This paper investigates the conditions facilitating career transitions across dissimilar cultural contexts. Particular attention is devoted to two critical obstacles faced by transitioners during cross-cultural role reorientations. First, transitioners must make sense of the unspoken demands and requirements ascribed to their work role in the new cultural context. Second, they must find ways to access and mobilize context-specific resources and information in a context alien to them. Empirically, the histories of 452 merchants emigrated from the southern provinces to Amsterdam during the period 1578–1602 are analyzed. The difference between Amsterdam’s merchant culture (based on open competition, speculative and “depersonalized” financial investments) and that of the southern provinces (a well-protected economic environment based on the guild system) required a reorientation from the role of pre-modern merchants to that of capitalist entrepreneurs. A set of hypotheses predicting why some immigrant merchants successfully completed this career transition while others did not is presented and brought to test.
AllisonP. (1999). Comparing logit and probit coefficients across groups. Sociological Methods and Research, 28(2), 186–208.
2.
BergerP. L.LuckmannT. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
3.
BorjasG. J. (1992). Ethnic capital and inter-generational mobility. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107, 123–150.
4.
BourdieuP.[1986] (1990). In other words: Essays toward a reflexive sociology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
5.
ColemanJ. S. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
6.
FlapHenkVölkerBeate (Eds.) (2004). Creation and returns of social capital: A new research program. New York: Routledge.
7.
GelderblomOscar (2000). Zuid-Nederlandse kooplieden en de opkomst van de Amsterdamse stapelmarkt (1578–1630). Hilversum: Noord Holland.
8.
GelderblomOscar (2003). The political economy of foreign trade in England and the Dutch Republic (1550–1650). Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
9.
GelderblomO. (2005). The decline of fairs and merchant guilds in the Low Countries, 1250–1650. Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
10.
GelderblomO. (2010). The Golden Age of the Dutch Republic. In LandesDavid S.MokyrJ.BaumolWilliam J. (Eds.), The invention of enterprise: Entrepreneurship from ancient Mesopotamia to modern times (pp. 156–182). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
11.
GelderblomO.JonkerJ. (2004). Completing a financial revolution: The finance of the Dutch East India trade and the rise of the Amsterdam capital market, 1595–1612. Journal of Economic History, 64, 641–672.
12.
GoffmanE. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
13.
GrandjeanB. D. (1981). History and career in a bureaucratic labor market. American Journal of Sociology, 86, 1057–1092.
14.
GranovetterM. (1985). Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91, 481–510.
15.
GunzH. P. (1989). The dual meaning of managerial careers: Organizational and individual levels of analysis. Journal of Management Studies, 26, 225–250.
16.
HarrisS. G. (1994). Organizational culture and individual sensemaking: A schema-based perspective. Organization Science, 5, 309–321.
17.
HughesE. C. (1958) Men and their work. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
18.
IbarraH. (1999). Provisional selves: Experimenting with image and identity in professional adaptation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, 764–791.
19.
IsraelJ. I. (1989). Dutch primacy in world trade, 1585–1740. Oxford: Clarendon.
20.
IellatchitchA.MayrhoferW.MeyerM. (2003). Career fields: A small step towards a grand career theory?International Journal of Human Resource Management, 5, 728–750.
21.
JohnsG. (2001). In praise of context. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22, 31–42.
22.
KnightF. H. (1921) Risk, uncertainty, and profit. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
23.
KramerM. W. (1996). A longitudinal study of peer communication during job transfers: The impact of frequency, quality, and network multiplexity on adjustment. Human Communication Research, 1, 59–86.
24.
LamerzK. (2002). The social construction of fairness: Social influence and sense making in organisations. Journal of Organisational Behavior, 23, 19–37.
25.
LearyM. R.KowalskiR. M. (1990). Impression management: A literature review and two-component model. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 34–47.
26.
LouisR. M. (1980a). Career transitions: Varieties and commonalities. Academy of Management Review, 5, 329–340.
27.
LouisR. M. (1980b). Surprise and sense-making: What newcomers experience in entering unfamiliar organizational settings. Administrative Science Quarterly, 25, 226–251.
28.
LouisR. M.PosnerB. Z.PowellG. N. (1983). The availability and helpfulness of socialization practices. Personnel Psychology, 36, 857–866.
29.
MayrhoferW.IellatchitchA. (2005). Rites, right? The value of rites de passage for dealing with today’s career transitions. Career Development International, 10, 52–66.
30.
MayrhoferW.MeyerM.IellatchitchA.SchiffingerM. (2004). Careers and human resource management – a European perspective. Human Resource Management Review, 14, 473–498.
31.
PodolnyJ. M.BaronJ. N. (1997). Resources and relationships: Social networks and mobility in the workplace. American Sociological Review, 62, 673–693.
32.
PortesA. (1995). Economic sociology and the sociology of immigration: A conceptual overview. In PortesA. (Ed.), The economic sociology of immigration (pp. 1–41). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
33.
PortesA. (1998). Social capital: Its origins and applications in modern sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 1–24.
34.
PutnamR. D. (1995). Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of Democracy, 6(1), 65–78.
35.
RabbT. (1974). The expansion of Europe and the spirit of capitalism. Historical Journal, 4, 675–689.
36.
RosenfeldR. A. (1992). Job mobility and career processes. Annual Review of Sociology, 18, 39–61.
37.
SalancikG. R.PfefferJ. (1978). Uncertainty, secrecy, and the choice of similar others. Social Psychology, 41, 246–255.
38.
ScheinE. H. (1978). Career dynamics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
39.
SchnurmannC. (2003). ‘Wherever profit leads us, to every sea and shore …’: the VOC, the WIC, and Dutch methods of globalization in the seventeenth century. Renaissance Studies, 17, 474–493.
40.
ShahP. P. (1998). Who are employees’ social referents? Using a network perspective to determine referent others. Academy of Management Journal, 41, 249–268.
41.
ShaneS.KhuranaR. (2003). Career experience and firm founding. Industrial and Corporate Change, 12, 519–543.
42.
StinchcombeA. L. (1965). Social structure and organizations. In: MarchJ. G. (Ed.), Handbook of organizations (pp. 142–193). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally & Company.
43.
SwidlerA. (1986). Culture in action: Symbols and strategies. American Sociological Review, 51, 273–286.
44.
Van MaanenJ.ScheinE. H. (1979). Toward a theory of organizational socialization. In StawB. (Ed.), Research in Organizational Behavior, 1, 209–269. Greenwich: JAI Press.
45.
WeberM. (1965). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (first published 1930). London: Unwin University Books.
46.
WeickK. E.SutcliffeK. M.ObstfeldD. (2005). Organizing and the process of sensemaking. Organization Science, 4, 409–421.
47.
WhiteH. (1980). A heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrix estimator and a direct test for heteroskedasticity. Econometrica, 48, 817–830.
48.
WhiteH. C. (1992). Identity and control: A structural theory of social action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
