Organizational embeddedness and occupational embeddedness across career stages

Journal of Vocational Behavior 70 (2007) 336–351 www.elsevier.com/locate/jvb

Organizational embeddedness and occupational embeddedness across career stages Thomas W.H. Ng a

a,*

, Daniel C. Feldman

b

School of Business and Economics, The University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong b Terry College of Business, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA Received 3 August 2006 Available online 22 November 2006

Abstract This article proposes a theoretical framework to study organizational embeddedness and occupational embeddedness. Organizational embeddedness is the totality of forces (fit, links, and sacrifices) that keep people in their current organizations, while occupational embeddedness is the totality of forces (fit, links, and sacrifices) that keep people in their current occupations. The proposed framework identifies the antecedents of these parallel processes and when and why they can diverge. It also highlights the role that individuals’ career stages play in the embedding process. The article concludes with a discussion of avenues for future research on job turnover and occupation change and implications for management practice. Ó 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Job stability; Job embeddedness; Organizational embeddedness; Job turnover; Career stability; Occupational embeddedness; Organizational change

1. Introduction Particularly since the mass layoffs of the 1970s, the careers literature has paid a great deal of attention to employees’ job mobility (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996; Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005; Sullivan, 1999). However, over the past several years, an interesting alternative question has emerged: Why do people stay in their organizations and occupa-

*

Corresponding author. Fax: +852 2549 3735. E-mail address: [email protected] (T.W.H. Ng).

0001-8791/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2006.10.002

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tions even when other opportunities are available elsewhere? Beginning originally with the research on job embeddedness, scholars have been paying more and more attention to issues of job stability (Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski, & Erez, 2001). Interest in occupational embeddedness has increased among careers researchers as well (King, Burke, & Pemberton, 2005). Just as individuals can become embedded in their organizations, individuals can become embedded in their occupations, too (Feldman, 2002a). For example, many individuals are still predisposed to stay the course in hopes of greater job security and employment stability (Ng, Butts, Vandenberg, Dejoy, & Wilson, 2006; Schmidt, 1999; White, Hill, Mills, & Smeaton, 2004). A greater understanding of employee embeddedness is timely and important for several reasons. First, the construct of occupational embeddedness can shed light on how an individual’s career development might explain job turnover above and beyond immediate situational factors (Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000; Steel, 2002). Second, employee embeddedness is relevant to organizational staffing and retention policies. In numerous cases, organizations have operated on the assumption that high (or low) job turnover is due to largely intra-organizational factors and, therefore, can be addressed by more effective staffing and retention programs (Greenhaus, Callanan, & Godshalk, 2000; Rousseau, 2004). However, sometimes low turnover may be due to embeddedness in a particular career path rather than to the nature of a particular organization’s environment. On the other hand, high turnover may be a function of low ‘‘sunk costs’’ in an occupation rather than of organizational ‘‘errors’’ in managing personnel. Untangling the effects of job turnover and occupational change, then, can provide organizations with better guidance about what actions are helpful, unhelpful, or irrelevant in stemming turnover. Third, the degree of employee embeddedness can affect the transfer of knowledge, innovation, and technology across organizational boundaries. While employee mobility may have harmful effects on group functioning and organizational performance, a lack of employee mobility might also slow down the rate of diffusion of new knowledge across organizational and industry boundaries (Saxenian, 1996). The purpose of this article, then, is to provide an integration and extension of the embeddedness literature. The central thesis of the current article is that organizational embeddedness and occupational embeddedness develop in largely parallel fashion, yet there are still some factors that uniquely promote either organizational embeddedness or occupational embeddedness. We also suggest that the factors that result in organizational embeddedness and occupational embeddedness vary across the establishment, maintenance, and disengagement stages of careers. Super’s (1957, 1984) life-span, lifespace model acts as the theoretical guide for explaining this embeddedness process. 2. Definitional issues 2.1. Organizational embeddedness To explain why people do not change organizations even when opportunities exist, Mitchell et al. (2001) proposed a new construct called job embeddedness. It is important to note that because embeddedness in a job essentially embeds the individual in the organization, too, job embeddedness also implies organizational embeddedness. On the contrary, organizational embeddedness does not necessarily imply job embeddedness

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because inter-job mobility within an organization is still possible. Since there has been less research on organizational embeddedness, we focus more fully on that broader construct in the article. Following Mitchell et al. (2001), we define organizational embeddedness as the totality of forces that keep people in their current employment. These forces include fit, links, and sacrifice. Fit is the extent to which an individual’s abilities match organizational requirements and an individual’s interests match organizational rewards. The stronger the perceived fit, the more embedded the person will be in his/her organization. Links refer to the extent of ties individuals have with other people and activities at work (e.g., friendship ties or task interdependence). The more links one has in an organization, the more embedded one is in the organization. Sacrifice is the totality of losses which individuals would incur by leaving their organizations (e.g., pension benefits or accrued sick leave). Thus, this component, in part, involves individuals’ risk assessments. The greater the perceived sacrifice in leaving, the more embedded the individual will be in the organization. Two additional points warrant attention. First, it should be noted that embeddedness is not necessarily a negative and uncommon career experience. In fact, the attainment of person-organization fit, the establishment of numerous social ties, the growth of pension accounts, and the enjoyment of the perks provided by the organization are valued highly by many workers (e.g., Cable & Judge, 1996; Seibert, Kraimer, & Liden, 2001). As such, a high level of embeddedness may signify that the individual’s career has been progressing well. However, embeddedness also means a lower likelihood of discovering and taking advantage of other career opportunities. The current article, therefore, is not advocating either mobility or stability. Rather, its purpose is to demonstrate that there are constraints on mobility and these constraints are not well understood yet. Second, the embeddedness construct is distinct from Allen and Meyer’s (1990) three components of commitment (Mitchell et al., 2001). Embeddedness is distinct from affective commitment because some of its dimensions, such as sacrifice, also reflect non-affective cognitive judgments. Embeddedness is also different from normative commitment. Embeddedness addresses the number of links individuals have; in contrast, normative commitment addresses the nature of those links (e.g., felt obligation to stay). Finally, embeddedness is distinct from continuance commitment because the ‘‘sacrifice’’ dimension of embeddedness does not assess ‘‘the lack of alternatives’’ that continuance commitment does. 2.2. Occupational embeddedness The embeddedness perspective proposed by Mitchell et al. (2001) may be applied to understanding occupational changes as well. Specifically, we propose that occupational embeddedness is the totality of forces that keep people in their current occupations. These forces, once again, are fit, links, and sacrifice. Fit is the extent to which an individual’s abilities match occupational requirements and an individual’s interests match occupational rewards. The stronger the perceived fit, the more embedded an individual will be in an occupation. Links refer to the extent to which individuals have ties to other people and activities in the occupation. The more links one has in the occupation (e.g., friendships with professional colleagues or involvement in professional associations), the more embedded an individual will be in his/her occupation. Sacrifice is the totality of losses which individuals would incur by leaving their occupa-

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tions. Again, this component involves individuals’ risk assessments; the greater the perceived sacrifice in leaving one’s occupation (e.g., sunk costs in professional training), the more embedded an individual will be in that occupation. Organizational embeddedness and occupational embeddedness are conceptually distinct. Embeddedness in an organization typically requires individuals to stay within the same occupation, but embeddedness in an occupation does not preclude organizational changes within the same occupation (Neal, 1999; Tolbert, 1996). For this reason, we believe that organizational embeddedness will impact occupational embeddedness more heavily than vice versa. 2.3. Career stages The factors that promote embeddedness are likely to be different as careers unfold over time. Two major assertions of Super’s (1957, 1984) life-span, life-space model provide the theoretical foundation for explaining this embedding process. First, Super’s model suggests that individuals undergo multiple stages of career development in their lifespan—exploration, establishment, maintenance, and eventual disengagement. Individual differences (particularly self-concepts) and social roles largely govern the progression through these career stages (Super, 1990). Super (1990) also mentions the possibility that different career stages may occur at different ages for different people and that some people (particularly those who change organizations and occupations) may recycle through career stages more than once in their life-span. The second major assertion of Super’s life-span, life-space model is that the number of roles individuals play and the salience attached to those roles vary across career stages. Super’s work in this regard underlies our thesis here that factors promoting organizational and occupational embeddedness may differ across career stages. As individuals progress in their careers, they are likely to have to play different roles both at work (e.g., prote´ge´, mentor, manager, leader, pensioner) and outside of work (e.g., child, spouse, churchgoer, community leader). As the number of roles and the associated salience of those roles change, the collection of forces that embed individuals in their organizations and occupations change over time, too. 3. Development of organizational and occupational embeddedness Why are individuals embedded in their organizations and occupations? We structure the discussion of these antecedent factors according to the fit, links, and sacrifice dimensions of embeddedness. Further, for the sake of parsimony, we focus on the establishment, maintenance, and disengagement stages only since, for many individuals, the forces that lead to embeddedness do not start accumulating until at least the establishment stage. The proposed framework appears in Table 1. 3.1. Establishment stage The main tasks of the establishment stage are securing one’s place in the organization, demonstrating outstanding performance, establishing relationships with others at work, and advancing to new levels of responsibilities (Super, Savickas, & Super, 1996). General attitudes toward work and fairly stable personal values mature in this career stage, too.

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Table 1 Factors promoting organizational and occupational embeddedness Establishment stage

Maintenance stage

Disengagement stage

Factors promoting organizational embeddedness only

Organizational socialization Organization-specific skills Work hours

Management & leadership responsibilities

Pension funds & insurance benefits

Factors promoting occupational embeddedness only

Generalizable occupational skills

Accumulation of career attainments

Leadership role in the profession

Factors promoting both types

Social ties Mentorship

Career plateauing Reconciliation of goal discrepancy Family status

Risk aversion

Individuals in this stage also look to more fully define their self-concepts (Cron & Slocum, 1986). By the end of establishment years, individuals have often achieved some level of career attainments and secured jobs (and/or occupations) in which they have some competence and with which they can identify (Super, 1957). Fit. An important factor that may increase the fit for individuals in the establishment stage is the organizational socialization process individuals undergo (Allen, 2006). The overarching goal of organizational socialization is to promote greater congruence of employees’ abilities and values with organizational demands and values (Bauer, Morrison, & Callister, 1998). Therefore, an important outcome of the socialization process is that newcomers’ attitudes and behaviors become closely aligned with organizational norms and expectations (Bauer et al., 1998). For instance, Kammeyer-Mueller and Wanberg (2003) found that organizational socialization increased employees’ role understanding, which in turn reduced the likelihood of withdrawal from the job and the organization. Organizational socialization, then, should be positively associated with person-organization fit and promote organizational embeddedness. However, we do not expect organizational socialization to increase occupational embeddedness because the content of most organizational socialization programs is organization-specific rather than occupation-specific in nature (Chao, O’Leary-Kelly, Wolf, Klein, & Gardner, 1994). Thus, we predict: Proposition 1. The degree of organizational socialization is positively associated with organizational embeddedness. Links. Individuals in the establishment stage often begin networking in the job market and meeting people professionally through various job experiences (Aryee, Wyatt, & Stone, 1996; Jokisaari & Nurmi, 2006). Such ties serve as a source of information, as a source of emotional support, and as a source of task assistance (Feldman, 2002b; Seibert et al., 2001). These links, however, may also embed individuals in their organizations and occupations. Over time, initially superficial relationships can develop into deeper emotional bonds. For instance, Nelson and Quick (1991) found that newcomers’ frequent interactions with peers were positively related to intentions to stay with the organization. Higgins (2001) also found that the existence of quality social relationships was negatively related to job change. Thus, we predict that:

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Proposition 2. The number and strength of social ties are positively associated with both organizational and occupational embeddedness. Besides actively cultivating social relationships with peers, many individuals in the establishment stage also develop informal mentor–prote´ge´ relationships with senior colleagues or with mentors formally assigned by their organizations (Murphy, 2002; Scandura, 2002). In fact, senior members of an organization can be instrumental for junior employees’ advancement in the firm (Noe, Greenberger, & Wang, 2002; Okurame & Balogun, 2005). The amount and quality of mentoring, then, may also build links that further embed individuals in their organizations and occupations (Allen, 2004). For instance, Green and Bauer (1995) found that doctoral students who received greater mentoring from advisors reported greater commitment to their current employers and to their professions. It is also worth noting that mentors may embed employees by enhancing their skills and, in so doing, increase individuals’ perceptions of person-organization and person-occupation fit. Proposition 3. The quantity and quality of mentoring are positively associated with both organizational and occupational embeddedness. Sacrifice. There are several factors in the establishment stage that may promote perceptions of sacrifices associated with organizational and occupational change. Individuals at this stage are often highly concerned with skill development opportunities (Phillips, Blustein, Jobin-Davis, & White, 2002). These individuals expect that a greater repertoire of skills and a high degree of proficiency in them will help advance their careers more rapidly (McEnrue, 1989). There are two types of skills individuals can develop. The first are generalizable occupational skills that are easily transferable across organizations within an industry. The second are organization-specific skills that are highly valued within a given firm but are not necessarily valued within the broader industry. We propose that heavy investment in developing generalizable occupation skills serves to increase occupational embeddedness. For example, the amount of money physicians would lose by changing occupations is enormous, since both the amount of money invested in a medical education and the income foregone to get that education are significant. On the other hand, the amount of investment in organizational skill development will be positively associated with organizational embeddedness, but not with occupational embeddedness. Energy invested in developing locally valued skills can only be recouped by staying with a particular organization for a longer period of time (Claes & Ruiz-Quintanilla, 1998). Thus, we predict: Proposition 4a. Investment in generalizable occupational skills is positively associated with occupational embeddedness. Proposition 4b. Investment in organization-specific skills is positively associated with organizational embeddedness. Work hours are another form of human capital investment that is rewarded in the labor market (Ng et al., 2005). Individuals in the establishment years often dedicate high numbers of hours to their jobs for several reasons (Lamberg, 2004). First, they are on a learning curve and it may take them longer to perform their job duties initially. Second, junior members are often given some of the most onerous tasks, and thus individuals in this

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career stage sometimes have to put in particularly long hours on their first couple of jobs. Third, career starters often dedicate a great deal of their time to work because they are highly energized and enthusiastic. Assuming that individuals are at least moderately productive in those extra work hours, greater investment of hours in work will enhance job performance (Feldman & Brett, 1983). At the same time, individuals who put in long work hours also tend to expect greater future rewards in return (Wayne, Liden, Kraimer, & Graf, 1999). Thus, the more hours individuals in the establishment stage dedicate to their jobs, the greater their sacrifice would be in leaving the organization. In effect, these employees would be investing extra effort in the short-run but not deriving the long-run benefits of that investment. However, work hours do not necessarily enhance occupational embeddedness because perceived sacrifices are likely to be framed in terms of organizational rewards rather than occupational rewards. Proposition 5. Number of weekly work hours is positively associated with organizational embeddedness. 3.2. Maintenance stage When individuals enter the maintenance stage, their major concerns become preserving their self-concepts and holding on to career achievements already attained. These individuals have often developed at least a moderate level of identification with their company or occupation (Slocum & Cron, 1985), thereby making any further changes in career paths more difficult. For older individuals at this career stage, achieving work–non-work balance becomes more important as non-work life roles become more salient (Super, 1980; Williams & Savickas, 1990). In fact, many individuals at this stage have developed strong roots in the non-work domains of their lives by becoming deeply involved in community, church, and volunteer activities (Sofer, 1970). Those who are partnered and/or have children may become more involved in other family-centered activities, too. Fit. The maintenance stage is the time at which individuals’ job performance typically peaks and levels off. On the positive side, this leveling off can signify an individual’s sense of professional satisfaction and a comfort level with career stability. However, lack of mobility can also be a symptom of career plateauing. In the maintenance stage, individuals are most likely to reach the point where they are unlikely to receive either more formal promotions or positions of increased responsibility (Feldman & Weitz, 1988). Consequently, it is not surprising that many individuals in the maintenance stage express interest in re-training and further professional skill development (Pazy, 1996; Simpson, Greller, & Stroh, 2002; Williams & Savickas, 1990). For instance, Guthrie and Schwoerer (1996) found that individuals in the later stages of their careers reported a higher need for skill re-training than those in early career. Such skill updating is likely to enhance perceptions of fit. Further, for those employees who truly plateau, both organizational embeddedness and occupational embeddedness will be high. By not getting additional training on the job, individuals make it more difficult not only to advance in their present jobs but also to receive offers in the external labor market (Nicholson & West, 1988). Moreover, individuals who plateau because they are unwilling to invest more energy into their current

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occupations are unlikely to invest even greater amounts of energy to start new occupations altogether. Proposition 6. Career plateauing is positively associated with both organizational and occupational embeddedness. The maintenance stage is also a period when individuals reconcile discrepancies between their initial career goals and their likely goal accomplishments (Hall & Mirvis, 1995; Rosen & Jerdee, 1990). Individuals often use the maintenance period as the cognitive frame of reference to assess past professional accomplishments and to determine what is feasible and achievable in the years ahead (Isabella, 1988). At least in part, cognitive dissonance helps individuals think more positively about the decisions they made earlier in their careers and to justify and rationalize their present trajectories (Schacter, 2001). These memory distortions enhance self-perceptions of person-organization fit and person-occupation fit (Blau, 1989; Gabriel, 2003) and, therefore, are likely to enhance organizational and occupational embeddedness as well. Proposition 7. The reconciliation of goal attainment discrepancies is positively associated with both organizational and occupational embeddedness. Links. One of the major factors that embeds individuals in their organizations at this career stage is involvement in management duties (Floyd & Wooldridge, 1994). As individuals reach the maintenance stage, they are often expected to take more responsibilities for supervising and developing others (Dalton, Thompson, & Price, 1980). Also due to their greater seniority and expertise, individuals in the maintenance stage are expected to play a greater leadership role in various work projects and serve more frequently as boundaryspanners with other units (Perrone, Zaheer, & McEvily, 2003). These managerial, leadership, and boundary-spanning activities directly increase the number and strength of ties individuals in the maintenance stage have within the organization (e.g., subordinates, upper-managers, team-members, and important clients) and, in so doing, promote organizational embeddedness. Maertz and Griffeth (2004) suggest that individuals are less likely to leave an organization when they have obligations to others because of ongoing leadership and participation in group projects. On the other hand, the links created by on-the-job responsibilities do not necessarily increase occupational embeddedness because such obligations are the result of organizational membership, not occupational membership. Proposition 8. The extent of management, project leadership, and boundary-spanning activities is positively associated with organizational embeddedness. A majority of individuals in the maintenance stage have already partnered and started their own families. Thus, work–family balance is a major concern for many individuals in this career stage (Cron & Slocum, 1986). This concern for work–family balance may manifest itself in a striving for stable home and community environments for their partners and/or children. Once a precarious balance of work and family has been achieved, many individuals in the maintenance stage are reluctant to upset that balance at least until their children have left for college. In fact, Bischof (1969) observed that individuals in the maintenance stage fear that any major changes they made in their careers (e.g., organizational change or occupational change) would also bring major (and implicitly negative) consequences for their families and significant others by disrupting their friendship and social ties.

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Therefore, we expect that those individuals in the maintenance stage who are partnered and/or have children will be more embedded in both their organizations and their occupations. This supposition is consistent, for instance, with the work of Lee and Maurer (1999), who found that being married and having children predicted intention to stay with the organization. Along the same lines, Kirchmeyer (2006) observed that individuals who put a high priority on family had significantly lower inter-organizational mobility. Proposition 9. Being partnered or/and having children is positively associated with both organizational and occupational embeddedness. Sacrifice. In the maintenance stage, many individuals have established a considerable level of career attainments in terms of salary, promotions, and professional reputation (Slocum & Cron, 1985). Thus, besides managing work–family balance, preserving the self-concept and holding on to current achievements already attained are major tasks in the maintenance years. We suggest here that the tangible achievements accumulated in one’s occupation by the maintenance stage would also represent significant sacrifices if individuals chose to leave their occupations. The greater the achievements and rewards attained in an occupation, the greater the sacrifices associated with leaving that occupation would be. Consistent with this argument, researchers observe that those individuals in the later career stages with career success are less likely to plan on changing occupations compared to others (Aryee, Chay, & Chew, 1994). On the other hand, career attainments do not necessarily promote organizational embeddedness. This is because changing organizations in the same occupation may still allow individuals to attain similar levels of salary, responsibility, and status within the occupation (Nicholson & West, 1988). Therefore, we suggest that: Proposition 10. Level of career attainment is positively associated with occupational embeddedness. 3.3. Disengagement stage The disengagement stage has often been described as a period of gradual detachment from jobs, organizations, and occupations (Super, 1957). The clear trajectory in this stage is towards less involvement in their current jobs (Adler & Aranya, 1984). Involvement in non-work activities also starts to re-accelerate as organizational and occupational activities decrease. Further, older individuals in the disengagement stage may want to spend more time with children or grandchildren, traveling, in leisure pursuits, or simply relaxing. Fit. The preference for familiar work activities over new activities may sustain personorganization and person-occupation fit for individuals in the disengagement stage. Specifically, the desire for a smooth transition to a new occupation or full retirement may make individuals in the disengagement stage value familiar rather than novel work activities (Goldstein & Goldstein, 1990). Many workers in this stage see making organization changes and occupation changes as highly risky because they jeopardize job security and are unlikely to generate high returns on initial investments of time and capital (Feldman, 2002c). Further, the risk aversion of employees in the disengagement stage to new work activities may also stem from lower confidence levels. For instance, Campion, Lord, and Pursell (1981) found that individuals close to retirement were more likely to refuse

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promotions than other individuals, perhaps reflecting their greater anticipation of failure. Thus we predict: Proposition 11. Risk aversion is positively associated with both organizational and occupational embeddedness. Links. In the disengagement stage, individuals often have a different focus of networking compared to individuals in other stages (Van Eck, Peluchette, & Jeanquart, 2000). Particularly if they have attained high levels of professional prominence, individuals can become deeply involved in a wide variety of other important leadership positions in national or local professional associations or in community and philanthropic endeavors (Simonton, 1998). These activities create even more links that embed individuals in the disengagement stage in their occupations (Feldman, 2002a). Note, though, that this involvement in professional activities may not necessarily embed disengagement-stage individuals any further in their organizations. Visibility as a senior leader in the profession may make an individual even more highly desirable as a job candidate to other firms in the industry. Proposition 12. Level of leadership activity in professional and community affairs is positively associated with occupational embeddedness. Sacrifice. Individuals in the disengagement stage (especially those who are older) tend to have stronger concerns about job security and financial stability (Adler & Aranya, 1984; Haber, 1993; Rabinowitz & Hall, 1981). These concerns figure greatly into their proclivity or disinclination to change organizations and occupations. Specifically, Feldman (1994) suggests that when employees in the disengagement stage anticipate few pension benefits, they are more likely to delay their retirement. Consequently, perceptions of insufficient retirement funds tend to embed these workers in their current organizations. Particularly in firms with fixed-benefit pension plans, continued organizational membership is critical to upping monthly pension benefits by increasing years of service (Powell & Meyer, 2004). Changing employers is also highly risky for individuals in the disengagement stage because of their concerns about insurance costs and coverage. Most insurance companies have exclusions for pre-existing conditions. Thus, these individuals (particularly those with significant health issues) might not seek out new employers because of the risks associated with not being able to get health insurance elsewhere or having to pay much more to get it. Because pension funds and insurance coverage are contingent on organizational tenure rather than occupational tenure, these side-bets should directly impact organizational embeddedness but not necessarily occupational embeddedness. Proposition 13. The amount of pension and insurance benefits is positively associated with organizational embeddedness. 4. Discussion At least on the surface, the embeddedness perspective is quite different from the boundaryless career perspective presented by Arthur and Rousseau (1996), which suggests that job experiences today are characterized by high rates of job mobility across organizations. How can these two perspectives be reconciled? The embeddedness perspective does not suggest that careers today are characterized by either more change or more stability. Rather, its core tenet is that there are numerous

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individual, organizational, and occupational factors that embed workers in their present employment situations even when there are plentiful opportunities to change course and even when there is greater cultural acceptance of such mobility. Further, these embeddedness factors are likely to be different from those that promote mobility. For instance, it has been widely documented that turnover is predominantly affect-driven (e.g., job dissatisfaction) (e.g., Hom & Kinicki, 2001). On the other hand, many embeddedness factors that we have discussed (e.g., mentoring, family status, financial motives) are not directly related to affect. In other ways, though, the two perspectives are complementary. For instance, the boundaryless career perspective does not assert that all employees will necessarily be mobile. Rather, it proposes that the need for organization change and occupation change are greater today, that cultural values about job mobility have become more positive, and that employees are therefore now more energized to consider alternative employers and occupations. The embeddedness perspective, in turn, focuses on those employees who do not move even when it might be advantageous to do so. Similarly, proponents of the boundaryless career perspective suggest that, when employees change jobs and organizations frequently, the primary focus of an individual’s work life becomes his or her occupation (Tolbert, 1996). The embeddedness perspective proposed here also highlights the overarching role that occupational embeddedness can play in enmeshing employees in their current organizations and career paths. 4.1. Implications for theory The current article highlights the utility of the construct of occupational embeddedness in careers research. Occupational embeddedness may dampen (or enhance) the effects of intra-individual and organizational factors on individual turnover decisions. Regardless of the potential of occupational embeddedness to explain individuals’ turnover behaviors, this construct has received little empirical attention to date. Theoretically, our understanding of occupational change will be incomplete if we continue to examine only what energizes people to change jobs and organizations and not what keeps them in their current career trajectories. From a methodological perspective, a rigorous operationalization of occupational embeddedness is essential to that end. The current paper also sheds new light on some of the existing careers theories. Here we focus on two prominent theories in particular, namely, the life-span, life-space model of career development (Super, 1990) and the theory of work adjustment (Dawis, 2005). Consistent with Super’s previous work, we suggest here that career stages and embeddedness are closely related and both play major roles in understanding job turnover and occupational change decisions. An important new direction for extending Super’s work, though, is examining how embeddedness and the duration of career stages are inter-related. For instance, how do organizational embeddedness and occupational embeddedness differentially affect individuals’ subjective perceptions of career growth, maintenance, and decline? Can career stages still recycle when individuals are embedded within an organization, an occupation, or both? For those individuals who feel negatively about being embedded, how does career adaptability (Savickas, 1997, 2005) affect the speed of progression through career stages? That is, what do individuals do and how do they adapt their self-concepts when they are embedded involuntarily? Additional attention to questions

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such as these can advance our understanding of embeddedness as well as extend the scope of Super’s life-span, life-space model. The current article also has theoretical implications for the theory of work adjustment (Dawis, 2005), which suggests that individuals strive to achieve correspondence between their attributes and those of the work environment. The theory of work adjustment proposes that, to the extent that individuals’ needs are met by reinforcers at work, job satisfaction is attained. Likewise, to the extent that workers’ abilities can satisfy job requirements, job satisfactoriness (roughly, job performance) is attained. Here, though, we suggest that the relationships among fit, job attitudes, and job performance are somewhat more complex (Lee, Mitchell, Sablynski, Burton, & Holtom, 2004). Fit may create an embedding force, affecting individuals’ mobility and career attitudes. It appears that, if individuals perceive embeddedness positively, satisfaction and performance may in fact increase. However, a negative reaction to embeddedness may actually manifest itself in poorer job attitudes and job performance. Thus, individuals’ attitudes and beliefs regarding embeddedness seem to be constructs worthy of more attention in their own right and might prove particularly helpful in expanding our understanding of the theory of work adjustment. 4.2. Implications for practice Organizations face the management challenge of wanting to decrease their fixed costs of ‘‘permanent, full time’’ employees while simultaneously building sufficient employee loyalty to sustain strong in-role and extra-role performance. A high rate of turnover can interrupt organizational productivity. However, employees’ embeddedness in their organizations and occupations may also limit the innovative capacity of the organization, especially if a critical mass of employees is embedded in the same company for decades. Like mobility, then, embeddedness has its own set of potential negative consequences for organizations. This research stream also argues that the optimal levels of turnover and embeddedness can vary over time and across industries, and, thus, the managerial strategies for addressing that balance might have to vary, too. For instance, occupations in which there are high barriers to entry (e.g., pilots), organizations in which there are high barriers to entry (e.g., top law firms), and companies with seniority-based incentives (e.g., fixed-benefit pension plans) will have much higher base rates of embeddedness. Conversely, in labor markets where there are extreme shortages of labor (such as nursing or high school teachers), it might be rational to encourage embeddedness even for average employees. Fortunately, many of the antecedents of organizational and occupational embeddedness we discussed in this paper are under the direct control of managers. For instance, managers are able to affect newcomers’ socialization experiences and the number and kind of mentors or supervisors assigned to them (Allen, 2006; Garvey & Alred, 2000). Furthermore, managers can affect the amount and quality of re-training for maintenance-stage employees or the pension incentives, insurance plans, and level of job security so valued by senior employees. The main task for managers, then, is designing the right mix of incentives/disincentives for high/low performers to stay and to adapt that mix to the varying perspectives of employees in different career stages. The major goal of management should be deciding who to embed and for how long to embed them rather than reducing (or increasing) turnover rates as an end in and of itself.

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