Boundaryless careers and institutional resources

Abstract

The 'boundaryless career' model has been dominant in the careers and management literatures for over a decade. It has provided valuable conceptual tools for researchers as well as a supportive ideology for those embarking on careers outside the limits of a single organization. It has stimulated a great deal of research in a variety of countries. But, along with a growing number of critics, we suggest that this model has an excessively individualistic bias which views career success as largely a function of individual proactive traits and the person-cantered social networks built by individual action. As a result it has neglected the institutional resources needed to support such careers. In this paper we outline seven different sets of needs for successful boundaryless careers: career counselling, socioemotional support, job performance and entrepreneurial skills, skill transferability and certification, labour market assistance, financial and material resources, and collective voice. We then describe institutions that currently provide at least some of the resources to meet these needs and have the potential to provide more: employers, occupational communities and associations, labour unions, employment and recruiting agencies, temporary worker agencies, community organizations, the Internet, and government at all levels. Employers can play a key role in supporting boundaryless careers by serving as points of reference for independent and contract workers, in particular those who have been their full-time employees. Rather than boundaryless, we suggest that more appropriate metaphors for the new career might be boundary crossing and boundary converging. We call for more research on the role of institutionally provided resources in supporting extra-organizational careers.