Real high-potential careers - An empirical study into the perspectives of organisations and high potentials

Purpose - The purpose of this empirical study is to make a contribution to career theory in general, and to the literature on high-potential careers in particular, by examining the careers of real high potentials, taking place in the twenty-first century world of work, from the perspectives of the high potentials themselves as well as those of their organizations. Design/methodology/approach - A total of 34 inter-views were conducted within three study samples: high potentials (n = 14), organisational representatives employed by the same organisations that provided the high-potential participants (n = 8), and organisational representatives employed by organisations that did not allow for interviewing of their high potentials (n = 12). Findings - The cur-rent study suggests that high potentials still have organisational-traditional careers. High upward mobility, low inter-organisational mobility and career self-management emerged as key features of real high-potential careers. Practical implications - Implications are spelled out with respect to the "streaming" of different types of employees in the workforce and the importance of expectations management. Originality/value - Not only are the viewpoints of individuals largely absent in the literature on high-potential careers, the majority of publications on the subject-matter are also non-empirical and take a rather normative stance. The inter-view study presented in this paper looks into the assumptions of real high-potential careers from the perspectives of the high potentials themselves as well as those of their organizations, providing empirical data that are interpretive and descriptive rather than normative.