With no
special ties to, or identity with the organization, employees may not even have enough of an emotional
stake in long-term organizational outcomes to feel alienated from their employers. Indifference and
opportunistic apathy could become widespread.
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Finally, the monolithic solution assumes that either there will be little need for different organizational
solutions in the future or that implementing new solutions when needed can be accomplished with little
cost to individuals or organizations. While the newly heralded change-oriented approach is certainly more
suited for future turbulence than stability, there still are likely to be periods when relevant parts of the
environment and organizations become relatively stable. Being limited to one approach would significantly
constrain the ability of organizations to dynamically interact with not only different types of individuals but
also the ebbs and flows of change in specific areas of the environment.

A Pluralistic Approach
Instead of shifting wholesale from structure and stability to free-form and change-friendly organizational
arrangements and career practices, we suggest that both organizations and the workforce as a whole might
benefit more from a pluralistic approach that combines varied amounts and types of organizational
structure with an array of quite different career experience opportunities.
In this schema, organizations would retain sufficient structure to maintain certain core competencies and
organizational leadership, while utilizing more dynamic and less structured arrangements to meet the
demands of external change and flux.
This pluralistic approach to organization design would naturally provide opportunities for diverse career
experiences. This pluralistic strategy would minimize the likelihood of pleasing one group of employees
while alienating another, and would provide the basis for maintaining a diverse workforce with which to
meet changing business conditions more effectively.

A Pluralistic Career Concept Framework

Implied in our preceding comments is the notion that careers can be defined pluralistically, with multiple as
opposed to singular concepts. A singular definition would be to define a career as a steady progression
toward positions of increasing authority and responsibility, and to measure career success in terms of
position in an organizational hierarchy. In the past, this singular definition implicitly seems to have defined
most aspects of career management and development practices in many, if not most, organizations - at least
in the U.S.
However, a pluralistic definitional framework would specify explicitly that there exist markedly different
ways of defining career success and, consequently, markedly different approaches to career management
and development in organizations. In this framework, the preceding, promotion-based definition would be
considered to be only one of several ways of defining the structure of a career. Other very different
concepts would also be accepted as valid and legitimate definitions of career success.
In our work, we have found it very useful to draw upon a multiple career concept model that identifies four,
fundamentally different patterns of career experience. The four patterns - or career concepts - basically
differ in terms of direction and frequency of movement within and across different kinds of work over time.
The four concepts can be combined in various ways to form "hybrid concepts" that in turn can be used to
describe many different patterns of career experience. In addition, our work with these concepts indicates
that distinctly different sets of motives underlie each of the four concepts. That is, individuals who differ in
their endorsement of particular career concepts as descriptive of the ideal career also differ predictably in
their underlying work and career-related motives. We describe the four basic concepts and their associated
motives as follows (see Appendix for details regarding conceptual and research bases of the framework).
Table 1 presents a summary of the concepts and key associated motives.

The Linear Career Concept

The Linear concept is the familiar, upward movement view of career success. The ideal Linear career
consists of a progressive series of steps upward in a hierarchy to positions of ever-increasing authority and
responsibility. The higher one moves, the better is the career as seen from this perspective. In our
experience, people who see the ideal career in Linear terms often find it difficult to imagine any other
definition of success. In the U.S., in particular, the Linear concept seems traditionally to have an edge over
other views of success. It seems deeply rooted in the cultural emphasis American society places on upward
mobility, as reflected in rags-to-riches, Horatio Alger-type stories.
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We find that people with strong Linear career concepts often bring numerous motives to their careers. Chief
among these motives are power and achievement. Basically, Linears are motivated by opportunities to
make important things happen.

The Expert Career Concept

The Expert career concept differs sharply from the Linear concept. From the Expert perspective, the best
career is one involving lifelong commitment to some occupational field or specialty.
Once the career choice has been made, the individual focuses on further developing and refining his or her
knowledge and skills within that specialty. If there is upward movement, it occurs roughly within a three-
level progression that equates basically to apprentice, journeyman, master. This probably reflects the
origins of the Expert concept in the medieval, guild structure of occupations. Old as it may be, there are
many people who view the Expert career concept as descriptive of their ideal career.

Table 1
Four Career Concepts
Key Features and Motives

Linear Expert Spiral Transitory

Direction of movement Upward Little Lateral Lateral

movement

Duration of stay in one Variable Life 7-10 years 3-5 years

field

Key motives Power Expertise Personal Variety

Achievement Security growth Independence
Creativity



People with strong Expert career concepts seem to know clearly what it is that they desire most in their
careers: expertise or technical competence, and security or stability. Getting ahead in the Expert framework
means becoming more and more proficient in one's specialty. For people with strong Expert career
concepts, the nature of the work they perform is an integral part of their self-identity. Viewed from this
perspective, one can see that a quick, Linear-type trip up the corporate ladder can be a fundamentally self-
alienating experience for an individual with a strong Expert career concept and motive set.

The Spiral Career Concept

Despite their obvious differences, both the Linear and the Expert career concepts describe rather traditional
perspectives on career success. The Spiral concept, however, describes a distinctly less traditional pattern.
Viewed from the perspective of the Spiral career concept, the best career is one in which a person makes
periodic major moves across occupational areas, specialties, or disciplines. Ideally, these moves come
every seven to ten years. The Spiral career concept captures, in career terms, the essence of the "seven-year
itch." A seven-year span seems to permit individuals sufficient time to develop in-depth competence - if not
full mastery - in many fields before moving on to new fields.
The ideal move from a purely Spiral point of view is from one area (e.g., engineering or research) into an
allied area (e.g., product development). The key here is that the new field draws upon knowledge and skills
developed in the old field, and at the same time throws open the door to the development of an entirely new
set of knowledge and skills.
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Like their Linear counterparts, Spirals seem to bring numerous motives to their careers. However, chief on
their lists of motives are personal development (broadening of one's skill sets) and creativity.

The Transitory Career Concept

Of the four concepts, the Transitory career concept is the least traditional. As a pattern, it can be described
as one of consistent inconsistency. From the Transitory perspective, the ideal career is one in which a
person moves every three to five years from one field or job to a very different or, preferably, a wholly
unrelated field or job.
People who intentionally pursue Transitory careers often do not think of themselves as actually having
careers. From their vantage point, they merely are treating themselves to a fascinating smorgasbord of work
experiences. Yet, we view the Transitory concept as describing a distinct career pattern. People with a
strong Transitory career concept are similar to their Expert counterparts in one way only: they also have
very clear ideas about what it is they are looking for in a career, albeit the very opposite, namely variety
and independence. In fact, we suspect that the old adage, "variety is the spice of life" was coined centuries
ago by someone with a Transitory career orientation.

Shifting Alignment of Individuals and Organizations

Viewed from the perspective of the preceding career concepts, the present career pandemonium can be seen
as produced by a shift in the fit between organizational cultures and career concepts traditionally supported
by organizations in the past in favor of other career concepts that typically have not been supported well.
Compared to today, organizations in the past have adapted to the relatively stable external environments
they faced with mechanistic structures and efficient bureaucracies. In these organizational circumstances,
employees with Expert and Linear career concepts have had the advantage, insofar as personally rewarding
careers are concerned. Those with Expert concepts have benefited from the stability of organizational
arrangements and specialty job classifications in particular. Employees with Linear concepts could look
forward to real opportunities for upward advancement, at least within their special functions. All that was
needed to help things along was a bit of organizational growth to open up more jobs at higher levels of the
organization.
These stable and highly structured organizational environments were decidedly less friendly to employees
with Spiral and Transitory career concepts. Things just didn't change enough. Boundaries between jobs and
departments were too rigid. People whose resumes betrayed lots of change were likely to be viewed warily
as unreliable or flaky. Ten years and more ago, when introducing these four career concepts in
organizations, we often found our description of the Spiral concept greeted with some amusement, and our
description of the Transitory concept greeted with comments such as, "We sure don't want anyone like that
around here!"
Now things have shifted. As organizations internally have become more turbulent and structures have
become more organic, people with Spiral and Transitory career concepts are much more at home and much
more welcome. Organizations want people who are prepared to move and adapt flexibly to changing
circumstances. People with Linear and Expert career concepts, on the other hand, now face much less
friendly environments. Experts cannot count on much job security, and can count even less on having a
stable job description or role to play, let alone having opportunities to refine their specialized skills. Linears
have little prospect of moving up when the ladder is so short. To make matters even worse for the Linears,
the demographic bulge of the mid-career Baby Boomers is making competition exceptionally intense for
the dwindling number of higher level positions on ever-shortening corporate ladders.
And, so the pendulum swings, from one extreme to another. The old career winners become the new career
losers, as the old losers become the new winners. But, one could argue, this is the way it always has been in
a world where "survival of the fittest" has been the supreme law.
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In Favor of Career Pluralism

From a career management standpoint, to take comfort in the law of survival may not serve well either the
interests of organizations or their employees. For organizations to let Linears and Experts figuratively stew
in their juices, turn into deadwood, or pack their own parachutes, while those same organizations smile
upon Spirals and Transitories as the new winners may be akin to allowing the proverbial baby to be thrown
out with the bath water.
Rather than argue that the working population en masse adopt radically new perspectives on careers or
suffer the consequences of not doing so, the position we take in this paper is that organizations ought to
support pluralistic concepts of careers. This would mean breaking with the past in which organizations
appear to have based their career management practices and policies on either one or another singular or
"monolithic" concept of career (in the U.S., usually but not always the Linear concept), or alternatively on a
random set of notions about careers with no particular theme at all.
Fundamentally, we argue that in supporting pluralistic careers, organizations stand to gain the advantage of
developing and maintaining within their workforces diverse sets of complimentary skills and capabilities
that, in turn, provide distinct competitive and survival advantages in a fast-moving, unpredictable, and
largely unforgiving world.
Individuals who differ in their career concepts and motives do not merely differ; they clearly complement
each other as well. To see what we mean, consider the behavioral competencies that are likely to be
supported motivationally by different career concepts, as show in Table 2.
Faced with highly changeable environments, it is easy to see why organizations are tempted to emphasize
the behavioral competencies associated with Spiral and Transitory career motives. But, in what measure
should these competencies be celebrated over and above those more closely associated with Linear and
Expert motives? Totally? We think not. We find it difficult to imagine many organizations with only needs
such as these. Nonetheless, we do believe that some organizations have greater need of Spiral and
Transitory type competencies than do others that in turn may have relatively greater need of Expert of
Linear competencies.

Table 2

Career Motives and Associated Behavioral Competencies

Linear Expert Spiral Transitory

Leadership Quality Creativity Speed

Competitiveness Commitment Teamwork Networking
Cost-efficiency Reliability Skill diversity Adaptability
Logistics management Technical competence Lateral coordination Fast learning
Profit orientation Stability orientation People development Project focus

Said otherwise, we suggest that organizations vary from one another in terms of the particular mix of
competencies they require at any one time. Insofar as organizations have variable competency requirements
and insofar as behavioral competencies are related to motives, it follows that organizations have variable
needs for people with particular career motives. In our parlance, this equates to saying that organizations
have variable needs for people with Linear, Expert, Spiral, and Transitory career concepts and motives, but
seldom, if ever, exclusive needs for just one of them.
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If organizations have needs for different mixes of career concepts in their employees then it follows also
that organizations need pluralistic career management practices. This may be no more true today than in the
past. However, inasmuch as career opportunities and career management practices are in flux today, the
present time seems to present a particular opportune time to move away from the more or less, monolithic
perspectives on careers of the past and move toward career management practices that embrace multiple
career concepts. As we explain below, organizations appear to have "career cultures" that often reflect more
or less systematically a particular career concept. We see the present as a good time to move from
monolithic career cultures to pluralistic cultures that support multiple career concepts.

A Framework for Identifying Organizational Career Cultures

That organizations have cultures with respect to careers has come to be recognized in the literature on
careers. Increasingly, writers on careers have noted that organizations need to adjust their career cultures.
For instance, Hall and Richter recommend a shift away from what they call the "promotion culture" of the
past in organizations. By this they mean that explicit and implicit career management policies and practices
are deeply rooted in the cultural fabric of the organization. In a promotion culture, beliefs, values, and
expectations would revolve around the idea that moving up the hierarchy is a good thing, and that the best
people are the people that can and do get promoted to the highest levels.
From our career concepts perspective, we would call Hall and Richter's promotion culture a Linear career
culture. And, while Linear career cultures traditionally have been quite commonplace in organizations,
other career cultures can and do exist. Just as individuals differ in career concepts, organizations differ in
their career cultures, although career culture differences may not vary as widely as do individual
differences in career concepts and motives
Table 3 presents a summary of organizational career cultures as related to the four career concepts. The
classification shown in the table is broken-down into rewards, rewarded competencies, and organizational
structure.

Table 3

Organizational Career Cultures

Linear Expert Spiral Transitory

Structure Tall pyramid Flat Matrix Loose amorphous
Narrow span of Strong functional Self-directed, structure
control departments interdisciplinary Temporary teams
teams

Valued Leadership Quality Creativity Speed

Efficiency Reliability Teamwork Adaptability
Performance Logistics Stability People Innovation
Factors management Technical development
competence

Rewards Promotions Fringe benefits Lateral assignments Immediate cash

Management Recognition awards Cross-training bonuses
perquisites Continuing Creative latitude Independence and
Executive bonuses technical training autonomy
Special temporary
assignments
Job rotation


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The cultural outlines shown in the table clearly represent examples of monolithic career cultures. In
practice, however, most organizations are not nearly so consistent or monolithic in their cultures. In fact,
organizational career cultures in some organizations seem to consist of a hodge-podge of inconsistent
elements. For instance, a survey in a major aerospace organization revealed that - at least in the eyes of its
employees - the organization had an Expert structure, and valued Expert competencies, but emphasized
Linear rewards. More specifically, a survey of employees indicated that the organization was relatively flat
with few levels or hierarchy, and was organized largely around traditional functions. Performance
appraisals consistently placed high emphasis on technical competence. These features suggest an Expert
culture.
Yet, the most visible reward (and route to future rewards) was promotion, the supreme Linear reward.
Consequently, the most technically brilliant performers were most likely to be rated "ready now" for
promotion into management or to higher levels of management (which by no means guaranteed actual
promotion) where management perquisites, salaries and executive bonuses increased sharply from one level
to the next. Therefore, in this organization, those who performed best as Experts were most likely to be
rewarded as though they desired Linear careers.
This is not what we mean by pluralism; this essentially is a career management mess of inconsistencies and
conflicting philosophies. But, it is not uncommon in organizations where different philosophies, policies,
and practices are put in motion by different groups, at different times, and for different purposes.

Table 4
Linking Organizational Strategies to Career Cultures

Organizational
Career

Strategic
Direction
 Strategic
Advantage
 Culture


Growth Low Price Linear

Deeper market penetration High Volume/Low Cost

Maintain position Quality Expert

Reliability

Diversification Creativity Spiral

Innovation

Entrepreneurial opportunity Speed Transitory

New market creation Novelty
Ease of use

Strategic Pressures on Career Cultures

Although, as we have pointed out, we favor pluralistic career cultures that support multiple career concepts,
we do acknowledge that particular organizations might need to manage their career cultures in such a way
as to throw a bit more support toward one or two concepts than the others.
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What reasonably might incline an organization toward one career culture over others? Certainly,
organizational strategy would be a major consideration. As other authors have pointed out, organizational
strategy gives rise to needs for certain skills and competencies that in turn need to be supported by
organizational human resource practices. In Table 4, we show how these strategic pressures logically link
to career concepts. The table shows a cross-classification of strategy, competitive advantage, and
organizational career culture. The basic logic on which the classifications in the table are based is this: a
particular organizational strategy makes requirements on the behavior of the organization, which in turn
places demands on certain competencies in the organization, and - through the motivational connection -
indicates the career culture needed to support the strategy.
For example, looking at the first row in Table 4, a strategy of growth through greater penetration of a
specific market (column 1) would likely require having a distinctive price advantage over competition
achieved through high volume/low cost production (column 2), which in turn would be supported best with
a Linear career culture (column 3). A Linear culture would provide the best support in view of the
motivational predisposition of people with Linear career motives toward competition, efficiency, and profit
orientation (see Table 2). In contrast, Spirals might be more inclined to emphasize innovation and creativity
over efficiency, and Experts would be inclined to deal with efficiency and quality trade-offs in favor of
quality.
So, as the table indicates, a Spiral culture would better support a strategy calling for creativity and
diversification. An Expert culture would better support a strategy aimed at maintaining the organization's
position based on high quality and high reliability products and services. A Transitory culture would suit a
strategy of exploiting new opportunities by getting into new markets quickly with highly innovative or easy
to use products or services.

Non-Strategic Pressures on Career Culture

Although we view strategy to be an important consideration in shaping organizational career culture, it is
our view is that it is but one consideration among others. Additional considerations would include the
actual career concepts of current employees, the level of technology of the industry and the rate of change.
In an ideal world, organizational strategy would be formulated also on the basis of these other
considerations. In other words, an organization might modify its strategy or construct a strategy based at
least in part on the career motives of its employees and their present competencies. For instance, an
organization with a high frequency of Spiral motives in its workforce might deliberately give its strategy a
Spiral twist by seeking out opportunities to move into new technology areas or to launch new spin-off
products or services. But, that is a topic for another paper.

Pluralistic Career Cultures

When we speak of pluralistic career cultures, we have in mind a thoughtful blending of elements from two
or more of the columns shown in Table 3 which shows key features of each type of career culture. There
are many ways to do this, from those that are very simple and easy to implement, but limited in scope, to
those that are very complex and broad in scope, but require significant time and energy to implement.
Exhibit 1 shows several types of methods that vary in complexity.

Training and Counseling

The training and counseling method is very easy to implement, and probably for this reason it is the single
most common approach in use today to develop career pluralism in organizations. Basically, the idea is that
through training, assessment, and counseling, the organization exposes large segments of its employee and
managerial population to pluralistic career concepts.
Usually, there is no particular emphasis placed on any particular career concept as better than others.
People simply learn about alternative career concepts, get assessment feedback about their own concepts
and motives, and receive limited counseling on what types of career tracks would make sense for them
based on their own career concept profiles. In this scenario, employees are encouraged to make informed
choices about their own careers in light of available opportunities.
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For example, at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Director of Human Resources, Wayne Boswell, and
his staff have been conducting career awareness workshops using pluralistic career concepts for various
divisions and units at the Center. Boswell, however, has taken this approach one step further by selecting
and training career mentors also in the use of pluralistic career concepts in advising their counselees. Linda
Jensen, who directs career development programs at NASA Ames Research Center in Palo Alto, California,
has begun a similar program aimed at exposing the Center's entire management and employee population to
pluralistic career concepts.

Exhibit 1
Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis, Indiana, under the direction of Tom Pritchard, has experimented
also with training and counseling in pluralistic career concepts by beginning training at executive and
senior management levels. In these workshops, executives and managers get feedback in their own career
concepts and motives and are trained to use career concepts in making task assignments and in advising
their subordinates.
Johnson and Johnson also has used career concepts training and assessment to facilitate the staffing and
development of special, "tiger teams" formed to speed the development of high-priority, new products.

Contracts
Tailoring formal or informal contracts is another way to move the organization toward career pluralism.
Here, the basic idea is that managers and employees agree on a particular program of career development
for each individual, or for groups of employees. These programs vary in terms of how detailed they are
with respect to specific assignments. However, they usually are quite explicit about career direction - e.g.,
promotion within a particular functional area, upward movement within project management, assignments
involving new business ventures.
A clear example of the contracting approach that has been in use for several decades in some organizations
is the so-called, dual-career ladder. In organizations with dual ladders there is one ladder for people
pursuing a Linear-style managerial or executive career path, and a separate ladder for individuals pursuing
careers as technical specialists.
This second ladder implicitly is intended for managing Expert careers. However, we have noted in many
instances that the technical ladder often boils down to a Linear perspective on Expert careers. For example,
to move up the ladder, one often must take on more responsibility and do more "important work." Ideally,
an Expert career management system would allow real experts to continue doing what they have been
doing with increasing latitude and autonomy. In addition, technical ladders often take on a second-class
stigma when it becomes clear that the highest levels on the ladder still do not command as much
compensation as the highest levels on the managerial ladders.
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This raises a general point of caution. In an traditional organization where previously a singular or
monolithic career management system has been operative, introducing a second alternative might run the
risk of creating a career alternative perceived as "second class." Just as this seems often to be the case with
the second ladder in a dual career ladder system, this may account at least in part with difficulties that other
authors have noted with the "Mommy Track" as an alternative to more traditional careers in organizations.
However, in a truly pluralistic system, individual differences are viewed as naturally desirable. Making
multiple distinctions and supporting multiple motives, beyond just one or two categories, can reinforce the
basic idea that diversity is required for organizational success.
At present, embracing this view of diversity and pluralism may still represent a real challenge in many
organizations. Nonetheless, we have seen a trend toward more willingness in organizations to negotiate,
special, non-traditional, career plans from a pluralistic perspective. This seems more common in smaller
organizations with less bureaucracy and fixed policies. A good example is Transpacific Development
Company, a large real-estate development and management firm where individual assignments and career
planning is carried out interactively with the employees' career concepts and motives taken into account.
This approach is not limited to smaller firms, however. At Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) where
there is a great deal of lateral movement, special arrangements are prepared for people wishing to shift
career paths, as for example in the case of tanker captains who wish to come ashore to pursue careers in
management. The agreements often involve special agreements on compensation packages to ease the
financial impact of moving from one track to another.

Cafeteria Methods
Cafeteria-style career management programs are among the newer approaches to career pluralism in
organizations. Fundamentally, cafeteria plans provide an array of career-track options, training
opportunities, performance evaluation schemes, and reward systems to make it possible for employees to
have career experiences that are most in synch with their own career concepts and motives and with the
strategy of the organization.
Organizations have just begun to experiment seriously with cafeteria-type career programs and are
gradually feeling their way toward more sophisticated approaches. We have yet to see any one organization
with more that a couple of elements of a cafeteria program in place. But, that may change soon.
Tetra Laval, a major food-processing and food-packaging company headquartered in Sweden, has used the
training and counseling approach to familiarize managers and employees with multiple career concepts.
Marie Högstedt, HR Manager at Tetra Laval Prepared Food, reports useful insights provided by the Career
Concept model for developing more pluralistic appraisal and reward systems that can evaluate a broader set
of career competencies and motivate more of the employees to develop and apply these competencies.
Tom Pritchard at Eli Lilly has also moved beyond training and counseling to encourage more pluralism by
explicitly tailoring performance evaluations to incorporate multiple career concepts. In one of the divisions
of the company he and his staff have experimented with the unit's annual "talent assessment" procedure in
which all employees are rated by management in terms of their career potential. Formerly, the talent
assessment focused exclusively on potential for upward movement. As is the case in many companies, the
term "potential" previously was assumed to be synonymous with management talent. Pritchard's project
expanded the assessment to include ratings also for lateral movement, and for technical development,
thereby encompassing Spiral and Expert career orientations as well as Linear. The introduction of the new
talent assessments was combined with training for managers to familiarize them with the logic of non-
Linear career concepts.
In addition, Eli Lilly has for a number of years identified "transferable skill" positions that enable
individuals to move Spiral-fashion from unit to unit and function to function, rather than being restricted to
Linear/Expert career paths in specific units and functions.
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Northern Telecom has formed Leadership Development Programs (LDPs) for each of five functional
specialties to assist and encourage young people to develop outside the confines of their traditional "Expert
silos." The LDP provides a functional base and identity while individuals work on far-flung developmental
assignments. Each program has a central coordinator who is involved in recruiting and selecting people for
the program, planning developmental assignments and negotiating positions in various Northern Telecom
organizations world-wide. Participants come together annually for training, special projects, and for sharing
their experiences.
Joe Stelliga, who heads NorTel's HR LDP, finds that the program is a great tool in recruiting high quality,
young talent. Rita McCracken, Northern Telecom's official Organizational Thrill Seeker and People
Development Visionary (that's her actual title!), a recent graduate of the Leadership Development Program
reports that the company is discovering that young people especially bring multiple needs with them to
their careers and the LDP is one means of dealing with multiple needs.
The high frontier of cafeteria programs is clearly compensation. In most organizations, compensation
systems are fundamentally Linear in their design. Money is all stacked up on the management ladder. To
get ahead financially in any significant way, one must move up the organization to higher level pay-grades.
Pay grades generally are established based on guidelines that take into account scope of responsibility for
budgets and people. Therefore, to opt for anything other than a traditional Linear career typically carries a
significant financial penalty.
Recently, however, some organizations have begun experimenting with non-Linear pay systems, such as
pay-for-performance and skill-based pay plans. Skill-based pay plans, for example, compensate individuals
on the basis of the range of skills and work functions at which they have demonstrated proficiency. These
plans are most often used in conjunction with high-involvement work teams. They are intended to
encourage skill diversity and flexibility. Clearly, they favor Spiral career motives.
Gradually, pay systems are moving toward more pluralism. For example, Northern Telecom is revamping
its performance management philosophy and, in the process, is examining ways to introduce compensation
systems that support, rather than penalize, career pluralism. This would offer employees the possibility of
signing up for different kinds of pay packages based on their career motives and the type of career track
they would prefer. Inasmuch as individuals may shift motivationally at different career stages, this could
also provide avenues for keeping motives and rewards aligned throughout individuals' careers.

Designing and Managing Pluralistic Career Cultures

The preceding examples provide a number of lessons for techniques that can be used to build and manage
pluralistic career systems in organizations. First, career pluralism covers a broad spectrum. The extreme of
career pluralism would be to set up a system that would "let all blossoms bloom" equally. However, we
know of no such system in existence today. Nor do we expect to find the ultimate career pluralist culture
any time soon. Leaving aside the administrative complexities of managing such a system, an entirely plural
culture in which all career concepts are equally valued and supported at all times would unlikely meet the
needs of any organization over time. Organization strategy and objectives may shift, making certain
competencies and motives more or less critical at different points in time; employees motives and
preferences may fall into one or two categories of career motives more than others, and they also may
change.
Rather than attempt to develop fully pluralistic career cultures, we believe that a better approach would be
to view organizational career culture as dynamic and as requiring periodic readjustments as strategic
considerations demand and as the changing mix of employees' career motives and competencies shift,
either as a function of employee turnover, or changes within individual employees over time in career
motives and competencies.
Exhibit 2 shows a schema for evaluating organizational and employee needs and for making periodic
adjustments in career management practices. The crucial aspect of this approach is that the process we
describe is iterative. There is no notion that one configuration of career culture attributes will be optimal
across time. Fit is considered a dynamic phenomenon requiring periodic reassessment and readjustments.
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Exhibit
2

Iteratively
Adjusting
Structure

and
Career
Management
Practices


Exhibit 2

When viewed from this perspective, career pluralism is defined as a system that offers diversity within and
across different periods of time, but not always in equal measure.
At any one point, it may be optimal for both the organization and its employees to place greater emphasis
on rewards and other organizational arrangements that support certain combinations of career motives more
than others, based on strategic considerations and employees' motives. But, what is optimal in one strategic
environment or for one employee population may not be optimal during a later period in which different a
different strategy applies, new employees with different motives have entered the picture, and/or more
experienced employees have entered different career stages. So, for instance, an organization might find
that a Linear/Spiral culture might be best at one period in its history whereas a Spiral/Transitory culture
might be needed during a later period.
Consequently, as we see it, Exhibit 2 depicts an iterative and continuous process of realignment. That is, an
initial structure and mix of career management practices will be identified that best fits the organization's
strategy and workforce now. This particular configuration could be one that effectively strikes a
compromise to accommodate any gap between strategic needs and employee motives. To close the gap, the
organization could introduce training and reward systems designed to move employees in a direction more
consistent with that needed for strategic success, but without the expectation that this will solve the career
culture puzzle for all time.
Elements of this approach are now being implemented at Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New
Jersey, by Vice President of Human Resources, Andrea Schutz, and her staff. ETS has for several years
been conducting a program of organizational renewal to prepare for the decades ahead. As part of this
program, workshops have been conducted on pluralistic career concepts with samples of employees from
through-out the organization. Assessment data, accumulated as survey data, have been compiled to
examine the career concepts and motives of employees in all major units.
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These results are being compared systematically with the strategic objectives of each unit to evaluate the
gap in organizational and employee needs. Schutz reports that where differences in objectives and
employee needs exist, the plan is to create "hybrid structures and career cultures" that build bridges
between organizational needs and employee needs. For instance, where the unit's objectives call basically
for a Spiral strategy based on creative diversification, but employees needs emphasize Expert motives, the
move will be to work toward a Spiral/Expert organizational structure and career culture. This would
involve creating interdisciplinary teams where functional experts maintain their specialties and are
rewarded both for creative breakthroughs and technical excellence. Training programs would aim both at
maintaining high levels of technical expertise and cross-training in different functions.
If successful, the ETS renewal program will create one of most advanced, pluralistic career management
systems in a large organization. As such, it could serve as an important prototype for other complex
organizations.

Looking Toward the Future

The present pandemonium in careers means confusion and frustration for many people. However, in the
long-run it may provide the impetus and opportunity to produce innovative career systems in organizations
that go far beyond those of the past in motivating strategic behavior and in serving the needs of the many
rather than the few. The few examples that we have cited of organizations working toward career pluralism
demonstrate clearly that we do not need to toss the baby out with the bath water and create new career
losers out of old career winners.

Endnotes
See M.B. Arthur, "Career Theory in a Dynamic Context," in D. H. Montross and C.J. Shinkman (Eds.)
Career Development in the 1990s: Theory and Practice (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1992, 65-84)
and P. Sparrow and J.M. Hiltrop, European Human Resource Management in Transition (Hertfordshire,
UK: Prentice Hall, 1994) for recent discussions on careers and HRM in various dynamic situations.
.
See E.H. Schein, Career Dynamics: Matching Individual and Organizational Needs (Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley, 1978) and C.B. Derr, Work, Family, and Career (New York: Praeger, 1980) for discussions
of the dynamics of, and tensions between, the needs of individuals and organizations.
.
W. Bridges, "The end of the job," Fortune, 1994, September, 19, 62-74.
.
C.M. Savage, "The Dawn of the Knowledge Era," OR/MS Today, 1994, December, 18-23.
.
R.H. Waterman, J.A. Waterman and B.A. Collard, "Toward a career-resilient workforce," Harvard Business
Review, 1994, July-August, 87-92.
.
See for example, P. Hirsch, Pack Your Own Parachute: How to Survive Mergers, Takeovers, and Other
Corporate Disasters, (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987) and C. M. Savage, op. cit.
.
P. Sellers, "Don't Call Me a Slacker," Fortune, 1994, December 12, 181-196.
.
W. Bridges, op. cit., 68.
.
P. Hirsch, op. cit.
.
Waterman et al. op. cit., 87, 88.
.
See for example, M.B. Arthur, D.T. Hall and B.S. Lawrence "Generating New Directions in Career
Theory: The Case for a Transdisciplinary Approach" in M.B. Arthur, D.T. Hall and B.S. Lawrence (Eds.)
Handbook of Career Theory (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 7-25).
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.
D.T. Hall and J. Richter, Career Gridlock: Baby Boomers Hit the Wall, Academy of Management
Executive, 1990, 4(3), 7-21.
.
E.H. Schein, "A Critical Look at Current Career Development Theory and Research," in D.T. Hall and
Associates, Career Development in Organizations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1986, 310-331) calls for a
theory and a technology that deal with the process issues of how organizations administer performance
appraisal, career planning, and management development in different ways to better grasp the impact of
cultural forces. The connection between culture and careers is extended to include both organizational and
national cultures in a framework by C.B. Derr and A. Laurant, "The Internal and External Career: A
Theoretical and Cross-Cultural Perspective" in M.B. Arthur, D.T. Hall and B.S. Lawrence (Eds.) Handbook
of Career Theory (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 454-471).
.
Hall and Richter, op. cit.
.
See M.J. Driver and M.W. Coombs, op cit.
.
See J.E. Butler, G.R. Ferris, and N.K. Napier, Strategy and Human Resource Management, (Cincinnati,
OH: South-Western Publishing, 1991) and C. Fombrun, N.M. Tichy and M.A. Devanna, Strategic Human
Resource Management (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1984) on the relationship between strategy and
human resource management.
.
We wish to point out that the linkages between strategy and career culture presented in the table are our
own propositions. They are not based upon a body of empirical research. We initially arrived at these
propositions by considering the kinds of strategies that, if successful, logically could be expected to create
organizational conditions supportive of each career concept. For example, if an organization increases its
market share, the organization is likely also to grow in size to support the expanded levels of activity
necessary to service a larger market. This should mean more jobs, including higher level positions that
would open up opportunities for the kind of upward movement that otherwise is presently threatened by
organizational down-sizing. Accordingly, a strategy of expansion fits well with the Linear career concept.
Conversely, individuals with strong attachment to the Linear career concept and with Linear motives of
power and achievement should be most motivated to "score the big gains" that are needed for expansion
that in turn would create the opportunities for upward motion. So, we see the linkages as a two-way street.
The strategy supports the concept and the concept supports the strategy. Similar logic was used to develop
linkages between strategy and the other concepts.
.
See F.N. Schwartz, "Management Women and the New Facts of Life," Harvard Business Review, 1989,
January-February, 65-76 and L. Bailyn, Breaking the Mold, New York: Free Press, 1993.
.
The notion of cafeteria HR systems is especially linked to flexible reward systems as, for example,
described by E.E. Lawler, Strategic Pay: Aligning Organizational Strategies and Pay Systems, San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990.
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Appendix

The Conceptual and Research Bases of the Career Concepts

Framework
For a recent, more detailed treatment of the four career concepts and their associated motives, see K.R.
Brousseau and M.J. Driver "Enhancing Informed Choice: A Career-Concepts Approach to Career
Advisement," Selections, 1994, Spring, 24-31. The impact of demographic and organizational trends on
careers from a career concept perspective is also discussed in K.R. Brousseau, "Career Dynamics in the
Baby Boom, Baby Bust Era," Journal of Organizational Change Management, 1990, 3(3), 46-58, and M.J.
Driver Work-Force Personality and the New Information-Age Workplace, in An Aging Workforce
Competes (Washington, D.C.: The National Planning Association and The National Council on Aging,
1994).
The conceptual foundations of the career concept model lie in several places. In the 1960s and early 1970s,
writers began taking note of the apparent increasing tendency of some people to have multiple careers.
Usually, the authors were referring to people who made fundamental changes in the nature of the work they
performed, moving from one field into another quite different field to the extent that they appeared to be
changing careers. For example, John Gardner, who had written about the dynamic nature of his and others'
careers in his book Self-Renewal, was talking about a pattern of career experience fundamentally different
from the more traditional up-the-ladder pattern. This contrast led to the identification in our work of what
we now call the Linear and the Spiral career concepts. Another influence on our thinking was the work of
other career theorists, particularly those working in the field of occupational choice, and most notably
among them, J.P. Holland. Holland posited that individuals differ in the motivational themes that underlie
their choices of occupational fields. Besides establishing a framework for identifying differential
motivational themes in people's careers, this literature on occupational choice suggested a conceptualization
of careers different from both the Linear and Spiral concepts: some people choose not to move up any
particular ladder and do not wish to shift from one type of work to another. This gave rise to the Expert
career concept, which in our early work we referred to as the "Steady State" concept.
The fourth concept then simply fell into place. When we began systematically examining people's career
histories and talking to people about their careers, it became clear that a significant number of people's
career patterns followed no consistent pattern that could be understood in terms of the three concepts. In
particular, we found some people whose careers seemed to follow a consistent pattern of inconsistency
involving frequent career changes. Many of these people appeared not to think of themselves as having
careers in a traditional sense, but nevertheless they were very work-oriented and seemed to be enjoying
their working lives. Hence, we identified the Transitory concept.
Having identified four fundamentally different concepts of careers, defined in terms of direction and
frequency of movement, we turned our attention to the motivational foundations of these career concepts.
For instance, we hypothesized that achievement would be the key motive underlying the Linear career, and
indeed, several empirical studies confirmed that achievement motivation is a key motive in the Linear
career, but not as important as another motive that we had missed: power and influence. Gradually, the
constellation of motives associated with each career concept as presented in this paper emerged from our
theorizing and related research.
Two large studies conducted in the early 1980s, still partially unpublished, contributed highly to our present
understanding of career concepts and career motives. One was conducted in a large utility company and
another was conducted in a major aerospace firm (for reading on the latter see, M.J. Driver & M.W.
Coombs, "Fit Between Career Concepts, Corporate Culture and Engineering Productivity and Morale," in
Enhancing Engineering Careers: Conference Record of the 1983 IEEE Conference on Careers (The
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., 1983, also available as a reprint from Decision
Dynamics Group, 615 Hampshire Rd., Suite 357, Westlake Village, CA 91361). These studies clarified
career concept and career motive linkages and they further illuminated the impact of fit between attributes
of organizational career culture and individuals' career concepts on organizational commitment, self-
perceived performance effectiveness, work satisfaction, as well as various aspects of non-work life
satisfaction.
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The measurement of Career Concepts has been found to have satisfactory levels of reliability and predictive
validity (see M.W. Coombs, Measuring Career Concepts: An Examination of the Concepts, Constructs, and
Validity of the Career Concept Questionnaire, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Southern California, Los
Angeles, 1989).
As we are so far only in the process of developing an instrument for measuring the career-related
behavioral competencies, the proposed relationships in Table 2 are currently based on largely anecdotal
observations and deduction. The career culture and strategy relationships proposed in Table 3 and 4 are
beginning to receive some more empirical support. In addition to the two studies mentioned above, three
partly quantitative case studies of Swedish organizations identified mutually supportive as well as
incongruent relationships between their strategies, cultural components, and employee career concepts and
motives in accordance with the framework. Finally, some of the conceptual bases for our suggested
pluralistic career cultures and management are outlined by M.A. Von Glinow, M.J. Driver, K.R. Brousseau,
and J.B. Prince in "The Design of a Career Oriented Human Resource System," Academy of Management
Review, 1983, 8(1), 23-32.
We initially arrived at our propositions about linkages between strategy and career culture by considering
the kinds of strategies that, if successful, logically could be expected to create organizational conditions
supportive of each career concept. For example, if an organization increases its market share, the
organization is likely also to grow in size to support the expanded levels of activity necessary to service a
larger market. This should mean more jobs, including higher level positions that would open up
opportunities for the kind of upward movement that otherwise is presently threatened by organizational
down-sizing. Accordingly, a strategy of expansion fits well with the Linear career concept. Conversely,
individuals with strong attachment to the Linear career concept and with Linear motives of power and
achievement should be most motivated to "score the big gains" that are needed for expansion that in turn
would create the opportunities for upward motion. So, we see the linkages as a two-way street. The strategy
supports the concept and the concept supports the strategy. Similar logic was used to develop linkages
between strategy and the other concepts.

Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation for its generous support of their
work on this paper and associated research. The authors also wish to express appreciation to Margaret
Allan, Marie Högstedt, Lynn Newman, and Patrick Sweet for their helpful comments and suggestions on an
earlier draft of this paper.