Career Concerns and Mobility Motivations of Orchestra Musicians

This paper offers a theoretical and empirical stance towards careers and professional socialization as subjective experience. Focusing on the problematic features of mobility, entrapment, and organizational commitment in the orchestra world, it shows how the analysis of career concerns in the “minor leagues” of organizational sets can reveal the meaning of status passage, definitions of time, and experiential turning points. Some adaptations to failure and the process of making commitments are considered.