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Wolfgang Mayrhofer: Professor, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: My thanks go to Yochanan Altman, University of Lyon, for encouraging the idea of starting this paper and for his enthusiasm to stimulate more in-depth thoughts; and to Eduard Mayrhofer, MPR Styria, for providing valuable historical background information.
Introduction
Dealing with managers nearly inevitably also means dealing with their careers. Among managers, in the popular press, and in scientific research the debate about careers - conceptualized as a sequence of positions within a social setting that an individual actually went through or will be going through[1] - is thought to be important.
First, it is important to the managers themselves. Their careers form their professional lives and determine the scope of influence they have. Second, important also for the organizations where these careers take place. Through creating and controlling career paths they form the pool of experience that managers can draw on in their management decisions. Third, important also for the social environment of these managers. The relationship between managers on the one side and their families, members of the political and economic system, etc. on the other, are heavily influenced by the type of careers individual managers make.
Despite its importance, "a career" is quite an enigmatic concept. In the German-speaking countries the concept, in its everyday use and in popular science, does not carry a neutral notion, but is clearly associated with hierarchical progress, success, money, fame and the like. Hence, not everyone has a career: careers are restricted to high quality jobs, or to subjects like the sports or art.
At the same time, "a career" is not a uni-dimensional positive attribute. On the contrary, making a career for oneself is regarded as a rather ambiguous undertaking. Besides the "good" aspects of careers (mentioned above) there are also "bad" associations, like ruthlessness, becoming alienated from one's roots, loneliness at the top. Being a careerist is therefore also a negative attribute applied to persons who focus on their own advancement rather than on performance, the (common) wellbeing of the organization and the wider interests of individuals and the community.
In that context I wish to discuss the careers of high-flyers, and specifically:
1 What are the characteristics of high-flyers?
2 How do...