Moving beyond organizational boundaries Why would people prefer a boundaryless career?

Abstract

Nowadays more and more people are choosing a boundaryless career (BC). The present study refers to Organizational Mobility Preference (OMP) indicating an attitude of an individual to conduct actual moves in changing between organization, occupations and jobs. As an overarching framework, the person environment fit framework (P-E fit) is used to derive hypotheses from. In this study organizational identification (OI), cognitive job crafting (CJC) and professional development (PD) will be put as antecedents because the literature shows that they are supposed to influence OMP. Additionally, affective organizational commitment (AOC) is put as moderator. A cross sectional design was used and 272 employees filled out the survey. Against the expectations the results showed that the antecedents OI, CJC and PD are positively statistically significant related to OMP. Yet, no moderation of AOC is found in the different relationships. This study contributes to the existing literature by exploring potential antecedents of OMP. This is new because little research has been done into OMP and especially not in the light of the PE-fit framework. Finally, the interesting findings are explained in the light of the implications this has for both organizations and HR practices.