"New organizations, new careers? Objective success and “career worlds” in new organizations"

In this paper, we address the assumption that new, “post-industrial organizations”, devoted to knowledge economy, would have enacted new career paths and new rules for career success. The first aim of this article is to describe actual career trajectories in “post-industrial” organizations. Second, we seek to understand which individuals and which behaviors are rewarded by career success. We examine the impact of “career worlds,” that is, cognitive schemas mobilized by individuals to bring about objective success in these different types of organizations. We surveyed 537 French managers. The data show that the situation of managers employed in post-industrial organizations does not differ from that of other managers. Both types of organizations reward loyalty to company strategy and to colleagues, belief in the efficiency of markets, and giving up notions of a subjective career. These results suggests that the traditional career is still both an opportunity and an objective, even in organizations that see...