Follow the Leader?

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Abstract
This article examines career decision making in the rapidly changing organizational and employment context at the end of the 20th century, the context some scholars have called the “boundaryless career” environment. The particular focus is the extent to which different sources of social influence and the combination of such sources affect employer choice: specifically, whether individuals conform to a dominant employer choice (i.e., make a popular employment decision). Hypotheses are tested with survey data on a sample of master of business administration students in the process of making career decisions for their work lives following graduate school. Results provide compelling evidence that normative sources of social influence have a significant effect on compliance with the dominant employer choice whereas informational sources of influence, such as one’s network of advisors, do not. Implications for how different types of social influence may affect different types of career decisions in today’s work environment are discussed.

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