Doubt and experimentation have become institutionalized in self-designing organizations, which are social forms built to deal with rapid environmental change. These self-designing forms have distinctive properties that pose unique issues for people who build and study careers.

If we define careers as “the individually perceived sequence of attitudes and behaviors associated with work-related experiences and activities over the span of a person's life” (Hall, 1976, p. 4), then we know little about the experiences, activities, and perceptions that are created when a career unfolds in a flexible system where change is continuous, experiments are routine, and growth replaces advancement as a measure of success. We know little about what it means to have a career in a system that does not use traditional external markers to signify progress, advancement, and movement in some consistent direction. This chapter suggests a starting point from which researchers can explore career issues in selfdesigning organizations.

We first describe six characteristics of self-designing systems and then contrast these systems with others in the organizational literature that appear to be similar. Using these descriptions as background, we then propose that career paths in self-designing systems originate from subjective rather than objective sources.