Moving forward: Diverse conceptual and theoretical perspectives to advance career proactivity research

Abstract

Research interests have surged recently to unpack the different elements or forms of career proactivity, which is presumed to carry important implications for one’s career (Klehe et al., 2021). However, as revealed in our bibliometric review (Jiang et al., 2022), career proactivity remains a complex domain which resides in various research themes in vocational and organizational psychology. While these insights emerging from the bibliographic analyses echo well-established perspectives in the wider career development literature, they do suggest broad directions future research may follow to move this field forward, such as clearing up the conceptualization of career proactivity, taking contextualized views, bridging historical traditions across domains, and developing new theories. That being said, since most existing career studies do not directly address “proactivity” due to constrained or ambiguous knowledge about the nature of being vocationally or occupationally proactive, the themes and clusters were largely hidden behind the literature that indirectly attends to individuals’ actions or behavioral tendencies (or indicators reflecting/fostering these actions or tendencies). What seems challenging for career proactivity research in the future, is still the complexity of identifying a clearer and more precisely defined thread that can bind these themes in a coherent, meaningful manner.