Are freelancers a breed apart? The role of protean and boundaryless career attitudes in employability and career success

• Published date: 01 July 2018
• Author: Jon P. Briscoe,Sara Pluviano,Alessandro Lo Presti
• Date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12188

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Are freelancers a breed apart? The role of protean

and boundaryless career attitudes in employability

and career success

Alessandro Lo Presti

1

|Sara Pluviano

2,3

|Jon P. Briscoe

4

1

Department of Psychology, Università degli

studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”

2

Suor Orsola Benincasa University

3

University of Edinburgh

4

College of Business, Northern Illinois

University

Correspondence

Alessandro Lo Presti, Department of

Psychology, Università degli studi della

Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Viale Ellittico, 31,

81100 Caserta, Italy.

Email: alessandro.lopresti@unicampania.it

Abstract

Recent economic and organisational changes have fostered an

increasing diversification of the workforce, among whom freelancers

are an under‐represented population in the literature. This study

aimed at examining the role of protean and boundaryless career,

professional commitment, and employability activities in fostering

freelancers' subjective career success. Data were collected via an

online survey among a sample of 425 Italian freelancers and analysed

through structural equation modelling. Results partially confirmed

several hypotheses: higher self‐directed career management and

boundaryless mindset predicted higher employability activities and

professional commitment; moreover, employability and professional

commitment acted as mediators between career attitudes and

subjective career success. The study provides support for the

importance of such variables to freelancers' career success, as well

as for the significance of protean and boundaryless careers among

nontraditional occupational groups. Interventions aimed at fostering

such attitudes could support freelancers in improving their attain-

ment of professional progress and perception of career success.

KEYWORDS

boundaryless career, career success, employability, freelancer,

protean career

1|INTRODUCTION

Following sweeping changes in organisational structures and employment relationships, an increasing quota of the

workforce is witnessing a shift from stable and linear career systems into transitional and fluid ones and is taking

charge of its own career development, seizing opportunities for career development without the traditional company

boundaries. This does not imply that the traditional career path is dead but is certainly no longer the norm for a

sizeable segment of the workforce (Baruch, 2006). Rodrigues, Guest, Oliveira, and Alfes (2015) argue that the actual

extent to which independent career orientations are widespread among employees is uncertain, but acknowledge that

they do pose a challenge to organisations seeking to develop and retain their most valued employees.

Received: 1 July 2016 Revised: 24 October 2017 Accepted: 19 January 2018

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12188

Hum Resour Manag J. 2018;28:427–442. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltdwileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrmj 427

Postcorporate career concepts such as the boundaryless(Arthur & Rousseau, 1996) and protean (Hall, 1996) career

perspective depict how the career landscape has changed. In contrast with the traditional and conventional mode

(by which employers used to exchange job security and lifetime employment for employees' loyalty and commitment),

a new psychological contract has emerged, whereby opportunities for career advancement are offered only for those

workers who engage in career self‐management and are able and prone to act as owners and agents of their own career

(Sammarra, Profili, & Innocenti, 2013). This major shift in the employment relationship suggests that practicalactivities

to gain and sustain one's employability have become a key benchmark for career success (Hogan, Chamorro‐Premuzic,

& Kaiser, 2013). It follows that engaging with continuing professional development (i.e., employability activities in this

study), conceived as the proactive development of knowledge, competencies, and abilities, becomes essential to the

pursuit of successful career trajectories within and outside organisations (Rothwell & Arnold, 2005).

The individual responsibility for finding sources of work and remaining employable, and therefore competitive,

holds particularly true for contingent workers (Auer, Kao, Hemphill, Johnston, & Teasley, 2014; Mallon &

Duberley, 2000) and especially freelancers, who also have to cope with fewer formal rights and greater uncertainty

compared with traditional workers (Osnowitz, 2010). Indeed, in exchange of higher autonomy and personal choice

compared with wage employees, freelancers or portfolio workers, or those “who charge fees for services and are

independent of their clients in employment terms”(Fraser & Gold, 2001, p. 682), have to perform a series of critical

enterprising actions to survive and succeed in the modern, information‐intensive economy. These critical behaviours

include the thorough understanding of their marketplaces, customers, strategy development, and the enactment of

activities related to marketing and branding themselves (Storey, Salaman, & Platman, 2005). Freelancers are a sort of

hybrid of both employees and entrepreneurs; on one hand, they can be considered as employees because they usually

have long‐term relationships with client organisations; on the other, they can be considered entrepreneurs because they

assume all business risks on their own and client organisations do not determine their career prospects. Therefore,

building strong relations with client organisations and putting substantial effort into developing and maintaining strong

professional networks with other freelancers (e.g., the rise of co‐working spaces), thus developing their own

professionalism is fundamental for freelancers to buffer against the risks of being on their own (van den Born &

van Witteloostuijn, 2013).

Despite this occupational group being at the cutting edge of new ways of working, its representation in the

literature has been minimal, barring a few exceptions (e.g., Fraser & Gold, 2001; Storey et al., 2005). Recognising that

the significant presence of freelancers demands a more thorough conceptualisation of career success (van den Born

& van Witteloostuijn, 2013), this study attempts to offer deeper insight into the ways in which employability,

professional commitment, and attitudes towards one's career are associated with subjective career success in a sample

of Italian freelancers. Thus, this study can contribute to the empirical research on the predictive validity of the protean

(hereafter PCA) and boundaryless career attitudes (hereafter BCA) (Briscoe, Hall, & DeMuth, 2006). From a practical

point of view, because each of them is considered an attitude, protean and boundaryless orientations, professional

commitment, and employability can be fostered through appropriate training (Akkermans, Brenninkmeijer, Schaufeli,

& Blonk, 2015), being therefore taught and learned (Briscoe, Henagan, Burton, & Murphy, 2012).

1.1 |Career success of protean and boundaryless workers

In the context of freelancing, objective career success (e.g., pay and promotions) becomes less relevant as it is often

hard to obtain throughout an instable and multidirectional career path (Verbruggen, 2012). Objective career success is

obtained through direct comparison with stable and predictable metrics, which are unavailable both to freelancersas

well as those who study them. In light of this, subjective career success, entailing feelings of satisfaction and

accomplishment regarding one's career (Seibert, Crant, & Kraimer, 1999), should be put under a greater scrutiny.

As opposed to the traditional model of career development wherein the career is managed by the organisation

(Hall, 1976), intertwined with the idea of lifetime employment and steady career advancement, protean and

boundaryless career models emphasise employees' drives to create career options, realise personal career goals,

428 LO PRESTI ET AL.