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"The career is dead-long live the career!"' Such is the mixed message regarding careers that we are carrying into the next millennium. The business environment is highly turbulent and complex, resulting in terribly ambiguous and contradictory career signals. Individuals, perhaps in self-defense, are
becoming correspondingly ambivalent about their desires and plans for career development. The traditional psychological contract in which an employee entered a firm, worked hard, performed well, was loyal and committed, and thus received ever-greater rewards and job security, has been replaced by a new contract based on continuous learning and identity change, guided by the
search for what Herb Shepard called "the path with a heart." In short, the organizational career is dead, while the protean career is alive and flourishing. In this special issue of The Executive we will examine the ways the career environment and the executive of the 21st century will shape the direction of
careers in the years to come. In this opening paper, we will provide a brief overview of the emerging career landscape, for both organizations and individuals. Then we will turn to an overview of the papers in this Special Issue and then to the papers themselves.
The New Career Contract While the popular writing on this topic has undoubtedly been overdone, it is clear that in the next century what we are now calling the new career contract will be simply part of everyday work life. Let us consider what some essential features of that career contract will be. (These features are summarized in Table 1, based on the work of Hall and Mirvis.) Protean careers. The career of the 21st century will be protean, a career that is driven by the person, not the organization, and that will be reinvented by the person from time to time, as the person and the environment change. (This term is derived from the Greek god Proteus, who could change shape at will.) Psychological success. The ultimate goal of the career is psychological success, the feeling of pride and personal accomplishment that comes from achieving one's most important goals in life, be they achievement, family happiness, inner peace, or something else. This is in contrast to vertical success under the old career contract,...