Abstract
This qualitative study offers empirically-based explanations of the dynamics of career mobility trajectories to self-employment, a popular phenomenon in real life but less so in the literature. Embedded in the career ecosystem of an emerging-economy country, we investigate the mobility dynamics of people in different stages of their self-employment career. We conducted in-depth interviews with 35 individuals who opted for entrepreneurship or self-employed careers, and deploy the interpretive phenomenology to explore the dynamics of career mobility of self-employment. The results demonstrate different patterns of mobility between self- and paid employment during individuals’ career sequences. The different push and pull forces that influence mobility are identified and explained. The study advances the theories of career and entrepreneurship literature by not only illustrating the mobility dynamics of self-employment as a stage of one’s career but by also exploring the dynamic mechanisms of the mobility, drawing on the career ecosystem framework.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3088-3111 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| Journal | International Journal of Human Resource Management |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue number | 14 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2021 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Keywords
- Career mobility
- career ecosystem
- paid employment
- push-pull factors
- self-employment
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Strategy and Management
- Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
- Management of Technology and Innovation
