Title: Career path challenges in the consultancy sector

Authors: Leandro Pereira; Diogo Guanilho; Renato Lopes Da Costa; Álvaro Dias; Rui Gonçalves

Addresses: Business Research Unit – BRU, WINNING LAB, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal ' WINNING LAB, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal ' Business Research Unit – BRU-IUL, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal ' ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Lisbon, Portugal ' LABest, Instituto Piaget Almada, Avenida Jorge Peixinho, No. 30, Quinta da Arreinela 2805-059, Portugal

Abstract: Careers have been evolving over the years, because of changes in the labour market and individual perspectives and objectives. Nowadays, looking for different working experiences within diverse companies are quite common, and individuals are more concerned about their career progression. In this context, organisations were pushed to learn and adapt their employee value proposition and place a higher focus on individual career needs. In the consultancy sector, career management can be much more complex and difficult to manage for organisations, since consultant's roles and responsibilities can quickly change. Therefore, this investigation aimed to understand how consultants see the relation between career management, seniority, and performance. The study's results were based on 92 responses from consultants and former consultants to an online survey and shown that while seniority still has a positive correlation with hierarchical levels, most consultants want to pursue a performance-based career management system, especially the experienced and older ones.

Keywords: career management; consulting organisations; seniority; performance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLIC.2022.123851

International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital, 2022 Vol.19 No.4, pp.350 - 372

Received: 08 Oct 2020
Accepted: 14 Jun 2021
Published online: 04 Jul 2022 *

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