Introduction
The contemporary work environment is characterized by uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, in the face of the growing employment volatility (Hirschi & Koen, 2021). That requires both employees and employers to revise their relationship (Fugate et al., 2021), while the agentic view on careers gets more support by experiencing an increasing need to take charge of their career paths through career self-management (CSM) behaviors. However, while career research has mostly focused on the individual agency of individuals, the nature of the context or, more particularly, organizational context for employees, remains overlooked.


Purpose
This study bridges CSM and organizational behavior in pursuit of gaining a deeper understanding of interaction between employees and employers around career. While the findings aim to help policy-makers in organizations to ensure CSM agency among employees, the study contributes to work and organizational psychology by uncovering how employees interpret, respond to, and influence the organizational context as they navigate their careers.


Method
The research is a qualitative study, with the chosen research methods being semi-structured interviews of employees for the data collection, and thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) for data analysis.


Results
The preliminary themes were identified throughout the completed 23 interviews with employees, identifying the characteristics of organizational context: embedded career exploration, person-centered focus, relational accessibility, challenge-driven environment and career co-creation.


Conclusions
The work is in progress, with the intention to build a processual model that reflects the interaction between employees and organizational context across all the aforementioned themes.