If careers are journeys which begin at the point of entry into working life and end at retirement, then it would seem that researchers and personnel specialists have devoted their main efforts to the study of the starting points, destinations and major routes. Far less attention has been paid to the individual turning points and decisions that determine the direction of the journey. How these connections – job changes – are experienced has the power to shape the tangled course of careers, so insights into how people anticipate and respond to job changes has the potential to unlock our understanding of longer-term patterns of change. It is therefore our aim in this and the next chapter, to look at the process of changing jobs and its outcomes.

In Chapter 3 we saw how most managers can expect to change jobs at least once within any three year period and that most of these changes make radical new demands on their adaptive capacities. It would thus hardly be surprising if the process of job change were a major focus of managers' thoughts throughout their working lives. The very positive response to our interest in job change from the managers and organizations involved in our research confirms this.