At the crossroads of agency and communion: Defining the shared career

This paper furthers our understanding of careers by going beyond their predominant depiction as individual undertakings and advancing insights on collective careers. In particular, it defines a new career construct at the intersection of agency and communion the shared career- as the co-evolving sequence of work collaboration and jointly pursued career opportunities by two or more career actors. Further, it puts forward a conceptual life cycle model of shared careers with supporting illustrations. Finally, it articulates how focusing on shared careers could open up avenues for the advancement of research on boundaryless careers.