Lying fallow: Individual and contextual conditions explaining intra-organizational career inaction

Abstract

The changing nature of careers has implications for navigating organizational careers. An increased focus on employee agency and an erosion of clearly structured and predictable career paths mark them with ambiguity and uncertainty, thereby increasing the likelihood of intra-organizational career inaction (i.e., insufficient action on a desire to make an intra-organizational career transition over time). Due to a one-sided focus on the influence of organizational conditions and on realized transitions (i.e., those in which the individual has moved into a new position within the organization), individual conditions and possible discrepancies in the execution of career desires remain underexplored. This paper takes an individual decision-making perspective to explain intra-organizational career inaction. Building on career inaction theory, we examine which configurations of individual and contextual conditions contribute to this phenomenon. This is important as intra-organizational career transitions can build employee competences, leading to a dynamic and resilient workforce. Empirically, we adopted a qualitative longitudinal research design covering 1 year, following 26 employees who expressed a desire to make an intra-organizational career transition at the beginning of the study. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) revealed four paths consisting of different combinations of the proposed conditions. We contribute to the career literature by addressing challenges in navigating contemporary organizational careers and to career inaction theory by empirically examining its core tenets.