Careers: Mobility, Embeddedness, and Success: Daniel C. Feldman Thomas W. H. NG

Careers: Mobility, Embeddedness, and Success
Daniel C. Feldman*
Terry College of Business, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602
Thomas W. H. Ng
School of Business and Economics, the University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong
This article proposes refinements of the constructs of career mobility and career embeddedness
and reviews the array of factors that have been found to energize (discourage) employees to
change jobs, organizations, and/or occupations. The article also reviews the literature on career
success and identifies which types of mobility (and embeddedness) are most likely to lead to
objective career success (e.g., promotions) and subjective career success (e.g., career satisfac-
tion). In the final section, the article revisits the utility of viewing careers as “boundaryless” and
suggests alternative frameworks for future research on these topics.
Keywords: careers; mobility; embeddedness; career success; boundaryless careers; job change;
career change; career development; career management
During the past decade, careers researchers have paid a great deal of attention to the topic
of career mobility (Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005). To a considerable extent, this
research emerged in response to a confluence of major changes in global and local labor
markets (Sullivan, 1999). Increased competition from emerging economies with cheaper
labor and raw materials resulted in more “off-shoring” of operations. Rapid increases in
health insurance costs and pension liabilities created incentives for companies to replace
full-time, permanent workers with temporary or part-time employees. The employment secu-
rity of managers in large corporations declined in response to a lengthy period of mergers,
acquisitions, and downsizings in major industries (Hirsch & Shanley, 1996). Moreover, as
the shape of nuclear families changed, employees sought out new employment opportunities
*Corresponding author. Tel.: 706-542-9387; fax: 706-542-3743.
E-mail address: [email protected]

Journal of Management, Vol. 33 No. 3, June 2007 350-377
DOI: 10.1177/0149206307300815
© 2007 Southern Management Association. All rights reserved.
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Feldman, Ng / Career Mobility 351
that better fit their changing personal circumstances (Kirchmeyer, 2006). In The Boundaryless
Career (1996), Arthur and Rousseau not only synthesized the previous decade’s research on
the changing career landscape but also urged researchers to pay more attention to these new
labor market realities in the future.
Several trends in careers research emerged during the past 10 years as a result of this focus on
boundaryless careers. Careers research has concentrated much more heavily on career transitions
than on career stability (Eby, Butts, & Lockwood, 2003; Lee, Mitchell, Sablynski, Burton, &
Holtom, 2004). In addition, careers researchers have explored attitudes toward mobility and per-
ceptions of mobility opportunities in more depth than actual mobility itself. Furthermore, during
the past decade, careers researchers have concentrated much more on the inevitability of career
change and its benefits than on its infrequency and its drawbacks (Eby, 2001; Feldman, 2002b).
The aim of this article, then, is to reawaken interest in alternative perspectives on the role of career
mobility in career success. Specifically, the present article has four goals.
First, we seek to clarify and refine the constructs of career mobility and career embed-
dedness. It is often unclear in the literature how much of a change in employment status is
needed to qualify as a “career change.” Along similar lines, the embeddedness literature is
sometimes unclear because of level-of-analysis problems, as some levels of embeddedness
(such as occupational embeddedness) may subsume others levels of embeddedness as well
(such as job embeddedness).
Second, we review the literature on the forces that contribute to career mobility. Here, we
examine the research on labor market, occupational-level, organization-level, group-level,
personal life, and individual-difference factors that contribute to employee mobility. We also
examine the differential effects these factors have on job embeddedness, organizational
embeddedness, and occupational embeddedness.
Third, we review the recent research on the relationships between career mobility/career
stability and career success. The term career success has become a catchall signifier for
widely disparate measures of achievement, ranging from very specific measures of salary
increases to very general measures of psychological well-being (Hall, 1976; Ng et al., 2005).
Here, we synthesize previous work on how different types of mobility (and different types
of embeddedness) influence objective measures of career success (such as pay raises) and
subjective measures of career success (such as job satisfaction or job involvement).
In the fourth and final section of the article, we reconsider the construct of boundaryless
careers and suggest ways in which the construct can be refined to make it more useful in future
empirical research. Indeed, the term boundaryless careers has been used in so many ways in so
many different contexts that it is now difficult to determine whether the term refers to the per-
meability of labor markets, the degree of actual mobility in individuals’ careers, or individuals’
perceptions and attitudes toward mobility. In addition, we highlight avenues for future research
and potential implications of mobility/embeddedness research for management practice.
Refining Key Constructs
Mobility
The construct career mobility has been used in multiple ways by multiple authors to
include everything from changing jobs to changing organizations to changing occupations.
352 Journal of Management / June 2007
By subsuming so many kinds of changes within one construct, important differences (e.g.,
individuals’ motivation to change, ability to change, and adjustment to change) often get
overlooked. Here, we suggest that it would be more constructive to focus on specific differ-
ences among job change, organizational change, and occupational change.
Job change refers to any substantial changes in work responsibilities, hierarchical levels,
or titles within an organization. It includes internal promotions, transfers, and demotions.
In contrast, organizational change refers to any change in the employing firm. Organiza-
tional changes can be independent of job changes (i.e., an employee can go from selling
Hondas to selling Toyotas) or involve job changes, too (i.e., an employee goes from selling
cars for Honda to sales management for Toyota). For this reason, then, it is critical to specify
whether or not organizational changes also entail job changes (Schniper, 2005).
Because the term career mobility has been used generically to refer to almost any kind of
change in job duties, the degree of change across job transitions has been hard to track. Here,
we argue that the term occupational change should be used to refer to transitions that require
fundamentally new skills, routines, and work environments and require fundamentally new
training, education, or vocational preparation (Feldman, 2002a). The connotations of the
term career change in popular parlance imply major shifts in training required, job respon-
sibilities, and work environments, but the term in scholarly writing includes changes both
large and small. Hence, use of the term occupational change more precisely conveys when
a major transition in career paths occurs.
Embeddedness
As we noted earlier, only recently have researchers begun to pay more attention to questions
about why people stay in their jobs, organizations, and occupations even when other (and better)
opportunities are available elsewhere. Beginning largely with the work of Mitchell, Holtom,
Lee, Sablynski, and Erez (2001), there is now increased interest in the construct of embedded-
ness, namely, the totality of forces that keep people in their current employment situations.
Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski, et al. (2001) suggested that the forces toward job
embeddedness are threefold: fit, links, and sacrifice. Fit is the extent to which a person’s job
meshes with, or complements, other areas of his or her life. Links refer to the extent of an
individual’s ties with other people and activities at work. Sacrifice refers to the ease with
which these links can be broken (i.e., what people would have to give up if they left their
current positions). The greater the fit, the number of links, and the degree of sacrifice, the
greater the forces toward job embeddedness will be (Holtom & O’Neill, 2004).
In the embeddedness literature, there has been some ambiguity between the constructs of
job embeddedness and organizational embeddedness. Because embeddedness in a particular
job essentially embeds an individual in the current organization, too, Mitchell, Holtom, Lee,
Sablynski, et al. (2001) did not differentiate job embeddedness from organizational embedded-
ness in much detail. Ng and Feldman (in press) note, though, that whereas job embedded-
ness implies organizational embeddedness, organizational embeddedness does not necessarily
imply job embeddedness; certainly, interjob mobility within an organization is possible, too.
Thus, although there is often overlap between job and organizational embeddedness in practice,
they are conceptually different constructs.
We suggest here that there is also a third type of embeddedness that has largely been over-
looked in the literature, namely, occupational embeddedness. We define this term as the
totality of forces that keep people in their present occupations. As with job embeddedness,
the forces toward occupational embeddedness are fit, links, and sacrifice. Fit refers to the
extent to which people’s occupations are similar to (or complement) other aspects of their
lives. Links refer to the extent to which individuals have ties to other people and activities in
the occupation. Sacrifice is the ease with which links can be broken—what people would
have to give up if they changed occupations.
In sum, then, just as there are different degrees of mobility, there are different degrees of
embeddedness as well. Individuals can be enmeshed in their present occupations without
being embedded in any particular organization, and individuals can be enmeshed in their pre-
sent organizations without being embedded in any particular job.
Career Success
Over time, researchers on careers success have consistently differentiated the “objective
career” from the “subjective career” (Ng et al., 2005). Measures of objective career success
are typically external indicators of career advancement or the accumulation of extrinsic
rewards. They include the highest level of education or hierarchical level attained, highest
salary earned, rate of movement up an organizational ladder, and badges of accomplishment
(e.g., professional honors) (Seibert, Kraimer, & Liden, 2001). Measures of subjective career
success are typically attitudes, emotions, and perceptions of how individuals feel about their
accomplishments rather than the objective amount of achievement. Here, researchers have
examined such variables as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and professional
identification (Hall, 1976; Judge, Cable, Boudreau, & Bretz, 1995).
As we will discuss in the next sections, different types of mobility and embeddedness are
related to different types of career success. For example, occupational mobility can be positively
related to subjective career success (like job satisfaction) but be negatively related to objective
career success (because changing occupations often entails starting over at a lower hierarchical
or salary level). Likewise, frequent organizational mobility may result in faster promotions and
greater compensation but is less likely to result in deep organizational commitment.
Six Perspectives on Mobility and Embeddedness
In the previous research on mobility and embeddedness, six perspectives have been used
to discover which factors motivate employees to seek out new employment opportunities
and/or tether employees to their current career paths (Ng, Sorensen, Eby, & Feldman, in press).
From the most macro to the most micro level of analysis, these perspectives consider the roles
of (a) structural labor market factors, (b) occupational labor market factors, (c) organiza-
tional policies and procedures, (d) work group-level factors, (e) personal life factors, and
(f) personality and personal style differences.
Structural Perspective
The structural perspective suggests that employees’ mobility or embeddedness is largely

determined by structural factors in the labor market. Sociologists have long suggested that
mobility is vacancy-driven; that is, mobility at the individual level is motivated (or discour-
aged) by the quantity and quality of the jobs available in the overall labor market (DiPrete,
De Graaf, Luijkx, Tahlin, & Blossfeld, 1997; Fujiwara-Greve & Greve, 2000; Haveman &
Cohen, 1994). Here we focus on the two dominant groups of structural factors that have been
posited as major influences on the labor market, namely, macroeconomic conditions and the
social and legal environment.
Macroeconomic conditions. Economic conditions influence the expansion or downsizing

of firms (DiPrete, 1993; DiPrete & Nonnemaker, 1997). In a growing economy, firms are
likely to expand both vertically and horizontally, thereby creating more opportunities for
both promotions and internal transfers to new units (Inkson, 1995). There are also differ-
ences in the level of regional economic development that create geographic disparities in
mobility opportunities. Because of more conducive climates or more plentiful natural
resources, some regions experience greater economic development than others (VanHam,
Mulder, & Hooimeijer, 2001). In addition, for a variety of political reasons, governments
sometimes choose to devote greater resources to the economic development of particular
cities or areas. Thus, regions with either historical economic advantages or government-sup-
ported initiatives (e.g., free trade zones) generate more opportunities for mobility as well.
Economic conditions may also influence people’s attitudes toward mobility and their per-
ceptions of mobility opportunities. For instance, Feldman (2002c) suggested that perceptions
of favorable economic conditions increase young adults’ aspirations for more fulfilling work
and their parents’ willingness to pay for more schooling. On the other hand, a weak econ-
omy may make individuals more risk-averse and unwilling to leave whatever jobs they do
have, even if those jobs are unsatisfying (Leana & Feldman, 1994).
Social and legal environment. There are numerous examples of how the social environ-
ment can affect individuals’ career mobility. For instance, Rosenfeld (1992) observed that
the implementation of diversity programs led to increased upward mobility for female and
racial minority employees in the public sector. In the private sector, promotion of diversity
has also been positively associated with greater mobility for minority group members
(Fujiwara-Greve & Greve, 2000).
Public policies affect opportunities for job mobility (DiPrete et al., 1997; Kruger, Eck, &
Vermeulen, 2001), too. For example, those that strengthen the solvency of company pension
plans tend to reduce mobility to other firms (Buchmueller & Valletta, 1996). On the other
hand, benevolent policies toward the unemployed (e.g., extended unemployment subsidies)
may contribute to individuals’ being more selective about which jobs they will accept and
more willing to experience long unemployment to find the best available jobs for themselves
in the labor market.
Occupational Perspective
Gender composition. As Rosenfeld noted, “Differences among types of firms, industries,

and occupations in their job rewards, career ladders, and employment relationships should
affect the job shifts underlying careers” (1992:48). A prime example of this phenomenon is
occupational segmentation by gender (e.g., Bygren, 2004). For example, women are over-
represented in jobs that are clerical and service-oriented in nature but are underrepresented
in engineering and the physical sciences. Furthermore, the gender distribution within an
industry also influences mobility opportunities. Maume (1999) observed that women who
work in male-dominated occupations also have more difficulty moving up the hierarchy, pre-
sumably because of gender bias. In addition, in male-dominated occupations, women may
also have less access to opportunities for job development and mentoring (Lai, Lin, &
Leung, 1998; Ohlott, Ruderman, & McCauley, 1994).
Wage levels. Hachen (1992) performed a comprehensive study of the relationships

between wage level and job mobility. He found that quit rates, intrafirm mobility rates, and
upward mobility rates were lower in high-wage industries. Hachen reasoned that, because
interfirm wage differences in high-wage industries are relatively small, the gain from exter-
nal mobility would be minimal. Along similar lines, Hammida (2004) found that workers
earning high wages change jobs less frequently than workers earning low wages.
Labor intensity. Leana and Feldman (1994) observed that labor-intensive industries (e.g.,
steel production) have higher involuntary exit rates and lower intrafirm mobility rates. In labor-
intensive industries, reduction of labor costs is a major concern, and companies aggressively
pursue cutting those costs by layoffs and plant closings. Also, in declining labor-intensive
industries (like auto manufacturing), even opportunities to engage in intrafirm mobility tend to
be lower.
Industry growth. Hachen (1992) found that the effects of industry growth on job mobility
depended on whether growth occurred through the emergence of new firms or the growth of
existing firms. The emergence of new firms increases external mobility because individuals
have more alternatives in the labor market. When industry growth is fueled by increases in
firm size, greater opportunities for upward internal mobility increase. As more units and
departments are added, additional layers in the organizational structure (and hence more
opportunities for hierarchical advancement) are added, too (Schniper, 2005).
Degree of change in occupational responsibilities. In occupations that have experienced

a high degree of change in activities and routines over time, individuals’ disenchantment
with, and their willingness to exit from, their current occupations is likely to be stronger. For
example, many young adults became high school teachers in the 1960s and 1970s because
of their enthusiasm for working with children and sharing their knowledge. Over the years,
many of them left teaching because they worked in buildings with metal detectors, were
alarmed by violence in their schools, and were hamstrung by state and federal regulations on
how and what they could teach (Feldman, 2002a, 2002b). The relationship between degree
of change in routines and mobility can also be explained from an embeddedness perspective.
Specifically, in occupations where activities and routines have changed substantially over
time, the initial equilibrium of fit, links, and sacrifice is disrupted as well.
Human capital investments. Investments in generalizable occupational skills (skills that

are easily transferable across organizations within an industry) tend to increase individuals’
job mobility within the same occupation or industry (Fulgate, Kinicki, & Ashforth, 2004).
On the other hand, generalizable skill investment may decrease job mobility across occupa-
tions because developing skills for a new occupation would entail a considerable sacrifice of
time and money invested in training for the previous career (Ng & Feldman, in press). The
amount of human capital investment in an occupation, then, is likely to be positively associ-
ated with mobility within an occupation but negatively related to mobility to different occu-
pations. It is for this reason, for example, that we see greater occupational out-migration
from public-school teachers than from university professors, but greater organizational
mobility among professors than among public-school teachers.
Occupational networks. Social ties within occupational networks may also embed indi-
viduals in their current vocations. Individuals often seek to establish their self-concepts by
identifying heavily with those whom they see as similar to themselves (Stryker & Burke,
2000). During the initial period of occupational socialization, new entrants have numerous
opportunities to interact intensely with groups of colleagues who have interests and values
similar to their own. Once individuals come to identify with others in an occupation and their
self-concepts are defined, there is more psychological resistance to changing career paths
(Allen, 2006). Moreover, because occupational networks often span multiple organizations
(De Janasz & Sullivan, 2004), an individual’s ties to an occupation are likely to be stronger
(and therefore more embedding) than his or her ties to a particular organization.
Rigidity and permeability of occupational mobility structures. Finally, whether the occu-
pation is characterized by rigid or permeable mobility structures can also influence individ-
uals’ mobility or embeddedness. Some occupations have higher barriers to entry than others
(e.g., surgery and professional sports). Consequently, in-migration to these occupations is
difficult even under favorable macroeconomic conditions. In contrast, other occupations are
much easier to leave and reenter independent of societal trends. For example, in the latest
available labor statistics on occupational mobility, Schniper (2005) reported that food service
workers had the highest levels of occupational mobility, whereas architects, engineers, and
lawyers had the lowest incidence of occupational mobility.
Organizational Perspective
There are many determinants of employees’ mobility or embeddedness that operate at the
organizational level (Malos & Campion, 2000). Below, we focus on the factors most frequently
investigated in this literature: organizational staffing and compensation policies, the structure
of pension and insurance benefits, intraorganizational networks, and socialization practices.
Organizational staffing and compensation policies. Sonnenfeld and Peiperl (1988) sug-
gested that the staffing policies chosen by an organization partially determine the availability
of internal mobility options for its employees. They propose that organizations’ staffing poli-
cies may be arrayed along two major dimensions: openness of internal labor markets and inter-
nal cohort competition. Those organizations high on openness of internal labor market actively
recruit from outside the firm to fill positions. Conversely, those low on this dimension focus on
internal job postings. Organizations high on cohort competition emphasize internal, merit-
based competitions for promotions. In contrast, organizations without such an emphasis are
likely to use seniority as a criterion instead. On the basis of these two dimensions, Sonnenfeld
and Peiperl (1988) divided organizations into four generic types: baseball teams, clubs, acad-
emies, and fortresses. Some empirical support has been found for this typology using different
samples (Baruch & Peiperl, 2003; Sturges, Guest, Conway, & Davey, 2002).
Along the same lines, organizations’ compensation policies also affect mobility and
embeddedness. For instance, if an organization implements a “winner-takes-all” or “star”
reward system, a few high-performing employees may become embedded by spectacular
salaries, but others have much lower incentives to stay (Hirsch & Shanley, 1996; Hurley,
Wally, Segrest, Scandura, & Sonnenfeld, 2003; Pil & Leana, 2000).
Structure of pension and insurance benefits. The structure of pension and insurance ben-
efits may also act to influence individuals’ job mobility or embeddedness, particularly in late
career (Kim & Feldman, 1998, 2000). Perceived lack of sufficient retirement benefits
embeds individuals in work. Whether that work takes place in the current organization or a
different organization, though, depends heavily on the type of pension plan itself.
Particularly in firms with fixed-benefit pension plans, continued membership in the current
organization is critical to upping monthly pension benefits (via accrual of additional years of
service). This observed relationship is also consistent with research on organizational com-
mitment, which suggests that when individuals’ “side bets” are high, their intentions to leave
their organizations are low (Powell & Meyer, 2004).
Intraorganizational networks. Many organizational researchers have paid attention to

how social networks of individuals affect work attitudes and behaviors (Davern & Hachne,
2006). For instance, when individuals begin their careers, they often actively network with
colleagues (Ayree, Wyatt, & Stone, 1996; Jokisaari & Nurmi, 2006). Such ties serve as
sources of information about norms and expectations, emotional support, and task assistance
(Seibert et al., 2001). Productive mentoring relationships serve to provide much the same
functions and yield similar benefits (Noe, Greenberger, & Wang, 2002).
Moreover, these early links may help embed individuals in their organizations over
extended periods of time (Coyle-Shapiro & Morrow, 2006). Initially superficial relationships
can develop into deeper emotional bonds between newcomers and veteran colleagues within
the firm (Maertz & Griffeth, 2004). For instance, Nelson and Quick (1991) found that new-
comers’ frequent interactions with peers were positively related to intentions to stay with the
organization. Higgins (2001) also found that the existence of quality social relationships was
negatively related to job change. Green and Bauer (1995) found that doctoral students who
received greater mentoring from advisors reported greater commitment to their current
employers and to their professions.
Organizational socialization practices. Another organizational factor that may affect

mobility or embeddedness is the socialization process individuals undergo (Allen, 2006).
Organizational socialization is the process through which newcomers become familiar with the
values, abilities, and behaviors that are essential for effective job performance (Bauer, Morrison,
& Callister, 1998).
The overarching goal of organizational socialization is to promote greater congruence of
employees’ abilities and values with organizational demands and norms (Allen, 2006; Bauer
et al., 1998). For instance, Kammeyer-Muller and Wanberg (2003) found that organizational
socialization increased employees’ role understanding, which in turn reduced the likelihood
of withdrawal from the organization. Thus, successful organizational socialization tends to
be associated with greater person-organization fit, which in turn is associated with greater
organizational embeddedness.
Work Group Perspective
In this section, we discuss a number of factors related to the work group that may pro-
mote mobility or embeddedness. These factors include social capital, social support and
group cohesiveness, relational demography, task interdependence, use of virtual work, use
of external labor, and complementary versus supplementary person-group fit.
Social capital. The core tenet of social capital theory is that the diversity and uniqueness
of ties to individuals in other networks significantly enhances individuals’ access to valuable
private or confidential information (Burt, 1992; Granovetter, 1985; Lin, 2001; Nahapiet &
Ghosal, 1998). On one hand, social ties at work directly strengthen individuals’ links with
others in the organization and thereby promote job embeddedness (Mitchell, Holtom, & Lee,
2001). On the other hand, social capital can increase the likelihood of external mobility
because highly networked employees have greater access to job leads and decision makers
in the external labor market (Granovetter, 1985). For instance, Lai et al. (1998) found that
people with greater social capital were more likely to find jobs through contacts with higher
status people—a strategy that resulted in their obtaining higher status jobs.
The role of social capital with respect to mobility and embeddedness, then, is somewhat
unclear. The mixed findings on the influence of social capital on mobility may be partially
attributable to whether the social ties are organization based or occupation based (Gersick,
Bartunek, & Dutton, 2000). Social ties that are organization based may act to directly
increase job embeddedness, whereas social ties that are occupation based may open up more
external mobility options for individuals.
Social support and group cohesiveness. It is not only the number of ties but also the emo-
tional intensity of the ties that affects mobility and embeddedness. Specifically, relationships
that involve deep affection and positive emotions are likely to reduce individuals’ intentions to
change jobs or occupations (Ng & Sorensen, in press; Viswesvaran, Sanchez, & Fisher, 1999).
The negative relationship between group cohesiveness and mobility can also be explained
from an embeddedness perspective. Group cohesion fosters obligations of reciprocity and,
in so doing, increases links among work group members (Taylor, Sherman, Kim, Jarcho,
Takagi, & Dunagan, 2004). Moreover, the emotional energy devoted to the development of
work-group relationships may also increase individuals’ sense of sacrifice when they con-
sider external job opportunities (Pearce & Randel, 2004).
Relational demography. Researchers have found that when individuals are demographically
different from others at work, they are more likely to leave their organizations altogether (Tsui,
Egan, & O’Reilly, 1992). The underlying explanation for this phenomenon is that individuals
who are demographically different are less likely to identify with their work groups’ values and
are more likely to have weak emotional attachments to coworkers (Jackson, Brett, Sessa,
Cooper, Julin, & Peyronnin, 1991). On the other hand, those who are demographically similar
to colleagues are less likely to be mobile. That is, those who value the reinforcement they
receive from colleagues will be much less likely to leave their workgroup behind.
Task interdependence. Task interdependence is the extent to which coworkers depend on

each other to achieve organizational or group goals (Van Der Vegt & Janssen, 2003). When
working on tasks that are interdependent in nature, employees may feel a stronger obligation
to remain because their leaving would interrupt the productivity of valued coworkers. Another
reason why task interdependence may decrease job mobility is because task interdependence
promotes stronger commitment to the organization as a whole (Bishop & Scott, 2000).
Virtual work. Advances in technology have changed the structure of work tremendously
(Russell, 2003). On one hand, Golden (2006) found that telework was associated with
increased organizational commitment and lower turnover intentions. The rationale behind
this finding was that, by accommodating individual workers’ idiosyncratic scheduling pref-
erences, virtual work arrangements increased individuals’ perceptions of person-group fit
(Hill, Ferris, & Martinson, 2003). On the other hand, the frequent use of virtual work may
accustom individuals to working alone, thereby decreasing their sense of identification with
the work group as a whole (Hesketh, 2001). By and large, the effects of virtual work on
mobility and embeddedness are still unclear.
Use of external labor. As organizational restructurings became more numerous, there was
a concomitant increase in the use of contingent employees (e.g., part-time, temporary, and
contract help) (Littler, Wiesner, & Dunford, 2003; White, Hill, Mills, & Smeaton, 2004). Not
surprisingly, the contingent labor force is highly mobile across organizations by virtue of
their short-term employment contracts (Liden, Wayne, Kraimer, & Sparrow, 2003).
What is perhaps more surprising is that the use of external labor appears to increase the
job mobility of “internal” or “core” employees, too. The blending of internal and external
labor may result in dysfunctional subgroup conflict (Davis-Blake, Broschak, & George,
2003). Studies have also suggested that social exclusion occurs between these two groups of
employees (Connelly & Gallagher, 2004), communication between core and external labor
forces is limited or biased (Sias, Kramer, & Jenkins, 1997), and competition for scarce work
and resources between the groups is sometimes intense (Barnett & Miner, 1992; Pearce,
1993). Davis-Blake et al. (2003) also found that extensive use of externalized labor resulted
in worsening relationships between core employees and management, decreased organiza-
tional loyalty among core employees, and increased turnover intentions.
Complementary versus supplementary person-group fit. Researchers differentiate between

two types of person-group fit: complementary and supplementary (Kristof, 1996; Ostroff,
Shin, & Feinberg, 2002). Complementary fit occurs when individuals’ skills and interests
add value to, or “complete,” those of other group members. In contrast, supplementary fit
occurs when an individual’s skills and values are the same as those of coworkers; it is the
type of fit typically envisioned by the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) model (Schneider,
Goldstein, & Smith, 1995). Complementary and supplementary person-group fit may act to
influence job embeddedness in different ways.
Where there is supplementary fit, communication among group members is more likely to
be effective and identification with the group is more likely to be reinforced. Consequently, the
links among individual members of the group may be strong—but an individual wanting to
leave the group could be confident his or her work would be handled successfully by remain-
ing teammates. In contrast, where there is complementary fit, individuals who “complete” the
group may have fewer links to the group but may feel more obligated to stay put because their
responsibilities could not be readily assumed by others. The effects of different types of person-
group fit on mobility, then, deserve much more empirical attention.
Personal Life Perspective
The personal life perspective on job mobility suggests that individuals’ mobility is deter-
mined, in part, by factors in their personal lives rather than in their professional lives.
Researchers approaching the question of embeddedness from this perspective have studied
three major factors in particular: (a) amount and predictability of time demands, (b) support
in resolving work-life conflicts, and (c) family and friendship networks.
Amount and predictability of time demands. Time demands of personal life activities may
elicit either mobility or embeddedness. If individuals cannot satisfy the time demands from
work, they are more likely to leave for jobs that allow for greater flexibility, lower workload,
or more predictable work hours (Fernet, Guay, & Senecal, 2004; O’Driscoll, Ilgen, &
Hildreth, 1992). The underlying process presumed to drive this external mobility is burnout
in the current job (Kossek & Ozeki, 1998).
It should be noted that amount and predictability of time demands at home also influence
individuals’ mobility or embeddedness. Doering and Rhodes (1989) observed that when indi-
viduals do not have a family to support, they are more likely to make job changes. The theory
of conservation of resources also supports this rationale (Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999).
Support in resolving work-life conflict. Individuals faced with a high degree of work-life
conflict typically experience a lower quality of life (Kossek & Ozeki, 1998; Ng, Sorensen,
& Eby, in press). To reduce this conflict, individuals are likely to either switch to another
organization that provides greater time flexibility or withdraw totally from the labor force.
On the other hand, organizational programs aimed at relieving these conflicts (e.g., on-site
child care) may increase the sense of fit and the magnitude of sacrifice individuals would feel
if they left their positions (Casper & Buffardi, 2004).
Family and friendship networks. Family and friendship networks also influence mobility
and embeddedness (Dette & Dalbert, 2005). Because an individual’s mobility decisions
affect close family and friends, too, an employee is likely to take them into consideration
when making important job decisions. In early career, the main effect of families appears to
be embedding individuals in their initial occupational choices (Feldman, 2002c; Maertz &
Griffeth, 2004). For instance, new college graduates may feel the need to remain in occupa-
tions related to their college majors because their parents expect them to (Vignoli, Croity-
Belz, Chapeland, de Fillipis, & Martine, 2005).
For older individuals who are married and have started their own families, mobility deci-
sions may be influenced by the relative earning power of spouses, with primary wage earn-
ers having a proportionately greater influence on mobility decisions (Eby, Allen, & Douthitt,
1999; Van Ommeren, Rietveld, & Nijkamp, 2002). By and large, individuals who care
deeply about work-family balance tend to have a preference for stable home lives and com-
munity environments (Lee & Maurer, 1999). For instance, Kirchmeyer (2006) observed that
married individuals fear that any major changes they made in their organizations or occupa-
tions could also have major (and/or negative) consequences for their families and significant
others by disrupting their friendship and social ties.
Personality and Personal Style Perspective
The last set of factors we consider deal with individuals’ stable predispositions. In partic-
ular, we focus on the four that have received the most attention in the mobility literature,
namely, attachment styles, personality traits, career interests, and intelligence.
Attachment styles. Attachment has been defined as “the propensity of human beings to
make strong affectional bonds to particular others” (Bowlby, 1977: 201). Individuals can be
classified into four categories of attachment styles based on two dimensions: self-view and
others-view (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Collins, 1996). Those with positive self-view
and positive others-view have secure attachment styles. Those with positive self-view and
negative others-view have dismissive attachment styles. Those with negative self-view but
positive others-view have preoccupied attachment styles. Finally, those with negative self-
view and negative others-view have fearful attachment styles.
Attachment style can have a major impact on mobility and embeddedness. Those who
have secure attachment styles may experience more internal-upward job transitions. As
Blustein, Prezioso, and Schultheiss (1995) noted, these individuals tend to have a positive
view of others, which in turn may increase managers’ evaluations of their promotability
(Shore, Barksdale, & Shore, 1995). Those with preoccupied attachment styles may feel
favorably toward their employers and be predisposed to be organizationally stable. However,
because preoccupieds do not have positive self-concepts, they may be less likely to apply for
internal promotions (Boudreau, Boswell, & Judge, 2001; Judge, Higgins, Thoresen, &
Barrick, 1999). Individuals with fearful attachment styles do not have favorable views of oth-
ers and are more likely to frequently switch employers as a way to avoid committing them-
selves to work relationships and organizations (Corcoran & Mallinckrodt, 2000; Wolfe &
Betz, 2004). Those with dismissive attachment styles have a positive view of themselves, but
not of others; they, too, tend to change employers more frequently (Wooten, Timmerman, &
Folger, 1999).
Big 5 personality traits. Personality traits have long been investigated as important influ-
ences on job mobility. Here we focus on the “Big Five” (neuroticism, extraversion, consci-
entiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience) because this taxonomy is the most
widely used one in this research area (Costa & McCrae, 1992; Van Vianen, Feij, Krausz, &
Taris, 2003; Watson & Clark, 1992).
Neuroticism appears particularly relevant in predicting different types of job mobility.
Because people high on neuroticism consistently demonstrate nervousness and anxiety, they
may not be seen as desirable candidates for internal transfers or promotions (Ng et al., 2005).
However, those scoring high on neuroticism may frequently seek out external-lateral mobil-
ity options because they have low self-esteem and tend to search for positive affirmation
elsewhere (Judge & Bono, 2001). Extraversion and openness to experience may be related
to greater upward mobility (both internal and external to the firm) because individuals with
these traits tend to be more active and skillful in seeking out new job opportunities (Judge,
Bono, Illies, & Gerhardt, 2002; Watson & Clark, 1992).
Given that conscientiousness is consistently related to job performance (Barrick &
Mount, 1991), people who are high on conscientiousness should have more opportunities for
upward mobility (Tharenou, 1997). However, because conscientiousness is also associated
with dutifulness, responsibility, and dependability, highly conscientious individuals may be
more likely to have greater internal mobility than external mobility. To date, agreeableness
has not been clearly demonstrated to be related to any particular kind of job mobility.
Locus of control. Another personality trait that has been examined in the mobility literature
is locus of control. Rotter (1966) differentiated between individuals with internal and external
locus of control. Internals are those who believe that they are the masters of their own fate and
are typically confident in their abilities to manage their environments. Externals, on the other
hand, are those who believe that they do not have much control over their lives and perceive
themselves in passive roles with regard to mastering their environments.
Because internals are often more successful in their careers (Ng et al., 2005), they are likely
to have more mobility options, both internally and externally. For instance, Phillips and
Bedeian (1994) observed that internals were more likely to be “spotted” by senior employees
and to achieve greater hierarchical advancement. On the other hand, because externals do not
believe they can gain active control over their careers, they are disinclined to explore new
career opportunities, either laterally or vertically (Ng, Sorensen, & Eby, in press).
Career interests. Researchers have theorized that individuals’ specific career interests also
affect mobility and embeddedness (e.g., Lent, Brown, & Gail, 1994; Oleski & Subich, 1996).
Because Holland’s (1985) typology of career interests is the model most commonly adopted
and validated in the careers literature (Larson, Rottinghaus, & Borgen, 2002; Prediger,
2000), we discuss the potential relationships between the six interest areas in this typology
and job mobility.
Individuals with social career interests are more likely to experience mobility because
they are more comfortable exploring new jobs in both internal and external labor markets
(Larson et al., 2002). In contrast, individuals with conventional career interests may have the
least amount of external mobility because they prefer routine and predictability in their jobs
(Douce & Hansen, 1990).
Individuals with investigative, enterprising, and artistic career interests may be more
likely to experience mobility than stability, but for different reasons. Individuals with inves-
tigative interests tend to be similar to those high on openness to experience and therefore are
more likely to welcome new job opportunities (Larson et al., 2002). Those with enterprising
career interests are especially motivated to move upward and externally because they have a
greater need to manage others (Chan, Rounds, & Drasgow, 2000). Because individuals with
artistic career interests are concerned with self-expression and creativity, they may have a
greater desire to seek out self-employment instead of organization-based employment. (To
date, there has been little empirical evidence of the relationship between realistic career
interests and job mobility.)
Types of intelligence. Both Hunter (1986) and Kanfer and Ackerman (2004) made an
important distinction between fluid intellectual abilities (Gf) and crystallized intellectual
abilities (Gc). Fluid intellectual abilities refer to the capacity of working memory, level of
abstract reasoning, and ability to pay attention and process new information. The weight of
the evidence suggests that maximum levels of Gf are usually reached in the early twenties
and decline thereafter, although certainly not at the same speed for all individuals.
Consequently, the cognitive “cost” of exerting effort to learn new material is greater for middle-
aged and older adults than it is for young adults (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004), and occupational
embeddedness is likely to increase with age (Feldman & Ng, in press).
Crystallized intellectual abilities are associated with greater general knowledge, vocabu-
lary, and verbal comprehension (Cattell, 1987). They encompass both vocational knowledge
(about work topics) and avocational knowledge (about culture, for instance). In contrast to Gf,
Gc appears to grow well into middle age and beyond (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004). Kanfer and
Ackerman (2004) also suggested that, as Gf declines, individuals compensate by moving into
work roles that place high demands on Gc and low demands on Gf (Baltes & Baltes, 1990).
For this reason, older workers are more likely to seek out internal opportunities for manage-
rial jobs but are less likely to seek out external mobility options for technical jobs.
Mobility, Embeddedness, and Career Success
Having reviewed the literature on factors leading to mobility and embeddedness, we now
turn to two other related questions. First, which sets of factors are most closely associated
with different types of job, organizational, and occupational mobility (and embeddedness)?
Second, which types of mobility and embeddedness are most closely associated with differ-
ent kinds of career success?
Although there have been numerous studies of how the various factors identified earlier
relate to job mobility and job attitudes (cf. Ng et al., 2005), there have been very few empirical
studies of the factors associated with embeddedness, particularly organizational and occu-
pational embeddedness. Similarly, as noted above, there are very few studies that empirically
link different levels of embeddedness (job, organizational, and occupation) to either subjec-
tive or career success. As a result, there is not a sufficiently large empirical base on which to
make strong statements about the relative effect sizes of different factors on types of mobil-
ity and embeddedness or about the relative effect sizes of different levels of mobility and
embeddedness on various outcome variables.
At the same time, though, some preliminary patterns of results are emerging. Below, we
provide our qualitative assessments of the state of the literature on relationships among
career mobility, career embeddedness, and career success.
Strongest Influences on Embeddedness and Mobility
Aggregate amount of mobility. In general, the structural factors (such as macroeconomic

conditions) appear to have their greatest impact on the aggregate amount of mobility in the
working population—across jobs, across organizations, and across occupations (DiPrete,
1993; Doeringer, 1990; Hachen, 1992). Poor economic conditions make it financially more
difficult for individuals to accumulate enough resources to invest in new occupational train-
ing. In addition, poor economic conditions also decrease the number of new positions within
firms and the number of new firms created. Poor economic conditions also increase job inse-
curity, thereby making individuals less likely to give up any longevity-based employment
security or compensation benefits accrued in their current firms.
Mobility of historically disadvantaged groups. The social and legal environment factors
appear to have their greatest impact on the aggregate mobility of populations that have been
historically disadvantaged (Fujiwara-Greve & Greve, 2000; Rosenfeld, 1992). During the
past 50 years, changes in social policy have increased educational and employment oppor-
tunities for these employees by either reducing barriers to entry (e.g., affirmative action leg-
islation) or by providing resources for entry (e.g., Job Partnership Training Act). Even
government set-asides for particular geographic locations have been typically targeted at
areas that have been economically distressed for considerable periods of time. For the pop-
ulation in general, though, social and legal policies have had only modest effects on
employee mobility and/or embeddedness (DiPrete & Nonnemaker, 1997).
Occupational mobility and embeddedness. The factors that seem to be particularly salient
for occupational mobility are the permeability of occupational mobility structures and indus-
try growth. Permeability of occupational mobility structures and high industry growth rates not
only reduce barriers to entry but also increase workers’ expectations that they can successfully
shift into a particular new career path (Arnold, Loan-Clarke, Coombs, Wilkinson, Park, &
Preton, in press; Ng, Sorensen, Eby, & Feldman, in press). On the other hand, the factor that
seems to embed individuals in their current occupations most strongly is level of human capi-
tal investment (Fulgate et al., 2004; Wayne, Liden, Kraimer, & Graf, 1999). Both the econom-
ics and management literature suggest that individuals are reluctant to give up on “sunk costs,”
particularly when those sunk costs are high and are unlikely to be recoverable in the near term.
Organizational mobility and embeddedness. The literature to date suggests that the struc-
ture of pension and insurance benefits has the strongest effect on embedding employees in
their current organizations (Kim & Feldman, 1998, 2000). Using the same logic as above,
individuals are reluctant to give up on sunk costs, particularly when those sunk costs are
high. It is interesting to note here that pension and insurance benefits are not typically high
on the factors individuals consider when choosing organizations but tend to be more impor-
tant in decisions about leaving organizations (Buchmueller & Valletta, 1996).
The effects of compensation policies on organizational change and embeddedness are
complex. For example, although it is true that high salaries can embed employees with
golden handcuffs, true stars are often able to extract equally high or higher salaries in the
external labor market (Pil & Leana, 2000). In general, wage differences across organizations
are positively related to external mobility decisions (Hammida, 2004), but the interactions
between wages and longevity-based benefits on mobility decisions have not yet been
explored in much depth.
Job mobility and embeddedness. Here, we need to consider the differences between job
change within organizations and external job change separately. In terms of internal job
changes, the factors that appear to be the most embedding are social capital and social sup-
port. Even for individuals who feel the need for new job challenges, high social capital and
high social support appear to focus employees’ search for new positions within their current
firms (De Janasz & Sullivan, 2004).
On the other hand, the factors that appear to lead to more external job mobility are pre-
dictability of time demands and support in resolving work-life conflict (Ng & Sorensen, in press).
Guidelines regarding predictability of time demands and support for work-life conflict are more
likely to be set at the organizational level than at the unit level. That is, it is relatively uncommon
for some units, but not others, to have flextime and day care facilities. For this reason, then, indi-
viduals who like their job responsibilities but cannot function adequately in a particular organi-
zational context are more likely to seek out external job mobility opportunities instead.
Individual mobility and embeddedness. In general, the research on individual differences

suggests that these attributes affect decisions to engage in any type of mobility rather than
any specific type of mobility (Judge et al., 2002). For example, although openness to expe-
rience has been linked to greater willingness to change positions in general, there is not
enough evidence at this point to argue that openness to experience is strongly related to any
particular type of mobility (job, organizational, or occupational). Similarly, although indi-
viduals with social career interests appear to be more open to mobility in general, there is
not much evidence to suggest whether those interests have a greater impact on job, organi-
zational, or occupational mobility (Ng et al., 2005).
Relationships With Career Success
Occupational mobility and embeddedness. In general, there is not much concrete evi-
dence that changing occupations leads to more tangible rewards like salary, certainly in the
short run. Even for individuals who are moving from lower wage occupations to higher wage
occupations, workers have to spend money on retraining and incur some loss of income
while getting retrained (Arnold et al., in press). Moreover, individuals entering new occupa-
tions with long training periods (like medicine) have to forego multiple years of earnings to
make career changes. It is likely (but not inevitable) that occupational mobility leads to
greater objective career success in the long run, because we would expect more moves into
higher paying occupations than into lower paying ones (Hachen, 1992; Schniper, 2005).
On the other hand, the relationship between occupational change and subjective career
success may be higher for a variety of reasons (Hall & Chandler, 2005; Hill et al., 2003;
King, Burke, & Pemberton, 2005). First and foremost, individuals usually only make these
dramatic changes when their affect toward new occupations is significantly more positive
than their affect toward their current occupations. Second, individuals often enter new
careers with high positive expectations of job satisfaction, and those expectations can
become self-fulfilling prophecies. Third, through processes of cognitive dissonance, indi-
viduals may raise their evaluations of their new occupations to justify the sacrifices incur-
ring in leaving their prior vocations. Thus, subjective career success (e.g., job satisfaction) is
likely to be positively associated with occupational mobility (Feldman, 2002a).
To date, there has not been a great deal of research on the relationship between occupa-
tional embeddedness and subjective career success. Using the attraction-selection-attrition
paradigm (Schneider et al., 1995), we would predict that individuals who are most unhappy
with their occupations would drop out of those occupations over time. As a result, individu-
als who are embedded in their occupations over a long period of time are likely to be gener-
ally satisfied with their vocations. However, the link between occupational embeddedness
and objective career success is more tenuous and depends, to a large extent, on the wage levels
within an occupation (Feldman, 2002a; Ng & Feldman, in press). For example, librarians
may be highly embedded in their occupations, but typically there are relatively low wages
and limited upward mobility opportunities in that career path.
Organizational mobility and embeddedness. The relationships between organizational

mobility and objective measures of career success are frequently opposite those we observe
with occupational mobility. Interorganizational mobility tends to bid up wages in the labor
market (Lam & Dreher, 2004), because individuals are reluctant to change jobs unless a
noticeable pay raise is part of the package. In addition, many individuals who are unsuc-
cessful in getting promoted internally seek out opportunities for promotions in the external
market and frequently take them when offered. Thus, all things being equal, organizational
mobility tends to be positively related to objective career success.
On the other hand, the influence of interorganizational mobility on subjective career
success may depend on whether the mobility is sought from an “approach” or “avoidance”
motivation (Kondratuk, Hausdorf, Korabik, & Rosin, 2004). When individuals change orga-
nizations voluntarily (e.g., to take advantage of significant promotion opportunities), feel-
ings of subjective career success are likely to be higher (Arthur, Khapova, & Wilderom,
2005). However, if mobility is sought out primarily to escape highly stressful environments,
then individuals might hurriedly accept jobs in other organizations that are only marginally
superior to their present positions. In these cases, we would not expect any significant
increase in subjective career success. Moreover, there is some evidence that individuals carry
over poor job attitudes in one organization to the next (Hochwarter, Perrewé, Ferris, &
Bryner, 1999).
The evidence on the relationships between organizational embeddedness and career suc-
cess is mixed. There are reasons to expect that organizational embeddedness may be associ-
ated with greater subjective career success. Individuals who are terribly unhappy are most
likely to self-select out early in their tenure with an organization, and so the remaining, long-
term employees tend to be relatively satisfied (Schneider et al., 1995). Moreover, long-term
embeddedness in an organization is likely to be associated with greater feelings of security
and financial well-being in retirement (Kim & Feldman, 1998, 2000).
However, long-term organizational embeddedness may not be significantly related to
objective career success. Because external wages typically get bid up faster than internal
wages, employees who have spent their whole careers in one firm may end up making
lower wages than their more mobile counterparts (Hammida, 2004; Haveman & Cohen,
1994). Also, particularly at the higher levels of organizations, it is hard to get promoted
internally into top management positions. Consequently, external mobility might be more
strongly related to ultimate hierarchical level attained than embeddedness is (Baruch &
Peiperl, 2003).
Job mobility and embeddedness. Like organizational mobility, external job mobility often
enhances objective career success because individuals typically accrue new skills or a
broader range of skills in such moves. These enhanced skill sets tend to raise individuals’
salaries and/or their promotion prospects in the labor market (Bird, 1996; Eby et al., 2003).
In addition, because wages in the external labor market tend to increase more quickly than
internal wages, external job mobility is more likely to lead to greater objective career suc-
cess than internal job mobility does (Feldman, 2002a).
Here, too, the relationship between job mobility and subjective career success is influ-
enced by whether individuals engage in external job mobility to approach better opportuni-
ties or to escape bad job situations. When individuals change jobs to take advantage of more
interesting and involving duties and responsibilities, external job mobility is likely to be
associated with greater subjective perceptions of career success (Hall & Chandler, 2005). In
contrast, when turnover is motivated by a desire to escape the present job rather than from
any genuine interest in the new position, there is no reason to expect that feelings of subjec-
tive career success will be any higher (Maertz & Griffeth, 2004). In addition, the relation-
ship between job changes and subjective career success is influenced by whether the job
moves entail upward, lateral, or downward mobility. Subjective career success is highly
likely with promotions and highly unlikely with demotions.
Discussion
In this final section, we revisit the construct of boundaryless careers and suggest some
ways in which it can be more thoughtfully used in future careers research. We also iden-
tify additional avenues for future research and implications for career development in
practice.
Reconsidering the Construct of Boundaryless Careers
Although the term boundaryless career has been used extensively in the careers literature,
the construct is somewhat imprecise. In their original formulation, Arthur and Rousseau
(1996: 6) enumerated at least six different connotations of the term. These include changes
in employers, external validation of market worth from outside employers, connectedness to
external networks, nonhierarchical reporting relationships, refusal to take employer-offered
job changes, and flexibility (or constraints) on mobility because of personal circumstances.
Consequently, it has sometimes been unclear as to whether the term boundaryless careers
refers to the nature of the environment in which career mobility takes place, the actual tra-
jectories of workers themselves, or even geographic mobility (Sullivan & Arthur, 2006). It is
also sometimes unclear whether the term refers to objective measures of mobility (e.g., the
frequency with which people change jobs) or to subjective measures of mobility (e.g.,
employees’ perceptions of the desirability or instrumentality of increased mobility).
Ironically, during the past decade, the construct of boundaryless careers has become some-
what boundaryless itself.
Here, we suggest that there are two major components of the boundaryless career con-
struct. The first is the permeability of institutional labor markets. From an institutional per-
spective, permeability refers to the number of alternative jobs, organizations, and
occupations available to employees and the ease or difficulty of entry into them (Belous,
1990; Doeringer, 1990). The second is the plasticity of individuals’ career paths. At the indi-
vidual level, plasticity refers to the frequency and degree of change (in jobs, organizations,
and occupations) across a person’s work history (cf. Nicholson & West, 1988). We believe it
is critical to distinguish boundarylessness as an attribute of the environment from boundary-
lessness as an attribute of an individual’s own work history.
We also propose a specification that clearly differentiates objective from subjective bound-
arylessness, much as we currently distinguish objective career success from subjective career
success (Hall, 1976; Ng et al., 2005). For instance, there are both objective barriers to entry
(e.g., years of education required) and subjective measures of permeability (e.g., employees’
perceptions of labor market opportunities). Similarly, there are both objective indicators of
plasticity of career paths (e.g., the ratio of job changes to years in the workforce) and subjec-
tive indicators of plasticity (e.g., attitudes toward the desirability of job mobility).
Furthermore, we suggest that some original elements of the “boundaryless career” con-
struct—particularly, networking outside the firm, getting external validation of wages from
outside employers, and refusal to accept job changes from the current employer—be con-
sidered as career tactics instead (Cappelli, 1999; Pil & Leana, 2000). Although these tactics
can certainly be instrumental in terms of increasing mobility and/or career success, they are
not systematically aligned with boundarylessness per se. For example, individuals may seek
out external validation from the market not so they can move but rather so they can stay in
their current firm but with a higher salary.
It is also important to reconsider whether the construct boundaryless career should retain
all the positive connotations it has acquired during the past decade. The term has commonly
been used to convey notions of unbounded, limitless, or infinite possibilities. However, bound-
aryless careers are hardly cost-free. For example, Eby (2001) found that among dual-earner
married couples, the interfirm upward mobility of one spouse was often accompanied by
downward mobility of the other.
In sum, then, the utility of the construct of boundaryless careers has decreased over time
as the number of attributes associated with the term has increased. Going forward from here,
a more precise, value-neutral specification of that term will be needed for serious research
to accumulate in meaningful ways. Indeed, as King et al. (2005) noted, it might be just as
fair to use the term bounded career as boundaryless career.
Directions for Future Research
Consistent with the discussion above, then, it is critical that researchers start taking a finer
grained look at career mobility, career embeddedness, and career success. By lumping all
kinds of mobility together, we increase the likelihood of spurious (and suppressor) relation-
ships with indicators of career success. Equally critically, we may draw overstated inferences
about the degree of mobility in the population. It has now become almost an urban myth that
the average graduate today will have five to seven careers throughout his or her life, but that
figure is totally inconsistent with objective data on occupational change (Schniper, 2005).
We owe it to other scholars, and to the public at large, to be more precise with our data and
our inferences from those data.
Although careers researchers draw on a wide variety of theoretical perspectives in their
research, careers research has been dominated by a few paradigms in particular: valence-
instrumentality-expectancy models (Kim & Feldman, 2000), the stress-coping paradigm
(Kammeyer-Mueller & Wanberg, 2003), role theory (Eby et al., 1999), and network theory
(Green & Bauer, 1995). Two additional perspectives, in particular, might be fruitfully
brought to bear on questions about mobility and embeddedness.
One research perspective that warrants greater attention is cognitive decision processes.
With numerous advances in cognitive psychology during the past decade, it is time to recon-
sider how decision-making heuristics and biases play into mobility and/or stability decisions.
Furthermore, to the extent that these biases have been studied in previous research on mobil-
ity, they have primarily been explored in the context of decisions about first jobs out of
school. However, individuals’ cognitive processing capacities change over time. Thus, we
need to investigate how decision-making biases influence mobility and/or stability decisions
across the entire career (Feldman & Ng, in press; Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004).
Another theoretical approach to mobility and embeddedness that might prove useful is
one grounded in emotions research (Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999). That is, we have rela-
tively little evidence about how individuals’ emotions, rather than their cognitions, affect
decisions to leave or stay. Also, research on emotional contagion might help us understand
the dynamics that underlie widespread exits from a firm—exits that are not explainable by
individuals’ personal circumstances alone.
Like several other fields in the organizational sciences, careers researchers have often
focused their investigations on one level of analysis (e.g., the structural perspective, the fam-
ily perspective, or the individual-differences perspective). Although no research study could
reasonably be expected to investigate all factors related to mobility and embeddedness, the
lack of attention to labor market dynamics in particular (cf. DiPrete et al., 1997) has been a
major methodological shortcoming in careers research. The economic context in which
mobility or embeddedness occurs significantly influences how individuals perceive the pos-
sibility or desirability of changing jobs; in some senses, labor markets become the “strong”
or “weak” situations that allow (or prevent) individual employees from acting in ways con-
sistent with their true preferences. Moreover, labor market dynamics might interact with
individual differences to help explain mobility and/or stability behavior. For instance, the
relationship between locus of control and the decision to leave might be moderated by the
robustness of the labor market, with internal locus of control influencing mobility decisions
only in growing economies but not in stagnant ones.
As noted earlier, there has been much more research on intentions to move than on actual
mobility behavior (Ng et al., 2005). It is easy to see why this is the case, given the difficulty of
collecting actual mobility data over time. Nonetheless, the relative lack of attention to actual
mobility in academic disciplines besides economics has resulted in a situation in which we
know much more about willingness to move than actual mobility itself. From a methodologi-
cal perspective, then, much more longitudinal research on actual mobility is clearly needed.
Implications for Practice
The research on mobility and embeddedness has some implications for how organizations
and individuals pursue career development activities. For example, the common practice of
making employees generate outside offers to justify requests for pay raises has several unin-
tended negative consequences. It signals employees that they should be frequently job hunt-
ing—despite the evidence that intention to search is an excellent predictor of turnover and
that it is the best employees who will be able to generate the most external offers (Maertz &
Griffeth, 2004). At the same time, employees who generate these offers often feel boxed into
accepting them, even if they are not excited about them, simply to save face if their current
employers do not “counter” (Pil & Leana, 2000).
For organizations, the decisions about whether to encourage mobility or embeddedness
should be tied closely to corporate strategy. Mobility and embeddedness are not ends in and
of themselves but rather means of linking HR practices to overall corporate goals. In quickly
growing units or functional areas, more organizational embeddedness is likely to be encour-
aged. In contrast, in business units and functional areas experiencing decline, firms may be
more willing to live with higher levels of turnover and external job mobility. In addition,
firms can use longevity-based benefits (like pensions) and family-friendly practices (like on-
site child care) to increase/decrease organizational embeddedness as needed.
From the perspective of individual employees, decisions about mobility and embedded-
ness are complex and appear to depend heavily on career stage and life stage considerations
(Feldman, 2002a). The evidence suggests that, in early career, the benefits of both job and
organizational mobility are numerous: They each build human and social capital at a stage
in life where the returns on these investments can accumulate. Moreover, for young adults
who came out of school with little specific (or the wrong kind of) training, the ability to
engage in occupational mobility and yet recoup the costs of retraining is still high.
In contrast, as individuals enter middle age, the forces toward occupational embeddedness
become stronger; employees become both more time-involved with, and financially com-
mitted, to family responsibilities (Kondratuk et al., 2004). That does not mean middle-aged
or mid-career employees cannot, or should not, be occupationally mobile. Rather, such
moves require a very high degree of investment in one’s career (relative to one’s personal
life) and sacrifices from one’s family and friends as well as from oneself. Job and organiza-
tional mobility at mid-career can still be generally beneficial, both to avoid career plateau-
ing and to increase one’s standard of living.
Finally, in late career, the degrees of freedom for older workers are often greater. Older
workers’ career concerns shift from the accumulation of assets to a greater desire for close
relationships and socially meaningful work (Hall, 1976). Thus, many earlier constraints on
mobility are relaxed (Kim & Feldman, 2000). Moreover, late-career and older workers typi-
cally have fewer embedding forces related to children and parents and thus experience less
pull to keep them on their current trajectories. It is perhaps quite fitting that, after long careers
marked by countless obligations to employers and families, older workers should have the
most opportunities for genuinely boundaryless careers. Thus, as highlighted throughout the
article, for scholars and practitioners alike who are concerned with issues of mobility and
embeddedness, it is critical to explore the different constellations of mobility opportunities,
embeddedness constraints, and definitions of career success across the entire life span.
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Biographical Notes
Daniel C. Feldman (PhD, Yale University) is Synovus Chair of Servant Leadership and Associate Dean for
Research at the Terry College of Business, University of Georgia. His research interests include career indecision,
organizational socialization, career mobility, early retirement incentives, workaholism, and career embeddedness.
Thomas W. H. Ng (PhD, University of Georgia) is an assistant professor of management in the School of Business
and Economics at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include organizational commitment, high-
performance work teams, workplace stress and health, social support, and career mobility.

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Refining Key Constructs

Six Perspectives on Mobility and Embeddedness

The structural perspective suggests that employees’ mobility or embeddedness is largely

Macroeconomic conditions. Economic conditions influence the expansion or downsizing

Gender composition. As Rosenfeld noted, “Differences among types of firms, industries,

Wage levels. Hachen (1992) performed a comprehensive study of the relationships

Degree of change in occupational responsibilities. In occupations that have experienced

Human capital investments. Investments in generalizable occupational skills (skills that

Intraorganizational networks. Many organizational researchers have paid attention to

Organizational socialization practices. Another organizational factor that may affect

Work Group Perspective

Task interdependence. Task interdependence is the extent to which coworkers depend on

Complementary versus supplementary person-group fit. Researchers differentiate between

Personal Life Perspective

Personality and Personal Style Perspective

Mobility, Embeddedness, and Career Success

Strongest Influences on Embeddedness and Mobility

Aggregate amount of mobility. In general, the structural factors (such as macroeconomic

Individual mobility and embeddedness. In general, the research on individual differences

Relationships With Career Success

Organizational mobility and embeddedness. The relationships between organizational

Reconsidering the Construct of Boundaryless Careers

Directions for Future Research

Implications for Practice

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