Ricardo Rodrigues

Have careers become boundaryless

The idea the boundaryless career has recently permeated the careers literature. However, critics have claimed that the concept is fuzzy and difficult to operationalize. Moreover, one of the core assumptions, namely the collapse of traditional organizational careers allied to increasing mobility across organizational boundaries, has rarely been seriously analysed in the careers literature. This article aims to take forward the analysis of the boundaryless career concept in two ways. First, we discuss its conceptual and operational problems. We argue that the current debate, focused on the permeability of organizational boundaries, fails fully to address the complexity of contemporary careers. Second, we integrate contributions from labour economics on job stability to argue that the assumption of the collapse of the traditional career model is not supported by the evidence. In our conclusions, we draw on boundary theory to outline the potential of a different approach to the conceptualization of career boundaries.

Smells like team spirit: Opening a paradoxical black box:

Despite the common usage of the term, researchers and practitioners have not been able properly to explain what team spirit is and what benefits and drawbacks it might bring to teams. Several definitions have been proposed, but not in a consistent manner. Using a qualitative approach, we worked with one football team to shed light on how individuals experience and characterize team spirit. Our results suggest that team spirit is built around four paradoxes: these are a paradox of selfless egoism; a paradox of results; a paradox of conflict, and a paradox of relationships. Essentially, team spirit can be viewed as an inter-subjectively shared facility with which individual members of a team can balance opposing tensions in a consistent way, managing to maintain a healthy synthesis between individual and collective needs and expectations, preventing the team from dominating the individuals, as well as specific individuals from capturing the team.

Bounded or boundaryless? An empirical investigation of career boundaries and boundary crossing

The article argues that the long-running debate between organizationally bounded and boundaryless careers has been too narrow and neglects the variety and distinctive characteristics of career boundaries. Drawing on boundary theory, it investigates the main career-relevant domains and boundaries, and the motivations and structural conditions that influence boundary crossing or having a career within a specific domain among a sample of professional pharmacists. The qualitative study shows that careers are enacted within a number of relevant domains and are shaped by a range of boundaries such that boundarylessness and embeddedness are co-existing career dimensions. It also reveals how even within a professional population careers are embedded within diverse social and cultural contexts that impose differing constraints on career mobility. The article therefore provides a fuller, more nuanced understanding of career boundaries and contemporary careers.

Are Participants in the New Career Good Organizational Citizens

Commentators have argued that a ‘new career’ deal has emerged, captured by the notions of the protean and the boundaryless career, signaling the demise of the traditional organizational career and ...