Achieving career success is an employee''s important objective
in working career and the strategy which might be often employed
is the career pattern the employee follows. However there have
been controversy and inconsistencies in the published literature
concerning the relationship between an employee''scareer pattern
and career success. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to
verify the relationship between those two variables and to
enhance the deve-lopment of knowledge in career success. The
main hypothesis was that the rela-tionship between the frequency
of employer changes and career success would beof inverted-U
shape. The sample included 251 MBA degree holders graduated in
1984, 1985 or 1986 in Taiwan and the questionnaires were mailed
as the instru-ment of data collection. The data showed that
those who had changed employers four times had the highest
salary attainment and hierarchical position. Those who had
changed employers more than four times had lower salary
attainment and, however, their hierarchical positions were not
influenced significantly. Pre-vious studies concerning employer-
changing and career success have resulted ininconsistent views.
This study found that those views were not conflicting and that
the inconsistencies might result from the absence of the
inclusion of the number of employer changes and the size of the
hiring firm. Previous studies reported that employees in large
firms attained higher salary and hierarchical attainment than
those in medium and small firms. However, this study found that
for employees with high educational level those in medium and
small firms achieved higher career success than those in large
firms. Besides, it was alsofound that those with high career
success not only worked smarter but alsoworked harder.