ABSTRACT

The extent and quality of accumulated knowledge within a research field depends largely on how it has been produced. This chapter reviews knowledge creation in organizational and management career research in the two decades between 1995 and 2015, and discusses methodological approaches. It offers a robust overview of the development, state, and use of approaches for producing knowledge in academic journals that publish career research. In its broadest sense, career research is a highly fragmented, multidisciplinary research field with several taxonomic approaches trying to make sense of the vast landscape. The attempt to classify career research by C. I. Lee et al. used bibliometric techniques to distinguish between global and local career research. The emergence and increasing adoption of new methodologies stem mostly from increasing computing power, new technologies for continuous unobtrusive observation, accumulation of big data, and opportunities for digitalization and automatic processing of qualitative data.