Although counselors have implicitly understood and used a number of its tenets, an action-theoretical approach is a relatively recent development in career counseling. This digest analyzes the tenets of this approach. An action approach to career counseling sees clients as agents who steer and direct their activities. It represents an integration of constructionist, contextual, and narrative approaches. Action theory is based on the importance of ways in which people organize their daily lives. Action and career are viewed as two important and interrelated constructs. The theory provides a framework and language which can be useful in understanding career counseling. Its theoretical propositions explore ways of viewing action, the construction of career resulting from counselor/client discourse, a balancing of what must be done in the short term and what can be done in one's life, the belief that career is not solely a matter of individual action but involves the social and dynamic nature of careers, and the recognition that the term "career" may not be critical to clients. One of the values of an action-theoretical approach is its ability to link theory and practice, thus providing counselors a conceptual model that parallels human experience. (RJM)