Innovators' careers

• The success or failure of most organizations is heavily dependent on innovation. However, this innovation is only possible through a special group of employees: the socalled innovators. These scientists, researchers, and developers are vital for the innovativeness of the organization. In my dissertation, I examine innovators’ careers from their organization’s point of view. In particular, my objective is to develop a more balanced approach to innovators’ careers than is offered in the contemporary career management literature. Some researchers argue that organizational career management has become more important because of the war for talent, whereas others postulate that organizations withdraw from career management because of the changing definitions of a career. These contrasting viewpoints leave organizations without a clear guideline for managing their key players’ careers. In order to provide such a guideline, in this thesis I address three central research questions by drawing on a cross-level sample of 625 innovators and 37 HR (human resources) managers from 37 organizations. First, I analyze why some innovators leave their technical field of specialization to become managers. The results reveal that new career attitudes and organizational culture have an influence. More specifically, innovators with a self-directed career attitude, a boundaryless mindset, and a preference for organizational mobility often have a high managerial orientation, whereas the opposite is the case for innovators with a more valuesoriented career attitude. Furthermore, it is more likely in organizations with a supportive and collaborative culture that innovators will want to advance their career in a management position than in organizations with a culture in favor of innovativeness, power sharing, and learning and development. Second, I investigate whether organizational career management can still influence innovators’ careers. My results reveal that this is the case. In particular, they show that organizations should apply their organizational career management intensively, but should refrain from using too many practices and from further diversifying an already intensively applied organizational career management. Moreover, my study indicates that organizations profit from increasing innovators’ perceived career management support because it boosts the match between individual and organizational career plans. Third, I examine how organizations can use dual ladders to raise innovators’ organizational commitment and career satisfaction. I identify the perceived recognition and transparency of the dual ladder as factors integral to the success of this career management instrument. My analyses illustrate that both are positively related to innovators’ organizational commitment and career satisfaction. In addition, my results reveal that selfdirected career management weakens the positive relationships between the perceived recognition of the dual ladder and organizational commitment and career satisfaction. Based on the conceptual arguments and empirical results, I provide recommendations for organizations on how to handle innovators’ careers in the era of the new career. Therefore, I provide easy-to-use guidelines on how to keep innovators in their technical positions and roles, how to use organizational career management, and how to make dual ladders work. Last, but not least, I focus on the limitations of my study and point to future research possibilities.