1 ABSTRACT The diploma thesis deals with one's own understanding of the career success of individuals successful in business. Its aim is to describe the causal attributions of individuals to success factors and to place them in a simplified framework of the narrative identity of success to evaluate trends in causal attributions at the individual level. In the theoretical part, the work describes the issues of career and success, while providing insight into various definitions and approaches. It also discusses causal attributions and attributional tendencies in human perception. After that, it explains the concept of narrative identity and its development. The practical part describes qualitative research, which includes data in the form of four unstructured interviews with career-successful individuals. Data analysis was inspired by selected principles of grounded theory and narrative analysis. The analysis of the data showed a unique link between the causal attributes of individuals and the development of the narrative identity of their success. The most important factor of success was diligence/hard working as sacrificing time for other activities and fascination with the topic. Furthermore, the qualities acquired during life and the influence of the individual's social world came to the fore. It turned...

Although ingratiatory behaviors have been investigated by social psychologists for almost twenty-five years, and have been discussed as being used in organizational settings as an upward influence strategy, few empirical studies have explored the use of ingratiation in organizations. The intent of this study has been to empirically investigate the use of ingratiatory behaviors in organizational settings. In doing so, a theory-based rationale for the occurrence of ingratiatory behaviors in organizational settings was developed. The framework developed for this study examined ingratiation as both an individually initiated and organizationally induced behavior. Next, a scale was developed to measure the frequency with which employees resort to ingratiatory behaviors in relationships with their superiors. Finally, a series of research propositions about the occurrence of ingratiatory behaviors in organizations were tested across a variety of organizational settings.