With a little luck: The role of luck in the relationship between ambition and career success

Careers scholars and practitioners routinely attribute successful career outcomes to agentic constructs—like ambition. As such, to capture the agentic perspective on career success, the present thesis incorporates ambition into the career success discussion. However, relying on ambition alone overlooks other factors outside of one’s control that may condition or influence its relationship with career success—such as luck. While luck is widely acknowledged as instrumental in everyday life, it has been largely underrepresented as a contributing factor to career success. Therefore, this thesis explores whether something non-agentic, like luck, may partly influence one’s career success.