Bravo2015 PDF

Article
Journal of Career Assessment

1-24
ª The Author(s) 2015
Measuring Career Reprints and permission:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Orientations in the Era of the DOI: 10.1177/1069072715616107
jca.sagepub.com
Boundaryless Career
Jesus Bravo1, Scott E. Seibert2, Maria L. Kraimer2,

Sandy J. Wayne3, and Robert C. Liden3
Abstract
Schein proposed his career anchor construct more than 40 years ago. The purpose of our research
is to use current career theory perspectives to reconceptualize and develop a measure that is
grounded in the career anchor framework but better reflects the boundaryless nature of careers
today. We conducted two studies in which we develop and validate a measure of career orientation
by examining its internal structure (Study 1) and external validity within a nomological network of
conceptually related variables (Study 2). Results suggest that career orientation is best represented
by a six-dimension factor structure: entrepreneurial creativity, security, managerial competence,
lifestyle, technical competence, and service to a cause. Five of the six factors that emerged were
correlated as expected with proactive personality, ambition, career self-management behaviors,
mentoring relationships, and workplace attitudes, providing support for our conceptualization and
measure of career orientation. The implications for both theory and practice are discussed.
Keywords
career anchor, career orientation, boundaryless career, protean career
Career scholars have observed that rapid changes in global trade, technology, organizational design,
and workforce diversity over the last two decades have led to changes in the employee–organization
relationship and the erosion of the traditional organization-based career (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996;
Sullivan & Baruch, 2009). Classically, careers unfolded within the framework of a stable organiza-
tional structure with a clear linear progression up an organization’s hierarchy (Levinson, 1978; Sul-
livan & Baruch, 2009; Super, 1957). Within the traditional organizational career, the opportunities
and constraints of one’s organization—job titles, pay grades, functional role hierarchies—acted as
1
Department of Management, Information Systems and Entrepreneurship, Carson College of Business, Washington State
University, Richland, WA, USA
2
Management & Organizations, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
3
Managerial Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Corresponding Author:
Jesus Bravo, Department of Management, Information Systems and Entrepreneurship, Carson College of Business,
Washington State University, 2710 Crimson Way, Richland, WA 99354, USA.
Email: jesus.bravo@tricity.wsu.edu
Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

2 Journal of Career Assessment
an external guide for one’s career. Success could be judged, both by the employee and by others, in
terms of these external indicators. In the last several decades, with the decline in the traditional
career, novel perspectives on how careers are approached by individuals and organizations have
emerged. Two such perspectives include the boundaryless career as described by Arthur (1994) and
protean career as described by Hall (1996).
Unlike the traditional career that is conceived and can unfold in a single organizational setting,
the boundaryless career is a multifaceted phenomenon that can involve and transcend various bound-
aries both physically and psychologically (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996; Briscoe & Hall, 2006). In a
boundaryless career, individuals can no longer rely on organizational promotions and internal career
paths, and they are less likely to stay within a single ‘‘bounded’’ career path or organization (Arthur
& Rousseau, 1996). Instead, individuals’ careers may cross many boundaries, as they move across
work roles, organizations, occupations, and even forms of employment during their career. The
implication for individuals is that they need to be ‘‘protean’’—that is, versatile, mutable, and adap-
table to the changing circumstances of their unfolding career (Briscoe & Hall, 2006; Briscoe, Hall, &
Frautschy DeMuth, 2006).
According to Briscoe, Hall, and Frautschy DeMuth (2006, the protean career attitude is defined
by two dimensions. The values driven dimension suggests that the individual’s internal values pro-
vide both guidance and measures of success for the individual’s career, while the self-directed
dimension provides the ability to be adaptive in terms of both performance and learning opportuni-
ties. As such, the person’s career is based on the needs and goals of the whole person, and success is
judged in terms of the person’s own internal, subjective criteria (Hall, 1996; Sullivan & Baruch,
2009). An individual with a protean career attitude needs to be resilient—ready, willing and able
to adapt to changing career circumstances in the boundaryless career era.
In short, what these two perspectives suggest is that companies may no longer be able to offer
upward, linear career mobility to motivate and retain individuals, and thus, understanding what
motivates individuals’ career choices is important to retaining top performers and engaged employ-
ees. One framework that could help organizations better understand career choices is Schein’s career
anchors (Schein, 1978, 1990). A career anchor identifies an individual’s career self-concept based on
one’s attitudes and values, self-perceived talents and abilities, and career motives and needs (Schein,
1978, 1990). Because of its focus on internal values and needs, the career anchor framework can be
useful for understanding the important drivers of individuals’ career choices in today’s boundaryless
career. Yet, the career anchor framework was originally developed over 40 years ago when careers
were more traditional. Thus, the potential of the career anchor concept has not been fully utilized
because of certain outdated assumptions of the original construct as well as the limited empirical
verification of career anchor measures (Feldman & Bolino, 1996; Igbaria & Baroudi, 1993). Thus,
it is time to revisit and update the career anchor framework and measure.
The purpose of the current study is to reconceptualize this theoretical construct and develop a
measure reflecting these theoretical revisions. To avoid confusion with Schein’s original career
anchor framework, we will refer to our revised construct and measure as career orientations. We
define career orientations as the features of work that define one’s career goals reflecting the indi-
vidual’s self-concept regarding his or her self-perceived values, interests, experiences, skills, and
abilities. Career orientations reflect the notion that internal values and self-direction are the drivers
of career decisions in the protean and boundaryless career era. This is consistent with other scholars
studying vocational behavior who have recognized the importance of individuals’ abilities, needs,
and values to issues such as occupational choice (Holland, 1959), work adjustment (Dawis &
Lofquist, 1984), and career development (Super, 1980). Thus, we contribute to the line of research
that has examined how individual differences relate to career choices and decisions.
Specifically, by developing and validating a measure of career orientations, we contribute to the
careers literature in three ways. First, we reconceptualize the career anchors framework so that its

Bravo et al. 3
theoretical assumptions are more consistent with today’s boundaryless careers. Our main argument
is that people tend to no longer remain with a single organization for long periods of time and simi-
larly do not guide their careers based on a single career anchor. Instead, individuals are guided by
multiple orientations and the set of orientations may change over their careers. Second, our study
makes an empirical contribution to the careers literature by offering an updated, valid scale to mea-
sure career orientations. By allowing for the possibility of individuals having multiple career orien-
tations at a time, as opposed to maintaining just one career anchor, and recognizing that individuals
may need to shift the significance of their career orientation throughout their careers, our updated
scale is better able to capture the realities of today’s boundaryless career. This revision will allow
future researchers to further examine how career orientations impact individuals’ work attitudes,
behaviors, and career decisions. Third, our updated scale offers a practical contribution by providing
a measure that can enhance practitioner’s understanding of what motivates individuals’ career
choices and work behaviors. We first theoretically develop our career orientations construct and then
develop and validate our measure across two studies.
From Career Anchor to Career Orientation

Schein defined a career anchor as the individual’s overall career self-concept that consists of focal
individuals’ attitudes and values, self-perceived talents and abilities, and most importantly, motives
and needs as they pertain to one’s career (Schein, 1978, 1987, 1990, 2006). By defining priorities
and values, career anchors provide individuals with a particular orientation toward work that guides
how they approach their careers. Schein’s early work on career anchors, based on in-depth interview
data, posited a typology of five distinct career anchors: (1) technical/functional competence, (2)
managerial competence, (3) security and stability, (4) autonomy and independence, and (5) entrepre-
neurial creativity (Schein, 1978). Subsequent work by Schein (1987, 1990) proposed three additional
career anchors: (6) service and dedication to a cause, (7) pure challenge, and (8) lifestyle.
In formulating the concept of the career anchor, Schein sought to develop an understanding of
how individuals establish for themselves a source of direction and coherence in their careers. A prin-
cipal assumption underlying Schein’s model is that individuals have only one true career anchor and
do not have multiple anchors. He argues that, even in the face of difficult choices, a career anchor is
the one element in a person’s self-concept that one would be unwilling to give up (Schein, 1990).
However, the assertion that individuals hold only one dominant anchor may be an artifact of meth-
ods that forced respondents to choose only one anchor (Schein, 1978, 1987, 1990). As Feldman and
Bolino (1996) note, ‘‘On a purely statistical level, arbitrarily adding extra points to higher ranking
items (as Schein does) forces a distinction which does not exist in the raw data’’ (p. 105). In contrast,
studies that have used Likert scaling techniques to measure respondents’ agreement with each of the
scale items (e.g., Danzinger, Rachman-Moore, & Valency, 2008) have found that the anchors cor-
relate in ways that suggest individuals may identify with multiple anchors. Overall, the empirical
research does not support Schein’s assumption that individuals hold only one true anchor. Another
vital assumption of Schein’s anchor model holds that fundamentally, career anchors do not change.
More specifically, Schein (1990) suggests that as individuals mature, their future career choices sta-
bilize along with their career anchor. Schein (2006) further argues that career anchors are built on
job experiences and the feedback one receives regarding one’s competencies, motives, and values.
As such, the career anchor is viewed as a stabilizing force in providing coherence to career decisions
and in guiding future career directions. Because the empirical studies testing Schein’s career anchor
framework have all been cross-sectional surveys or interview studies, it is unknown whether Schein
is correct in assuming that career anchors are a stabilizing force. In fact, Schein (1990) acknowl-
edges that although there is evidence on the side of stability, the empirical evidence is inconclusive.

In terms of measurement, researchers have primarily relied on Schein’s (1990) 40-item career
anchor inventory scale to measure career anchors despite there being little evidence for the scale’s
psychometric properties. One problem is that Schein’s career anchor scale has shown reliabilities
below .70 for some of the dimensions (e.g., technical/functional, creativity; Danziger, Rachman-
Moore, & Valency, 2008). More importantly, there have been inconsistent results in the number
of factors represented by the scale (Feldman & Bolino, 1996). For example, studies reporting
exploratory factor analyses of the 40-item scale have revealed a 4-factor solution (Nordvik,
1996), a 9-factor solution (Danziger et al., 2008; Marshal & Bonner, 2003; Petroni, 2000), and an
11-factor solution (Igbaria, Greenhaus, & Parasuraman, 1991).
Based on the discussion above, one can conclude that a number of the basic aspects of the career
anchor concept are still questioned: How many anchors exist? Can an individual hold more than one
anchor? Is one’s career anchor stable over time? We address these questions through our conceptual
development of career orientations. First, in terms of the number of distinct orientations that may be
relevant to describing work features, we believe this is an empirical question worth investigating. In
general, we believe Schein’s eight anchors defined in terms of abilities, needs and interests, and val-
ues, include the important features of work that may be important to individuals as they navigate
career choices in a boundaryless career environment. However, the number of possible dimensions
that can comprise career orientations remains an empirical question.
Second, in terms of the number of anchors that may be salient to an individual at a given point in
time, our career orientation construct is more in line with what previous scholars have suggested, and
as such more reflective of current career perspectives. Although Schein argued that each person has
a single career anchor that is more important than any other anchor, Feldman and Bolino (1996)
argue that individuals can have multiple career anchors of differing intensity and that the signifi-
cance of any one anchor may change over time as a result of new experiences and challenges. Our
approach to the career orientation construct and measure reflects this view. Specifically, we expect
individuals to be able to rate themselves highly on more than one career orientation at a time. Shift-
ing the significance of one’s career orientation, as opposed to maintaining just one career anchor,
may be necessary in order to adapt to environmental changes. In this regard, Feldman and Bolino
also describe two important observations regarding Schein’s career anchors: (a) Although Schein
suggests that all career anchors are composed of self-perceived abilities, needs, and values, Feldman
and Bolino (1996) note that each career anchor appears to be composed of primarily one of these
underlying psychological constructs. (b) They also suggest that, because different career anchors
may be different types of psychological constructs, it is possible for an individual to rate themselves
highly on more than one of them at the same time. This suggests that in today’s protean and boun-
daryless career environment, it makes more sense for people to have multiple career orientations as
opposed to just one career anchor.
Third, regarding the stability of any one career orientation, our conceptualization of career orien-
tation allows for the possibility of changes in an individual’s values and needs as a result of new
career paths that are driven and managed by the individual, not the organization. According to
Gubler, Arnold, and Coombs (2014), people who have a protean career orientation develop their
own idea of what makes up a successful career and take appropriate action to adapt to a changing
environment. Schein argued that the (single) career anchor develops after several years of experi-
ence and then does not change. In contrast, we believe individuals identify with certain career orien-
tations early in their career based on their early work experiences, personal values, and perhaps
parental values. Individuals may continue to feel that some orientations are important throughout
their careers, but other orientations may become more or less important over time based on signif-
icant career or life experiences, such as being fired from a job or having children. It may be that
orientations are stable in the short term but change over longer time periods. The changes in the work
environment over the past few decades require individuals to be more ‘‘protean’’—that is, versatile,

Bravo et al. 5
mutable, and adaptable to the changing circumstances they encounter. As such, it is imperative that
contemporary measures used to inform career research reflect the current landscape of careers today.
In sum, although our definition of career orientation shares conceptual similarities to the career
anchor concept in terms of focusing on perceived skills, the needs important to one’s career, and
internal values we differ in terms of the multidimensional nature of the distinct orientations and the
stability of orientations over time.
Study 1
The purpose of Study 1 was to develop a measure of career orientations following the scale devel-
opment process outlined by Hinkin (1998). Our approach involved five steps: (1) generate items; (2)
administer a questionnaire to assess psychometric properties of the new items; (3) perform explora-
tory factor analysis for initial item reduction; (4) perform confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of
retained items with an independent sample; (5) provide construct validity evidence through conver-
gent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity. We completed Steps 1–3 and part of Step 5 (con-
vergent/discriminant construct validity) in Study 1. Step 4 and the criterion-related validity of Step 5
are completed in Study 2.
We initially developed scale items to capture the eight orientations identified by Schein’s career
anchor framework (1990). These eight orientations included technical/functional competence—the
value for and desire to become an expert in one’s chosen occupation; managerial competence—the
value for and desire to become a general manager and rise to organizational levels with significant
profit/loss responsibilities; autonomy—the value for and desire to have freedom and independence
in one’s job; security and stability—the value for and desire to have financial and job security; entre-
preneurial creativity—the value and drive to create new ventures, develop new products or services,
or build new organizations (this definition includes corporate intrapreneurship); pure challenge—
the value for and desire to work on difficult problems and having to overcome obstacles; service and
dedication to a cause—the value for and desire to improve the world in some way that fits a specific
value; and lifestyle—the value for and desire to have flexibility to integrate and manage one’s life
and work issues as necessary. Our first objective was to explore the validity of these eight career
orientations.
Research Question 1: Does the career orientation construct comprise the following 8 dimen-
sions: technical/functional, managerial, autonomy, security/stability, entrepreneurial creativ-
ity, pure challenge, service and dedication to a cause, and lifestyle?
It is important to note here that previous empirical evidence (Nordvik, 1991) suggests that career
anchors are correlated with each other to varying degrees. Based on Schein’s definitions and Nord-
vik’s findings, Feldman and Bolino (1996) proposed an octagonal model in an effort to reconcile and
determine the underlying patterns of career anchor types. Their octagonal circumplex model sug-
gested that some career orientations were fairly similar to each other, while others were quite ortho-
gonal such that individual who scores highly on one orientation is likely to score higher (or lower) on
another. Although we see the virtue in the proposed circumplex structure in which certain orienta-
tions are expected to occur together, we work from the more modest proposition that the orientations
are positively (or negatively) correlated with each other. Because specific hypotheses would depend
on which orientations emerge from our examination of Question 1, we do not offer formal hypoth-
eses. But, in general, we expect the correlations to be consistent with the circumplex model of Feld-
man and Bolino (1996). In particular, we expect managerial competence to be positively related to
entrepreneurial creativity; security to be negatively related to entrepreneurial creativity; and secu-
rity/stability, service, and dedication to a cause, and lifestyle to be positively related. Our approach

therefore builds on the conceptual work done by Feldman and Bolino (1996) by empirically exam-
ining their propositions concerning the relationships among the career anchor dimensions.
Method and Results

Step 1: Item generation. We first deductively generated an initial set of 120 items to measure the eight
career orientations. For each dimension, we developed items reflecting the content domain based on
Schein’s (1990) definition of the related career anchor. In doing so, we ensured items tapped into
either one’s values, self-perceived abilities, or motives and needs, the core aspects of a career anchor
(Schein, 1990). Our initial set of items included a few scale items developed by Premarajan (2001).
Content validity of the items was assessed by four PhD students who were asked to independently
assign each item to one of the eight career orientations based on Schein’s definitions and as reported
above. Items that were assigned to the same orientation by three of the four academics were retained
for further analysis. From this initial content validity procedure, we retained 60 scale items for the
next stage of scale development.
Step 2: Questionnaire administration. The 60 items generated in Step 1 were administered to 271 work-
ing upper-class undergraduate and part-time MBA students at a large, public Midwestern university.
Although they were mostly business majors, the students take positions in a wide variety of occu-
pations and industries upon graduation. For example, according to the College’s placement services,
recent graduates’ jobs ranged across financial services, sciences, media/entertainment, sports/lei-
sure, health care, and government industries. Respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which
they agreed that each statement represents their own values and motives with respect to work. Items
were scaled from 1 ¼ Strongly Disagree to 7 ¼ Strongly Agree. Participation was voluntary, anon-
ymous, and did not affect students’ course grades. We received completed surveys from 207 of the
students (33% of which were MBA students) for a 76% response rate.
Step 3: Exploratory factor analysis and initial item reduction. We followed a two-stage process to refine
the 60 scale items. First, because we had a priori factors based on theory, following Hinkin’s (1998)
recommendations, we examined interitem correlations among the sets of items designed to measure
each a priori factor (e.g., all items intended to measure managerial career orientation). Items that
correlated less than .40 with all of the other scale items for that dimension were eliminated from the
exploratory factor analysis in order to remove items producing error and unreliability (Hinkin,
1998). This resulted in 9 items being eliminated.
As a second stage, we conducted a series of exploratory principal axis factor analyses to deter-
mine the number of factors actually represented by our scale items. Because our intention was to
develop a scale in which the scale items measuring each dimension ‘‘are reasonably independent
of one another, an orthogonal rotation is recommended for this analysis’’ (Hinkin, 1998, p. 112).
Thus, we used varimax rotation. Our initial analysis of the 51 remaining items resulted in 12 factors
with eigenvalues greater than 1, explaining 70% of the total variance. To produce a set of more inter-
pretable factors, we eliminated 18 items that loaded on more than one factor at or above .40 (4 items),
did not load above .40 on any factor (8 items), or loaded above .40 on a factor with only 1 other item
(6 items; the last three factors were each composed of only 2 items and explained less than 2% of the
variance). We reanalyzed the reduced item pool (33 items) again using principal axis factor analysis
and varimax rotation. This resulted in a six-factor solution with eigenvalues greater than 1.0,
explaining 67% of the cumulative variance. Each of the six factors clearly corresponded to six of
the proposed career orientation (anchor) dimensions and none of the 33 items cross loaded on more
than one factor. In order to reduce the overall scale length, we retained the 5 highest loading items

Bravo et al. 7
for five of the factors and retained all 4 items for the sixth factor. A principal axis analysis on the
final set of 29 items was performed (see Table 1 for results).
The six components to emerge from these analyses were clearly interpretable as the following
career orientation: entrepreneurial creativity (a ¼ .90), security (a ¼ .89), service to a cause (a ¼
.91), lifestyle (a ¼ .85), managerial (a ¼ .85), and technical/functional (a ¼ .84). All items intended
to measure the ‘‘pure challenge’’ and ‘‘autonomy’’ orientations were eliminated due to factor load-
ings above .40 on multiple factors in the initial factor analysis. The correlations among the dimen-
sions appear in Table 2. Of the 15 correlations, 8 are statistically significant with the strongest
correlation between managerial orientation and entrepreneurial creativity (r ¼ .44, p < .01). None
of the dimensions are significantly, negatively correlated. Step 4 (confirmatory factor analysis with
independent sample) will be done in Study 2.
Step 5: Discriminant and convergent construct validity. Convergent validity can be assessed by correlating
our new scale with measures designed to assess similar constructs; discriminant validity is demon-
strated if our new measure does not correlate with dissimilar measures (Hinkin, 1998). In our case,
Schein’s (1990) 40-item scale designed to measure his career anchors is an alternative measure to our
career orientation scale. We therefore had included Schein’s 40-item career anchor scale in our ques-
tionnaire that was completed by the Study 1 sample. Per Schein’s (1990) instructions, we averaged the
5 items designed to measure each of the eight career anchors to compute scale scores for each anchor.
Reliabilities for Schein’s original eight scales are entrepreneurial creativity (a ¼ .80), security (a ¼
.80), lifestyle (a ¼ .57), technical/functional competence (a ¼ .41), managerial competence (a ¼ .56),
service and dedication to a cause (a ¼ .78), autonomy (a ¼ .71), and pure challenge (a ¼ .72).
Convergent validity is demonstrated when the correlations between measures of similar con-
structs (e.g., managerial orientation and managerial anchor) using different methods (e.g., our new
career orientation measure versus Schein’s career anchor scale) are sufficiently large and signifi-
cantly different from zero (Campbell & Fiske, 1959; Hinkin, 1998). Examination of the correlations
of this monotrait–heteromethod diagonal revealed that all of these correlations were large and sta-
tistically significant (r ranged from .47 to .82, average r ¼ .66, p < .01). Correlations among our
career orientation dimensions and Schein’s career anchors are reported in Table 2.
Discriminant validity is demonstrated when three conditions are met. First, correlations between
measures of the same construct with different methods (monotrait–heteromethod) should be greater
than correlations between different constructs with different methods (heterotrait–heteromethod).
For example, the correlation between our managerial career orientation and Schein’s managerial
career anchor should be greater than the correlation between our managerial career orientation and
all of the other career anchors measured with Schein’s scale. As noted above, in our sample, all cor-
relations of the monotrait–heteromethod diagonal exceeded .47. The largest correlation in the het-
erotrait–heteromethod matrix (directly below the monotrait–heteromethod diagonal in Table 2) was
r ¼ .32, which was between our entrepreneurial orientation and Schein’s managerial anchor. Thus,
the first condition was met. Second, correlations between the same construct using different methods
(monotrait–heteromethod) should be larger than correlations between different constructs measured
with the same measure (heterotrait–monomethod; e.g., the correlations for our managerial career
orientation with all other career orientation dimensions). As noted above, in our sample, all correla-
tions in the monotrait–heteromethod diagonal exceeded .47. The largest correlation in the hetero-
trait–monomethod matrix (correlations among our career orientation dimensions) was r ¼ .44,
which was between managerial orientation and entrepreneurial orientation. Thus, the second condi-
tion was also met. Third, similar patterns of correlations should exist in the heterotrait–monomethod
matrix and within the heterotrait–heteromethod matrix. In our sample, the heterotrait–monomethod
correlations ranged from r ¼ .09 between security and entrepreneurial orientation to r ¼ þ.44
between managerial and entrepreneurial orientations. The heterotrait–heteromethod correlations

Table 1. Exploratory Factor Analysis Results of the Career Orientation Scale From Study 1.
Factora
Career Orientation Scale Item 1 2 3 4 5 6
I am very good at developing innovative new procedures, products, or .88

services.
I find work most interesting when I am working on the development of .78
a new product, service, or work process.
I enjoy work that involves building or creating something that is .78
entirely new.
One of my greatest strengths is developing, creating, and launching .77
new products or services.
I have the kinds of skills and abilities required to be a successful .62
entrepreneur.
Employment security is important to me. .88
It is important that my organization provides me with job security. .86
I would value working at an organization that offers long-term job .79
security.
Financial security is important to me. .67
Organizations should strive to provide job security for their .59
employees.
It is important to me to have a job that helps society in some way. .88
Contributing positively to society through work is important to me. .83
It is important to me to have a job that is compatible with my desire to .80
improve the world.
I will feel successful in my career only if I am making a real contribution .78
to the welfare of society.
It is important to me that I have a job that provides ‘‘family-friendly’’ .82
benefits so that I can balance my work and home life.
Balancing my work and personal needs is important to me. .72
An ideal organization to me is one that allows employees the time they .68
need to be with their families.
My career must provide me with good work-life balance. .67
It is important that I work for an organization that values family/ .66
personal life.
I would like a position with a great deal of managerial responsibility. .77
I have the skills and abilities to eventually rise to a high managerial .72
level.
I would like to manage an entire organizational division or profit- .71
center someday.
I have the kind of skills and abilities that make one an effective general .66
manager.
I have the dedication required to rise to a high managerial level. .59
I would pursue a position that would allow me to become more .78
proficient in my technical/functional specialty.
I prefer work that challenges my technical or specialized skills and .74
abilities.
I prefer having a job in which I can fully utilize my technical/functional .72
expertise.
If given the choice, I would prefer an advancement that allows me to .69
continue to use my specialized technical skills.
I enjoy work that allows me to learn something new in my area of .51
specialization.
(continued)

Bravo et al. 9
Table 1. (continued)
Factora
Career Orientation Scale Item 1 2 3 4 5 6
Eigenvalue for each factor 6.09 4.82 3.72 2.28 1.76 1.48
Variance Explained by each Factor 21.00 16.63 12.81 7.85 6.06 5.12
Total Variance Explained 69.48
Note. N ¼ 207.
a
Factor 1 ¼ entrepreneurial creativity orientation; Factor 2 ¼ security orientation; Factor 3 ¼ service to a cause orientation;
Factor 4 ¼ lifestyle orientation; Factor 5 ¼ managerial orientation; Factor 6 ¼ technical/functional orientation.
ranged from r ¼ .18 between Schein’s security anchor and our entrepreneurial orientation to r ¼
.32 between Schein’s managerial anchor and our entrepreneurial orientation. In addition, comparing
the 15 correlations across the two matrices, 14 of the correlations are in the same direction and the
majority are of a similar magnitude. Thus, the patterns of correlations within the two matrices are
quite similar and meet the third condition. In sum, our new career orientation measure demonstrated
good convergent and discriminant validity in relation to Schein’s career anchor scale.
Finally, we examined the correlations among the six career orientations measured with our new
scale (see Table 2). Consistent with Feldman and Bolino’s (1996) circumplex model, we found that
managerial and entrepreneurial orientations were significantly correlated (r ¼ .44, p < .01), service
to a cause and lifestyle orientation were significantly correlated (r ¼ .28, p < .01), and technical and
security orientations were significantly correlated (r ¼ .32, p < .01). Also consistent with Feldman
and Bolino’s circumplex model, security and entrepreneurial were not related, and managerial and
service orientations were not related.
Discussion
Through the scale development process followed in Study 1, we developed a 29-item scale to mea-
sure six career orientations: entrepreneurial orientation, security, lifestyle, technical/functional,
managerial, and service to a cause (all scales composed of 5 items except for service to a cause,
which is composed of 4). The results demonstrate that our new career orientation scale, relative
to Schein’s 40-item career anchor scale (Schein, 1990), had good convergent and discriminant valid-
ity, yet was rigorously developed to ensure content validity, independent factors, and scale items
with strong internal consistency. Our findings contribute to theoretical development of the career
anchor concept in two ways.
First, our results demonstrate that not all of the eight orientations identified by Schein emerged. In
particular, items designed to tap two of the career anchors—autonomy and pure challenge—did not
surface as their own unitary dimensions. One conclusion might be to regard these anchors as unim-
portant or irrelevant to career orientation. However, examination of the items that were dropped ren-
ders this conclusion unlikely in our judgment. Many of these items were eliminated due to the fact
that they loaded on several dimensions of our scale. Similarly, the correlations in Table 2, show that
Schein’s autonomy and pure challenge scales significantly correlated with three and four, respec-
tively, of our career orientation dimensions. Thus, it may be that these items tap psychological pro-
cesses or drives that underlie several of the career orientations identified by the principal axis
analysis. For example, challenge may underlie an individual’s desire for managerial competence,
entrepreneurial achievements, technical/functional competence, or fulfillment of service to a cause.
This view is consistent with Mainiero and Sullivan’s (2005) kaleidoscope career model in which
one’s desire for challenge is considered to be one of three motivators that underlie individuals’

10
Table 2. Descriptive Statistics and Correlations Among Our Career Orientation Dimensions and Schein’s Career Anchors.
Study 1 Sample
Variable Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
1. Entrepreneurial creativity orientation 4.90 1.20 (.90)

2. Security orientation 5.66 .98 .09 (.89)
3. Lifestyle orientation 5.85 .83 .00 .37** (.85)
4. Technical/functional orientation 5.39 .86 .12 .32** .26** (.84)
5. Managerial orientation 5.52 .92 .44** .19** .07 .23** (.85)
6. Service to a cause orientation 4.66 1.27 .31** .05 .28** .09 .02 (.91)
7. Schein entrepreneurial 4.67 1.19 .69** .06 .06 .04 .26** .27** (.80)
8. Schein security 4.66 1.05 .18* .76** .31** .16* .14* .06 .15* (.80)
9. Schein lifestyle 5.39 .79 .03 .25** .66** .04 .01 .19** .03 .28** (.57)
10. Schein technical 4.90 .72 .21** .22** .10 .47** .24** .16* .14* .27** .07 (.41)
11. Schein managerial 4.28 .84 .32** .15* .00 .05 .55** .05 .30** .15* .00 .19** (.56)
12. Schein service to cause 4.73 1.03 .30** .07 .27** .10 .07 .82** .30** .03 .24** .28** .15* (.78)
13. Schein autonomy 4.95 .90 .36** .25** .04 .13 .07 .35** .47** .31** .11 .09 .20** .31** (.71)
14 Schein pure challenge 4.90 .87 .42** .13 .08 .21** .38** .34** .42** .19** .01 .37** .31** .45** .24** (.72)

Note. N ¼ 207. Coefficient as estimating reliabilities are in parentheses along the diagonal.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
Bravo et al. 11
career decision making to varying degrees throughout their career. Future research is necessary to
determine whether autonomy and pure challenge should be considered as underlying motives that
explain individuals’ career orientations.
A second theoretical contribution is finding that the six career orientation dimensions behave as
continuous variables, with a normal distribution of individuals over the range of each dimension,
rather than a bimodal distribution as suggested by a typological approach. Further, the mostly weak
to moderately positive correlations among the dimensions suggest that an individual’s score on one
dimension does not determine his or her score on any of the other dimensions. Thus, as Feldman and
Bolino (1996) argue, it appears that individuals can hold multiple career orientations of differing
intensity at the same time.
A limitation of Study 1 is that the student sample from a single US university limits the general-
izability of the findings. Although students were working at least part time and the university from
which the sample is drawn is culturally diverse, we do not know if our findings generalize to indi-
viduals more advanced in their careers or in other countries. We address the career stage limitation in
Study 2 by using a sample with a diverse age range.
Study 2
In Study 2, we conducted a CFA of our career orientation scale using an independent sample (Step 4
of the scale development process) and examined criterion and discriminant construct validity (Step
5). Because this second study was conducted in a single manufacturing organization, we and our
contact person in the organization did not feel the service to a cause orientation was relevant to this
sample. We therefore did not include this orientation in Study 2. To assess criterion and discriminant
validity, a number of variables that we theoretically expected to be related to certain career orienta-
tion dimensions, but not others, are examined. This includes two individual difference variables that
have been shown to be relevant to the protean career construct: proactive personality (Seibert,
Kraimer, & Crant, 2001) and desire for upward mobility (London, 1983). We also included two vari-
ables related to an employee’s career development: career self-management and mentoring received.
In addition, we examined how two work attitudes (willingness to relocate and continuance commit-
ment) and five work behaviors (organizational tenure, innovative performance, promotability, man-
agerial competence, and technical competence) may be differentially related to career orientation.
We developed hypotheses for how each of these variables are expected to be related to the career
orientation dimensions only if there was theoretical justification for a significant relationship. How-
ever, we conducted a robust test of the nomological network by including all five career orientations
in the test of the hypotheses, enabling us to test convergent and discriminant validity for the career
orientation dimensions.
Hypotheses
Entrepreneurial Creativity Career Orientation
Individuals high in entrepreneurial orientation are principally motivated by the need to create some-
thing that is entirely their own project and enjoy moving from project to project to escape boredom
(Feldman & Bolino, 1996; Schein, 1978, 1990). We therefore expect that individuals high in entre-
preneurial orientation are more likely to be high in proactive personality. Proactive personality is
defined as the disposition to take initiative in a broad range of situations and environments and has
been shown to be related to entrepreneurial behaviors (Crant, 2000). In addition, entrepreneurial
creativity should be related to behaviors that show initiative at work, such as engaging in career
self-management. Activities associated with career self-management include seeking feedback,
engaging in career planning, and proactively finding ways to develop one’s skills (Sturges, Guest,

Conway, & Davey, 2002). Finally, we also expect that individuals with an entrepreneurial creativity
orientation engage in more innovative behaviors at work since such individuals perceive themselves
to be creative.
Hypothesis 1: Entrepreneurial creativity orientation is positively related to proactive person-

ality, career self-management, and supervisor ratings of innovative performance behaviors.
Security Career Orientation

Individuals high on the security orientation value employment and financial security from an orga-
nization. We expect security to be associated with an unwillingness to relocate for the organization.
Individuals who value security may not want to risk the ‘‘known’’ benefits of their current position
for the ‘‘unknown’’ of another position even one that might offer a higher level opportunity or more
developmental experience (Feldman & Bolino, 1996; Schein, 1978, 1990). Essentially, individuals
with a high security orientation are likely to be risk avoiders and would view relocating as a poten-
tially risky job decision.
Hypothesis 2a: Security career orientation is negatively related to willingness to relocate.
On the other hand, we would expect individuals high on security orientation to be stable employ-
ees who are highly committed to their organization (Schein, 2006). These individuals view stability
as a means to maintaining their financial security. Thus, high-security-oriented individuals may feel
they need to stay with the organization. Leaving the organization would represent a loss of accrued
benefits and rewards that come with organizational tenure. This type of commitment to an organi-
zation has been referred to as continuance commitment (Meyer, Allen, & Smith, 1993). Based on the
notion of attitude–behavior consistency, the knowledge and skills individuals acquire during their
tenure plays a role in keeping their behavior, including job employment, consistent (Fabrigar, Petty,
Smith, & Crites, 2006).
Hypothesis 2b: Security orientation is positively related to continuance commitment and orga-
nizational tenure.
Lifestyle Career Orientation

Individuals with a high lifestyle career orientation strive for situations that allow for the integration
of family, personal, and career concerns and opportunities for self-development (Petroni, 2000).
Moreover, consideration of a spouse’s attitude toward a move, the impact the move has on a spouse’s
career, and concerns about moving children all can affect a person’s willingness to relocate a family
(Eby & Russell, 2000). Often, this means that the individual will not easily relocate his or her family
for the purposes of career advancement.
Hypothesis 3: Lifestyle career orientation is negatively related to willingness to relocate.
Managerial Career Orientation

Individuals who score highly on the managerial career orientation are motivated to have primary
profit and loss responsibility and be in higher managerial levels. These individuals desire the power
and achievement potential that top positions can offer (Tan & Quek, 2001). We therefore expect that

Bravo et al. 13
they will report a desire for upward mobility and a willingness to relocate in order to achieve higher
level positions. Individuals with a managerial orientation are also energized by the opportunity to
analyze and solve problems under conditions of incomplete information and ambiguity and look for-
ward to responsibility for the productivity of the organization (Feldman & Bolino, 1996; Schein,
1978, 1990). These types of challenging managerial tasks require individuals to take initiative and
responsibility for developing their skills to succeed in these situations. We therefore argue that a
managerial orientation is associated with proactive personality and career self-management beha-
viors. We also expect that individuals with a managerial orientation seek to learn from senior man-
agers and be perceived by senior managers as worthy of mentoring. Finally, because promotions are,
at least partly, based on job performance (Lyness & Thompson, 2000), we contend that individuals
with managerial orientations are motivated to perform well, especially on managerial tasks, and,
thus, are also perceived as more worthy of promotion.
Hypothesis 4: Managerial career orientation is positively related to proactive personality,

desire for upward mobility, career self-management, mentoring received, willingness to relo-
cate, and supervisors’ assessments of managerial competence and promotability.
Technical/Functional Career Orientation

Individuals scoring high on technical/functional career orientation value the opportunity to continue
to develop their skills in their area of expertise and to apply those skills to increasingly challenging
and complex problems. They are principally energized by the content of the work itself and prefer
advancement only in their technical or functional area of proficiency (Feldman & Bolino, 1996;
Schein, 1978, 1990). Individuals with this orientation seek opportunities to exercise their technical
skills, and their identity is tied to a job that allows them to enhance these skills (Petroni, 2000). This
type of individual is essential for organizations that both implement and maintain technical infra-
structures and processes (Marshall & Bonner, 2003). Enhancing their technical/functional skills
through continued training and development initiatives coupled with viable promotion opportunities
will help retain the intellectual capital attained by these individuals (Marshall & Bonner, 2003).
Arguably, because these individuals prefer advancement in their areas of proficiency and seek
opportunities to apply their skill set to increasingly challenging problems (Tan & Quek, 2001), they
desire upward mobility within an organization.
Hypothesis 5: Technical/functional career orientation is positively correlated with supervi-

sors’ assessments of technical competence and desire for upward mobility.
Method
Sample and Procedures
Surveys were mailed to the homes of 512 exempt-level employees (those not legally entitled to over-
time pay) who worked in a Fortune 500 manufacturing company and, in a separate mailing, to the
homes of their corresponding supervisors. Employees were randomly chosen from the organiza-
tion’s U.S. facilities and represented all major functions at the corporate level (e.g., production,
research and development, marketing, accounting), as well as plant management, and sales and ser-
vice personnel. A human resources representative within the company provided us with the home
addresses for employees and their supervisors. Surveys were assigned code numbers so that we
could match employee and supervisor surveys upon return. Employees and supervisors were assured
confidentiality and were instructed to complete the survey and return it directly to the authors in the

postage-paid envelope provided. The original survey was followed by a postcard reminder 1 week
later and another complete survey packet to nonrespondents 3 weeks after that.
A total of 290 employees (56.6% response rate) and 326 supervisors completed the surveys (these
data were collected as part of a larger study and were used in Kraimer, Seibert, Wayne, Liden, &
Bravo, 2011). Of those, there were 208 matched employee–supervisor pairs with complete data for
an effective overall response rate of 41%. The average age of employee respondents was 45 years,
66% were male, 77% were married, and 93% were White. Eight percent held a high school diploma
as their highest degree, 25% held an associate’s degree, 41% held a bachelor’s degree, and 26% held
a master’s or higher degree.
Measures—Self-report
All scales were measured on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) unless otherwise
noted.
Career orientation. The 25 items for the corresponding five factors developed in Study 1 were used in
this study (see Table 1). Reliabilities in the current sample were acceptable across all orientations:
entrepreneurial creativity (a ¼ .83), security (a ¼ .87), lifestyle (a ¼ .90), technical/functional
(a ¼ .83), and managerial (a ¼ .90).
Proactive personality. We used Seibert, Crant, and Kraimer’s (1999) 10-item proactive personality
scale. An example item is ‘‘If I see something I don’t like, I fix it’’ (a ¼ .87).
Desire for upward mobility. We used 3 items from Wayne, Liden, Kraimer, and Graf (1999) to assess
employees’ desire for upward mobility. An example item is ‘‘I am not interested in moving from my
present job to a higher-level position’’ (reverse scored; a ¼ .83).
Career self-management. Nine items selected from Sturges, Guest, Conway, and Davey (2002) and
Tharenou and Terry (1998) assessed career self-management. Respondents indicated on a scale from
1 (not at all) to 5 (a very large extent), to what extent they had engaged in certain career management
activities. An example item is ‘‘I have engaged in career path planning’’ (a ¼ .86).
Mentoring received. Mentoring was assessed using Dreher and Ash’s (1990) 8-item career mentoring
scale. Respondents indicated on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (a very large extent), to what extent an
influential, more experienced manager has engaged in certain activities to help them develop their
careers within the organization. An example item is ‘‘Encouraged you to prepare for advancement’’
(a ¼ .92).
Willingness to relocate. A 3-item version of Eby and Russell’s (2000) scale was used to assess will-
ingness to relocate. An example item is ‘‘I am not willing to relocate for any reason’’ (reverse scored;
a ¼ .82).
Continuance commitment. Continuance organizational commitment was assessed with 6 items from
Meyer, Allen, and Smith’s (1993) measure. An example item is ‘‘It would be very hard for me to
leave my organization right now, even if I wanted to’’ (a ¼ .79).
Organizational tenure. Respondents reported how many years and months they have been working for
the current organization; we report organizational tenure in terms of years.

Bravo et al. 15
Measures From Supervisor

All scales were measured on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) unless otherwise
noted.
Innovative performance. The four innovation items from Welbourne, Johnson, and Erez’s (1998) role-
based performance scale were used to assess innovative performance. Supervisors rated employees
on a scale from 1 (needs much improvement) to 5 (excellent) on dimensions of their performance. An
example item is ‘‘Works to implement new ideas’’ (a ¼ .61).
Promotability. We used 4 items from Wayne et al. (1999) to assess employees’ promotability. An
example item is ‘‘If I had to select a successor for my position, it would be this employee’’ (a ¼ .90).
Managerial competence. Three items developed for this study assessed employees’ managerial com-
petence. An example item is ‘‘This employee has what it takes to be an effective manager in this
organization’’ (a ¼ .96).
Technical Competence. Three items developed for this study assessed employees’ technical compe-
tence. An example item is ‘‘(this employee) is an expert in his/her technical or functional area’’
(a ¼ .93).
Analyses and Results

To complete the scale development process (Hinkin, 1998), we present results of a CFA (Step 4) and
regression analyses testing the hypotheses for criterion-related convergent validity (Step 5).
Step 4: CFA. To test the quality of the five-factor structure of the 25-item career orientation scale, we
conducted a CFA using LISREL 8.80. This analysis is based on responses from 287 employees who
provided complete data on the career orientation scales. We specified five, correlated, latent factors
with scale items loading only on their respective factor. The results indicated acceptable fit for this
five-factor model (w2 ¼ 687.26, df ¼ 265, p < .01; CFI ¼ .95; NFI ¼ .92; SRMR ¼ .07; RMSEA ¼
.07). The five-factor model fits significantly better than a model in which all correlations among the
latent factors were set equal to 1 (analogous to a one-factor model; Dw2 ¼ þ189.40, Ddf ¼ 10,
p < .01; CFI ¼ .92; NFI ¼ .89; SRMR ¼ .34; RMSEA ¼ .09) and better than all of the possible
four-factor models, in which two factors were allowed to be perfectly correlated (all Dw2 ¼ þ26.02,
Ddf ¼ 1, p < .05). In the five-factor model, all scale items had statistically significant lambda estimates
to their respective factors (p < .01).
Step 5: Criterion-related construct validity. Means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations among the
study variables are reported in Table 3. The correlations among some of the career orientation
dimensions were again statistically significant. We therefore used multiple regression analyses
including all five career orientation variables to test the unique effects of each of the hypothesized
career orientation dimensions on the outcome variables. The results of the multiple regressions are
reported in Tables 4 and 5.
Entrepreneurial creativity career orientation. The regression analyses indicated that the b weight for
entrepreneurial career orientation was positive and statistically significant, predicting proactive per-
sonality (see Table 4), career self-management (see Table 4), and supervisor’s ratings of innovative
performance (see Table 5). Thus, Hypothesis 1 was fully supported. Although not hypothesized,

16
Table 3. Descriptive Statistics, Correlations, and Reliability Coefficients for Study 2 Sample.
Variables Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
1. Entrepreneurial 5.48 .94 (.83)

orientation
2. Security orientation 6.09 .81 .12 (.87)
3. Lifestyle orientation 5.95 .95 .20** .57** (.90)
4. Technical/functional 5.96 .78 .35** .50** .45** (.83)
orientation
5. Managerial 5.31 1.26 .41** .01 .08 .05 (.90)
orientation
6. Proactive personality 5.63 .68 .51** .05 .15* .16* .56** (.87)
7. Desire for upward 4.82 1.52 .29** .13 .04 .07 .59** .35** (.83)
mobility
8. Career self- 3.11 .80 .43** .08 .01 .08 .50** .38** .40** (.86)
management
9. Mentoring received 2.66 .91 .21** .01 .14* .10 .29** .18** .14* .37** (.92)
10. Willingness to 3.79 1.67 .09 .19** .18** .03 .25** .12 .40** .16* .11 (.82)
relocate
11. Continuance 3.96 1.34 .10 .29** .10 .13 .24* .09 .25** .27** .25** .27** (.79)
commitment
12. Organizational 13.07 10.06 .08 .07 .03 .10 .18** .07** .29** .16* .11 .10 .30**
tenure (years)
13. Innovative 3.77 .79 .24** .03 .06 .12 .18** .19** .16** .21** .29** .11 .16* .04 (.61)
performance

14. Promotability 4.43 1.80 .16* .05 .11 .36 .30** .16* .30** .29** .34** .16* .27** .19** .60** (.90)
15. Managerial 4.80 1.70 .15* .07 .03 .01 .37** .20** .24** .26** .33** .17* .20** .02 .59** .81** (.96)
competence
16. Technical 5.57 1.35 .23** .04 .11 .07 .14* .07 .16* .27** .20** .09 .10 .01 .54** .50** .59** (.93)
competence
Note. N ¼ 208. Coefficient as estimating reliabilities are in parentheses along the diagonal.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
Bravo et al. 17
Table 4. Regression Results for Individual Differences and Career Development Outcomes.
Proactive Desire for Upward Mentoring Career Self-

Predictor Variable Personality Mobility Received Management
Entrepreneurial .32** .05 .08 .29**

orientation
Security orientation .01 .15* .09 .09
Lifestyle orientation .06 .08 .14 .08
Managerial orientation .42** .58** .24** .39**
Technical/functional .00 .14* .05 .05
orientation
R2 .41 .39 .11 .33
Adjusted R2 .40 .38 .09 .32
ANOVA F 28.19** 26.01** 5.05** 20.18**
Note. N ¼ 208. Standardized regression coefficients (b) are reported. ANOVA ¼ analysis of variance.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
entrepreneurial orientation also positively related to supervisor’s ratings of technical competence

(see Table 5).
Security career orientation. Per Table 5, the regression coefficient for security orientation predicting
willingness to relocate was not statistically significant. However, the b weight for security orienta-
tion was positive and statistically significant in the equations predicting continuance commitment
and organizational tenure. This supports Hypothesis 2b but not 2a.
Lifestyle career orientation. As shown in Table 5, the b weight for lifestyle career orientation was
negative and statistically significant in the equation predicting willingness to relocate. This provides
support for Hypothesis 3. Unexpectedly, it also positively related to supervisor’s assessments of pro-
motability and negatively related to technical competence ratings.
Managerial career orientation. The b weight for managerial career orientation was statistically sig-
nificant and positive in the equations predicting proactive personality, desire for upward mobility,
mentoring received, career self-management, willingness to relocate, promotability, and managerial
competence (see Tables 4 and 5). Thus, Hypothesis 4 was fully supported. Although not hypothe-
sized, managerial career orientation was also negatively related to continuance commitment and
organizational tenure.
Technical/functional career orientation. As can be seen in Table 5, the technical career orientation
did not significantly predict supervisor’s assessments of technical competence, but it was positively
related to desire for upward mobility (see Table 4). Thus, we found partial support for Hypothesis 5.
Technical career orientation was also significantly, negatively related to organizational tenure.
General Discussion
In Study 1, we developed scale items to correspond to Schein’s eight career anchors. Following a
rigorous scale development process, the resulting factor structure suggested that these items best
represent six dimensions of career orientation: entrepreneurial creativity, security, managerial, life-
style, technical/functional, and service to a cause. Our results suggest that these are continuous rather
than typological variables and that individuals may indicate that more than one of these career orien-
tation dimensions are salient at the same time. We did not find support for the notion that autonomy
and pure challenge are unique anchors that define career orientation. Instead, individuals identifying

18
Table 5. Regression Results for Work Attitudes and Behaviors.
Willingness to Continuance Organizational Innovative Managerial Technical

Predictor Variables Relocate Commitment Tenure Performancea Promotabilitya Competencea Competencea
Entrepreneurial .14 .05 .04 .18* .03 .01 .22**

orientation
Security orientation .15 .31** .18* .13 .16 .12 .01
Lifestyle orientation .17* .05 .05 .05 .17* .06 .20*
Managerial .31** .22** .18** .09 .27** .36** .06
orientation
Technical orientation .14 .03 .18* .09 .02 .03 .07
2
R .13 .15 .06 .08 .11 .15 .09
Adjusted R2 .11 .13 .04 .06 .09 .12 .07
ANOVA F 6.19** 6.94** 2.74* 3.52** 5.21** 6.88** 3.86**
Note. N ¼ 208. Standardized regression coefficients (b) are reported. ANOVA ¼ analysis of variance.
a
Work behavior was assessed by supervisor.

*p < .05. **p < .01.
Bravo et al. 19
with several different career orientations seem to value autonomy and job challenge. It may also be
that autonomy and job challenge are secondary orientations that become subsumed by one or more
of the other six orientations. For example, some basic level of autonomy may be necessary but not
sufficient to achieve lifestyle balance or entrepreneurial creativity in one’s career. We believe future
research focused on these variables within their own domain may prove fruitful.
In Study 2, we found theoretical support for Schein’s definitions of five of the career orientations
by showing that they mostly correlated as expected with proactive personality, career self-
management behaviors, mentoring by senior colleagues, and attitudes toward one’s organization and
work. In particular, strong support was found for our hypothesized relationships for entrepreneurial
career orientation, lifestyle career orientation, and managerial career orientation. At the same time, a
few unexpected relationships emerged in our sample. Overall, our results provide empirical evi-
dence for our reconceptualization of the career orientation construct and suggest some avenues for
future refinement.
Theoretical Implications
Using Schein’s career anchor framework as a theoretical foundation for our research, we developed
and validated a multidimensional measure of career orientation. By doing so, we address the need to
empirically verify a measure of career orientations that has both sound psychometric properties and
reflects the changes that have occurred in how employees view their careers. Such a measure will
enable researchers to utilize an instrument that captures a current perspective of the internal career
needs of today’s employee. We hope that our career orientation scale will revitalize research on indi-
vidual’s internal career goals and values. Indeed, our findings for each of the dimensions offer the-
oretical insights and future research opportunities.
The managerial career orientation dimension had the most consistent support across all of the
hypothesized relationships. In particular, we found that a managerial career orientation positively
related to nine of the criterion variables demonstrating its relevance to a wide variety of employee
attitudes and behaviors, at least within a large organizational setting. Although seven of these rela-
tionships were hypothesized, we also unexpectedly found that managerial orientation negatively
related to continuance commitment and organizational tenure, suggesting that such individuals may
more readily move organizations in order to attain higher managerial positions. As one of Schein’s
original anchors, our scale to measure managerial career orientation appears to exhibit considerable
criterion validity.
The entrepreneurial creativity career orientation also appears to be robust as we found support for
all three relationships hypothesized. A significant but unexpected relationship also emerged with
supervisor ratings of technical competence. In retrospect, this makes considerable sense. It is likely
that one would need relatively high competence in one’s technical knowledge in order to initiate
worthwhile innovations. If we compare the entrepreneurial orientation with the managerial orienta-
tion, we find a great deal of overlap in the criterion variables to which each is related. It appears that
the main difference between these two dimensions of career orientation is the desire for upward
movement within the organization in the managerial orientation versus the desire to create new prod-
ucts, services, or processes for the entrepreneurial orientation. Future research is needed to further
examine how entrepreneurial orientation differs from a managerial orientation in terms of career
paths and work style choices. For example, this career orientation might be used to predict who will
be most effective in new product start-up operations or who might leave the organization to become
an entrepreneur.
The technical/functional career orientations dimension, which was also included in Schein’s orig-
inal set, showed few significant relationships to the other variables in our study: technical/functional
orientation positively related to desire for upward mobility and negatively related to organizational

tenure. Nonetheless, these relationships seem to make sense. Because individuals with a technical/
functional orientation prefer advancement in their areas of expertise and seek to apply their skill set
to increasingly challenging problems, they desire upward mobility within an organization in order to
achieve this, even if this movement is along a technical rather than managerial career track. Research
has indeed demonstrated that employees with specialized skills are less willing to accept downward
movement (Noe, Steffy, & Barber, 1988). It therefore stands to reason that as individuals are in the
process of enhancing their technical/functional skills, they are doing so with the idea that such activ-
ity will lead to upward movement as opposed to remaining stagnant or moving downward.
Regarding our finding that technical/functional career orientation negatively related to tenure, it
may be that only newer employees in the organization we studied continue to hold this career orien-
tation and they either change their orientation or leave the organization over time. In fact, research
suggests that as tenure in an organization increases, employees achieve a better understanding of the
way technical work is accomplished (Zenger & Lawrence, 1989). Accordingly, it seems reasonable
to suggest that as employee tenure increased in our sample, the orientation toward attaining and/or
enhancing technical skills diminished as a result of the level of comfort they felt with their positions.
Perhaps those individuals with more tenure are closer to having achieved their career goals, and as a
result, do not feel the need to enhance their technical/functional skills any further. Future research
will have to examine these relationships more closely if these contentions are to be substantiated.
As expected, security career orientation was positively related to organizational tenure and continu-
ance commitment. Individuals who self-identify with a desire for job and financial security appear to
be more stable employees. It is also interesting to note that individuals high on security orientation
were not any more or less likely to indicate a willingness to relocate. Perhaps such individuals are
willing to relocate in order to remain employed with the same organization, rather than risk employ-
ment stability by refusing a transfer or stay where they are geographically and search for another job.
Overall, this career orientation is associated with behaviors and outcomes identified by Schein.
People higher on the lifestyle orientation were however less willing to relocate. It is likely such
individuals consider their family’s interests and desires as equally important if not more important
when it comes to making company requested relocation decisions. We feel it is worth noting here
that, although not hypothesized, we also found that lifestyle orientation was negatively related to
supervisors’ assessments of technical competence, yet positively related to promotability assess-
ments. We found this a bit paradoxical and suggest that future research further investigate the rela-
tions among individuals’ desire for work/life balance, technical competence, and promotion
potential within organizations.
Practical Implications
From a practical standpoint, the multidimensional nature of the career orientation construct devel-
oped here offers some implications for the workplace that may help to keep protean employees com-
mitted to their current organization. Specifically, an understanding of the dimensions and scales
identified here can help employers better support their employees’ career goals. We recommend that
organizations assess the career orientation of each of their employees and use this information in
career development sessions. Individuals who are high on entrepreneurial orientation will desire
opportunities to develop new products and services. It is important that these individuals be given
the opportunity to work on projects that enable them to fulfill these internal career needs. Not only
will this likely enhance employee satisfaction but will benefit the organization, as entrepreneurial
orientation was significantly related to innovative performance. In contrast, rather than focusing
on innovative projects that may involve risk in terms of whether they will be successful, individuals
high on security orientation may value core positions that are less likely to involve risk. These indi-
viduals are also less likely to desire upward mobility. Consequently, career plans for these

Bravo et al. 21
individuals could be comprised of lateral positions perhaps within the same department and thus
involving less change and risk.
Our finding that employees with a lifestyle orientation are less willing to relocate suggests that
development plans that consist of internal career opportunities that do not require relocation are more
likely to retain these employees and at the same time help them have satisfying careers. The large num-
ber of significant relationships for managerial orientation provides several implications for career
development plans for individuals high on this orientation. Individuals high on managerial orientation
are proactive, willing to relocate, have mentors, and engage in career self-management. They also have
a strong desire for upward mobility. At the same time, these individuals are high on managerial com-
petence and have less commitment and tenure in their organizations. The implication is that these indi-
viduals are more likely to leave for career opportunities in other organizations if their career needs are
unmet. Thus, for individuals with high managerial orientation, it is important that organizations have
clear development plans and monitor closely the extent to which these plans are realized to avoid los-
ing these individuals. Finally, individuals high on technical orientation also have a strong desire for
upward mobility but prefer to remain in a technical career path. This supports many organizations’
career ladders that provide for both technical and managerial career paths.
Another practical use of our career orientation measure is in assisting individuals in identifying
organizations with career opportunities that are in alignment with their career orientations. The abil-
ity to self-assess one’s career orientations may be especially valuable for individuals starting their
careers. For example, individuals who are high on service and dedication to a cause may be advised
to seek out employers whereby there is a fit between their orientation and the organization’s mission.
In contrast, individuals high on managerial orientation may desire employers who promote from
within and have a strong management development system. Career development systems that are
in alignment with employees’ career orientations are likely to be associated with high employee
career satisfaction and commitment.
Strengths and Limitations

One strength of this research is that we followed recommended scale development processes (e.g.,
Hinkin, 1998) in developing our career orientation scale using two separate samples to identify and
then confirm the factor structure. The two studies together provide strong empirical support for our
multidimensional model of career orientation. Another strength of this research is that our career
orientation scale was grounded in a strong theoretical framework provided by a rich career anchor
literature. The main limitation of the current study was that our analyses relied on cross-sectional,
correlational data. Thus, we cannot draw conclusions about the causal directions underlying our
findings. A second limitation of this research is that the mostly Caucasian sample from a single
U.S. organization in Study 2 limits generalizability of these findings. A third limitation is that the
sample used in Study 2 to externally validate the measure included only exempt-level employees
of a large manufacturing organization. This may have resulted in a disproportionate emphasis on the
managerial orientation and it precluded us from validating the service to a cause orientation in Study
2. We note that, because the career orientations are independent dimensions, this limitation does not
negate the validity of the findings for the other five dimensions we uncovered. We encourage future
research to further validate our career orientation constructs in a more diverse sample where service
to a cause may be deemed more relevant.
Conclusion
Traditional theories of careers that were based on the predictability and stability of job security
within a single organization or industry have given way to fresh and innovative ways of examining

careers in this new work context (Sullivan & Baruch, 2009). Contemporary career theories, includ-
ing the boundaryless and protean career concepts, are more representative of today’s ever changing
work environment. Missing until recently has been the rigorous empirical research that can inform
and support this growing area of inquiry (Briscoe & Hall, 2006; Briscoe et al., 2006). We addressed
this empirical gap by developing and validating a scale to measure career orientations. Although the
career orientation concept is not a new one, it seemed appropriate at this time to offer an updated
valid scale that can extend this framework so that its theoretical assumptions are more consistent
with today’s boundaryless careers. We hope our research and resulting scale will encourage future
research to continue to investigate how individuals’ career orientations impact work attitudes, beha-
viors, and career decisions.
Authors’ Note
The data used in this study were collected as part of a larger project that was funded by the University of Illi-
nois’ Center for Human Resource Management (CHRM). The conclusions are those of the authors and do not
necessarily represent CHRM.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
References
Arthur, M. B. (1994). The boundaryless career: A new perspective for organizational inquiry. Journal of
Organizational Behavior, 15, 295–306. doi:10.1002/job.4030150402
Arthur, M. B., & Rousseau, D. M. (Eds.). (1996). The boundaryless career: A new employment principle for a
new organizational era. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Briscoe, J. P., & Hall, D. T. (2006). The interplay of boundaryless and protean careers: Combinations and impli-
cations. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 69, 4–18. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2005.09.002
Briscoe, J. P., Hall, D. T., & Frautschy DeMuth, R. L. (2006). Protean and boundaryless careers: An empirical
exploration. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 69, 30–47. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2005.09.003
Campbell, D. T., & Fiske, D. W. (1959). Convergent and discriminant validation by the multitrait-multimethod
matrix. Psychological Bulletin, 56, 81–105.
Crant, J. M. (2000). Proactive behavior in organizations. Journal of Management, 26, 435–462. doi:10.1177/
014920630002600304
Danziger, N., Rachman-Moore, D., & Valency, R. (2008). The construct validity of Schein’s career anchors
orientation inventory. Career Development International, 13, 7–19. doi:10.1108/13620430810849506
Dawis, R. V., & Lofquist, L. H. (1984). A psychological theory of work adjustment: An individual-differences
model and its applications. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Dreher, G. F., & Ash, R. A. (1990). A comparative study of mentoring among men and women in managerial,
professional, and technical positions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75, 539–546. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.
75.5.539
Eby, L. T., & Russell, J. E. A. (2000). Predictors of employee willingness to relocate for the firm. Journal of
Vocational Behavior, 57, 42–61. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jvbe.1999.1724
Fabrigar, L. R., Petty, R. E., Smith, S. M., & Crites, S. L. (2006). Understanding knowledge effects on attitude–
behavior consistency: The role of relevance, complexity, and amount of knowledge. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 90, 556–577. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.90.4.556

Bravo et al. 23
Feldman, D. C., & Bolino, M. C. (1996). Careers within careers: Reconceptualizing the nature of career anchors
and their consequences. Human Resource Management Review, 6, 89–112. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/S1053-4822(96)90014-5
Gubler, M., Arnold, J., & Coombs, C. (2014). Reassessing the protean career concept: Empirical findings, concep-
tual components, and measurement. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35, S23–S40. doi:10.1002/job.1908
Hall, D. T. (1996). Protean careers of the 21st century. Academy of Management Executive, 10, 8–16. doi:10.
5465/AME.1996.3145315
Hinkin, T. R. (1998). A brief tutorial on the development of measures for use in survey questionnaires.
Organizational Research Methods, 1, 104–121. doi:10.1177/109442819800100106
Holland, J. L. (1959). A theory of vocational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 6, 35.
Igbaria, M., & Baroudi, J. J. (1993). A short form measure of career orientations: A psychometric evaluation.
Journal of Management Information Systems, 10, 131–154.
Igbaria, M., Greenhaus, J. H., & Parasuraman, S. (1991). Career orientations of MIS employees: An empirical
analysis. MIS Quarterly, 15, 151–169. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/249376
Kraimer, M., Seibert, S., Wayne, S., Liden, R., & Bravo, J. (2011). Antecedents and outcomes of organizational
support for development: The critical role of career opportunities. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96,
485–500.
Levinson, D. J. (1978). The seasons of a man’s life. New York, NY: Knopf.
London, M. (1983). Toward a theory of career motivation. Academy of Management Review, 8, 620–630. doi:
10.5465/AMR.1983.4284664
Lyness, K. S., & Thompson, D. E. (2000). Climbing the corporate ladder: Do female and male executives fol-
low the same route? Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 86–101. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.85.1.86
Mainiero, L. A., & Sullivan, S. E. (2005). Kaleidoscope careers: An alternative explanation for the ‘‘opt-out
generation.’’ Academy of Management Executive, 19, 106–123.
Marshal, V., & Bonner, D. (2003). Career anchors and the effects of downsizing. Implications for generations
and cultures at work: A preliminary investigation. Journal of European Industrial Training, 27, 281–291.
doi:10.1108/03090590310479910
Meyer, J. P., Allen, N. J., & Smith, C. A. (1993). Commitment to organizations and occupations: Extension and
test of a three-component conceptualization. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 538–551. doi:10.1037/
0021-9010.78.4.538
Noe, R. A., Steffy, B. D., & Barber, A. E. (1988). An investigation of the factors influencing employees’ will-
ingness to accept mobility opportunities. Personnel Psychology, 41, 559–580. doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.
1988.tb00644.x
Nordvik, H. (1991). Work activity and career goals in Holland’s and Schein’s theories of vocational personal-
ities and career anchors. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 38, 165–178. doi:10.1016/0001-8791(91)90024-G
Nordvik, H. (1996). Relationships between Holland’s vocational typology, Schein’s career anchors and Myers-
Brigg’s types. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 69, 263–276. doi:10.1111/j.2044-
8325
Petroni, A. (2000). Strategic career development for R&D staff: A field research. Team Performance
Management, 6, 52–61. doi:10.1108/13527590010731970
Premarajan, R. K. (2001). Cross cultural validation of a career anchor scale and the initial structure of an aug-
mented scale. Paper presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meetings, Washington, DC.
Schein, E. H. (1978). Career dynamics: Matching individuals and organizational needs. Boston, MA: Addison-
Wesley.
Schein, E. H. (1987). Individuals and careers. In J. Lorsch (Ed.), Handbook of organizational behavior (pp.
155–171). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Schein, E. H. (1990). Career anchors: Discovering your real values. San Diego, CA: Pfeiffer.
Schein, E. H. (2006). Career anchors. In J. H. Greenhaus & G. A. Callanan (Eds.), Encyclopedia of career
development (Vol. 1, pp. 63–69), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Seibert, S. E., Kraimer, M. L., & Crant, J. M. (2001). What do proactive people do? A longitudinal model link-
ing proactive personality and career success. Personnel Psychology, 54, 845–874. doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.
2001.tb00234.x
Seibert, S. E., Crant, J. M., & Kraimer, M. L. (1999). Proactive personality and career success. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 84, 416–427. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.84.3.416
Sturges, J., Guest, D., Conway, N., & Davey, K. M. (2002). A longitudinal study of the relationship between
career management and organizational commitment among graduates in the first ten years at work. Journal
of Organizational Behavior, 23, 731–748. doi:10.1002/job.164
Sullivan, S. E., & Baruch, Y. (2009). Advances in career theory and research: A critical review and agenda for
future exploration. Journal of Management, 35, 1542–1571. doi:10.1177/0149206309350082
Super, D. E. (1957). Psychology of careers. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers.
Super, D. E. (1980). A life-span, life-space approach to career development. Journal of Vocational Behavior,
16, 282–298.
Tan, H. H., & Quek, B. C. (2001). An exploratory study on the career anchors of educators in Singapore. The
Journal of Psychology, 135, 527–545. doi:10.1080/00223980109603717
Tharenou, P., & Terry, D. J. (1998). Reliability and validity of scores on scales to measure managerial aspira-
tions. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58, 474–491. doi:10.1177/0013164498058003008
Wayne, S. J., Liden, R. C., Kraimer, M. L., & Graf, I. K. (1999). The role of human capital, motivation, and
supervisor sponsorship in predicting career success. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 20, 577–595.
doi:10.1002/(SICI)1099-1379(199909)
Welbourne, T. M., Johnson, D. E., & Erez, A. (1998). The role-based performance scale: Validity analysis of a
theory-based measure. Academy of Management Journal, 41, 540–555. doi:10.2307/256941
Zenger, T. R., & Lawrence, B. S. (1989). Organizational demography: The differential effects of age and tenure
distributions on technical communication. The Academy of Management Journal, 32, 353–376. doi:10.2307/
256366

Bravo2015 PDF

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Bravo2015 PDF

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Article

Journal of Career Assessment

Jesus Bravo1, Scott E. Seibert2, Maria L. Kraimer2,

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

From Career Anchor to Career Orientation

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Method and Results

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Career Orientation Scale Item 1 2 3 4 5 6

I am very good at developing innovative new procedures, products, or .88

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Career Orientation Scale Item 1 2 3 4 5 6

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

1. Entrepreneurial creativity orientation 4.90 1.20 (.90)

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Hypothesis 1: Entrepreneurial creativity orientation is positively related to proactive person-

Security Career Orientation

Hypothesis 2a: Security career orientation is negatively related to willingness to relocate.

Lifestyle Career Orientation

Hypothesis 3: Lifestyle career orientation is negatively related to willingness to relocate.

Managerial Career Orientation

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Hypothesis 4: Managerial career orientation is positively related to proactive personality,

Technical/Functional Career Orientation

Hypothesis 5: Technical/functional career orientation is positively correlated with supervi-

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Measures From Supervisor

Analyses and Results

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

1. Entrepreneurial 5.48 .94 (.83)

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Proactive Desire for Upward Mentoring Career Self-

Entrepreneurial .32** .05 .08 .29**

entrepreneurial orientation also positively related to supervisor’s ratings of technical competence

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Willingness to Continuance Organizational Innovative Managerial Technical

Entrepreneurial .14 .05 .04 .18* .03 .01 .22**

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Strengths and Limitations

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Middle East Technical Univ on February 7, 2016

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi

Entrepreneurial .32 .05 .08 .29