ABSTRACT

“The career is dead – long live the career” was the statement Mirvis and Hall (1994) ascribed to, at the time, the new situation in which organizational careers seemed of less relevance as a result of the changes of employment relations in the new economy. Following that came the “boundaryless career,” a concept that removed the organization as well as at its bureaucratic boundaries from the career debate, favoring agency and boundarylessness over structure, institutions and boundaries. Despite the popularity of the construct, boundaryless careers have also been criticized for oversimplifying the complexity of careers and for overlooking the fact that careers exist in a context with boundaries at multiple levels. We concur with the literature that there has been a transformation of careers as a result of short-term employments and flexible ways of organizing work. However, this chapter will challenge the unproductive simplification put forward by this view that states that organizational boundaries and other structures have no, or only have limited impact on career processes.