Playing to win: Biological imperatives, self‐regulation, and trade‐offs in the game of career success
运用进化理论分析职业成功，论证客观结果（如地位和财富）的首要地位，并解释为何主观成功与客观成功关联不强，探讨了“快乐的失败者”和“不快乐的赢家”现象，以及职业策略中的权衡与风险。
Abstract The article applies evolutionary theory to the concept of career success, to argue the primacy of ‘objective’ outcomes, utilities such as status and wealth, and to analyze why the relationship with subjective career success is not stronger. Although there are grounds for expecting subjective evaluations to be sympathetic secondary accompaniments of objective success and failure, there are substantial numbers of paradoxically ‘happy losers’ and ‘unhappy winners’ in the career game. These are explored theoretically as adaptive outcomes of self‐regulation and sense‐making processes. The nature of that game is then explored by a closer examination of the interrelations and decay functions of the major objective success outcomes. This is undertaken as a theoretical exercise, and also by reference to the evidence in the literature. Both approaches support the existence of close linkages among most of these outcomes, though empirical data reveal variations that highlight the importance for careerists to be aware of trade‐offs and risks in career strategies. Context mediates these relationships, especially key contingencies such as individual differences, gender, career stage, culture, and business sector. The implications are discussed; in particular the role of careers theory and research in helping to cut through some of the ideological aspects of ‘subjective’ careers in order to help raise the awareness of actors in the labor market about objective career realities. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.