An Intelligent Career: Taking Ownership of Your Work and Your Life

Written by three career experts, An Intelligent Career is a playbook for the modern knowledge worker, providing a complete guide that will allow workers to take a composite, dynamic view of a life's work in the 21st century.

"Knowledge work" is fundamental in today's economy. It is the basis for long-term success in the global economy and it drives the collective brainpower through which goods and services are delivered. And today, knowledge work requires much more than a college degree: it means understanding the changing nature of work and employment, and the processes through which knowledge is generated, transferred, and applied. It means understanding new career possibilities, more dynamic work arrangements, and the growing demand for knowledge work around the globe. It means navigating work life with an authenticity that replaces any straightforward loyalty to a single employer, and instead calls for better understanding of the self, collaborators, clients, and customers.

Now in paperback, An Intelligent Career provides clear guidance on how to take charge of your own destiny, seek continuous learning, collaborate with others, recognize and act on fresh opportunities, determine when it is time to move on, and much more.

Michael B. Arthur is professor of management at Suffolk University in Boston. He has worked extensively on "intelligent careers," including the development of the Intelligent Career Card Sort career exploration instrument. He is widely known for the Handbook of Career Theory and The Boundaryless Career, and received the Academy of Management's Everett Hughes Award for distinguished careers scholarship in 2006.

Svetlana N. Khapova is professor of careers and organization studies at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, and director of the VU School of Management and Amsterdam Business Research Institute. She studies how individuals draw on their careers to innovate and uses her research interest to help managers who are part of her PhD programs to bring innovation into their firms.

Julia Richardson is associate professor of human resource management at Curtin Business School in Perth, Australia. She has pursued a global career across Asia, New Zealand, and North America. She is author of The Independent Expatriate, co-editor of New Ways of Organizing Work, and has received multiple awards, including the Emerald Literati Award and Verity International Award, for her teaching and research.