The present study has two purposes. One is to investigate the relationship between an Inter‐Organizational Career Orientation (IOCO) of employees and their career strategies. The second is to investigate the effects of the career attitudes that an IOCO has on employee career strategies.
The facts and conclusions presented in this paper were obtained from a study of 365 employees from 16 companies. A multiple regression analysis was adopted for testing hypotheses.
With regard to the first objective, it was determined that IOCO has a positive effect on inter‐organizational career strategies (career exploration) and a negative one on organizational career strategies (self‐nomination). With regard to the second objective, the moderating effects of career attitudes toward the relationships described as follows became clear: job involvement of employees with regard to the relationship between IOCO and creating career opportunities; job involvement of employees with regard to the relationship between IOCO and self‐nomination; job involvement of employees with regard to the relationship between IOCO and career insight; and career goal commitment of employees with regard to the relationship between IOCO and challenging work behavior.
An analysis according to demographic factors and the implementation of longitudinal research are suggested as future research subjects.
This paper showed that IOCO contributed not only to the rejection of organizational career strategies but also to that of organizational and inter‐organizational career strategies. “Domain fit hypothesis” was verified in new organizational behavioral concepts between career orientation and a career strategy.
