An important force in the transformation of the world of work over the past three to four decades has been globalisation. The process of globalisation is intractably enmeshed with the development of new organisational forms, and new forms of work. Consequently, the form of careers and how careers are perceived has changed as well. However, as discussed in Chapter Three (pp. 42-51), the debates on the nature, causes and consequences of globalisation are manifold. This renders any discussion like the following necessarily selective.
The changes on the level of the firm saw firstly a transformation towards internationalisation with the increasing importance of world markets. This pertains on the one hand to the increase international trade, and on the other to the globalisation of production.
While both phenomena have a long history, dating back to the origins of capitalism (Wallerstein 1974, 2004), their importance has vastly increased with the current wave of globalisation since the 1970s. The consequence of the prominent role of world markets has altered the demands on organisations in multiple ways. With an increase in global trade comes the requirement to be able to engage with actors in the marketplace outside local contexts, which makes the acquisition of knowledge and information across borders and cultural customs a necessity in terms of business interests and demands an opening up of firms to outside influences. Further, technological innovation and globalisation, especially through financial markets, increase all-round competitiveness, requiring ever faster responses by firms, leading to a paradigm of organisational flexibility (O’Brian and Williams 2008: 174ff, Inkson 2008: 546ff).
This finds its expression in new organisational forms, the most prominent example of these being transnational corporations. Such multinational enterprises are both a result and a driving force of economic globalisation. Transnational corporations integrate the global production process either vertically (when different stages of production occur in different countries), horizontally (parallel production in multiple countries), or as conglomerates (across a wide range of products and countries to diversify risks) through a unified structure of ownership (O’Brian and Williams 2008: 179). While classical organisational theory conceptualised the
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firm as a singular unit, directed by clear, centralised hierarchy of management, the physically dispersed structure of multinational corporations requires a more flexible organisational structure. The geographical dispersion of the sub-units of such firms requires the ability to operate in multiple local contexts simultaneously and leads to strong intra-organisational differentiations between local subsidiaries. Based on multiple case studies of transnational corporations, Ghoshal and Bartlett (1990) argue that the dispersed structure of such firms should be described as an inter-organisational network rather than as a centralised hierarchy. While such a hierarchy exists formally, the everyday business in transnational corporations is defined by the local and international contexts of specific subsidiaries, who pursue their business with a relatively high degree of operational autonomy. This can lead to diverging interests between different subsidiaries, and to contesting business strategies and struggles over authority within the same company.
However, it is not just transnational corporations who have adopted a network paradigm.
A second main “transmission belt” of economic globalisation exists in the networks of small- and medium-sized enterprises, specialising in economic niches as parts of global value chains (Gereffi, and Korzeniewicz. 1994, Castells 2000: 172ff). In such chains, the production process is segmented along various small firms, often in different countries. While such firms are not part of transnational corporations, their network of customers, partner firms, and subcontractors creates a flexible economic structure, linking firms closely with each other, thereby mitigating competitive market relations. Although organisationally independent firms, their embeddedness in these dense economic networks renders their external boundaries porous, as the strong cooperation within such networks creates interlocking work environments, thereby diminishing organisational autonomy.
In the literature on management, these developments find their expression in a turn away from the prescription of hierarchical organisational structures. As such economic environments demand organisational flexibility and the workplace becomes increasingly organised around projects, paradigms such as the “network organisation” or the “boundaryless organisation”
(Gebhard 1996, Ashkenas et al. 1997, Robbins and Coulter 2015: 346-360) have emerged. The aim of such organisational strategies is “to eliminate vertical and horizontal boundaries [within the firm] and break down external barriers between the company and its customers and suppliers” (Robbins and Coulter 2015: 348) in order to efficiently organise the workflow and the transmission of knowledge and information along the chain from suppliers to customers.
Although the extent to which such practices are actually implemented, and the amount of intra- and inter-firm boundaries actually disappearing to the degree described in management
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textbooks, are both disputed (see for example Newell et al. 2001, Victor 1994), the discourse on these forms of organisational design has nevertheless sustained a change in perspective on careers and the world of work.
Corresponding to the concept of the “boundaryless organisation”, the idea of the
“boundaryless career” (Inkson 2008, Arthur et al. 2005, Arthur 1994) has found traction in the literature since the 1990s. Conceptualised as an antithesis to the model of the organisational career, this model aims at capturing the effect of the changes in the economic, organisational, and normative structures on career paths. As the flexibilisation of organisational forms and employment relations breaches the traditional “psychological contract expectations” (Slay and Taylor 2007: 379f) of security, stability and loyalty between employer and employee, the perspective on working life becomes increasingly disentangled from the idea of a lifetime job.
These factors have led to a re-evaluation of the assumption that careers would be a primarily organisational matter, to be managed by human resources departments. Instead of seeing careers as determined by organisational management and structures, increasing attention is now being paid to individual agency. In this respect, the concept of the “boundaryless career” is closely related to the model of the “protean career”, which comprehends careers as “based upon individually defined goals, encompassing the whole life space, as well as being driven by psychological success rather than objective success such as pay, rank, or power” (Briscoe and Hall 2006: 6). These approaches complete thereby the turn from conceptualizing careers as an objectively assessable pathway within a definite framework and clear outcomes to a more subjective conception, centred on a more holistic conception of the individual.
As critics have remarked, these models easily fall prey to propagating “images of talented men and women, liberated from the constraints of organizational life, moving autonomously to exciting opportunities and developing ever more interesting and prosperous careers” (Inkson 2008: 555), despite the fact that for many people such work arrangements primarily mean insecurity and precarisation (Hirsch and Shanley 1996). The possibility of such careers, and the consequences of such a lifestyle, depend on the specific social context of the individual, and the resources she has available.
In order to avoid these pitfalls of mono-directional reasoning, Mayerhofer et al. (2007) argue, that career research needs to move beyond such “surface views”, and employ “full-scale”
social theory (Mayerhofer et al. 2007: 228ff). Such theories need to “offer a reflexive relationship between action and structure; go beyond the organisation as the main point of reference; avoid the selective bias or one-sided choice of objective versus subjective career and include neglected areas such as power distribution and inequality” (228). As I have shown in
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the discussion at the beginning of this chapter, it is precisely this perspective which spells out the merits of field-theory.