The emergence of career boundaries in unbounded industries: career odysseys in the Italian New Economy

The main objective of this research1 was to study boundaries to the ‘boundaryless career’ in a novel context. Our empirical study focused on career paths leading top managers to enter emergent firms. We collected data on professional histories of a sample of top managers who operated in firms listed at the ‘Nuovo Mercato’ (New Market), the Italian equivalent of the NASDAQ. We demonstrate the existence of two major kinds of boundaries: competence-based (in the form of industry boundaries) and relation-based (in the form of professional network boundaries). A second objective of our research was to identify dominant individual career logics and to connect different career logics to the boundaryless career concept. Our data reveal the dominance of the evolutionary career logic.