Bridges over breaches: Agency and meaning as resources for dealing with new career demands

Abstract

This chapter presents a theoretical and qualitative exploration of how agency and meaning offer psychological resources for dealing with the new demands of career self-management. The protean career serves as a focal point for this endeavor, but other concepts such as the sustainable careers framework, the idea of career crafting, the impact of career resilience and career narratives as a potentially stabilizing force are also presented. Firstly, breaches in today’s career contracts are discussed. In the second section, current understandings of the protean career concept are deepened by a look at its potential to deal with new demands in working life. The last section provides three career narratives that emerged during a larger qualitative exploration of career resources. These narratives demonstrate how self-directed and values-oriented career moves help individuals deal with self-managing their careers. The protean career is shown to be a resource, particularly in terms of career change. This result is illustrated by several accounts of strategies applied in dealing with the heightened learning and adaptability demands of career changes. The aim of this chapter is to offer insights into how mid-career professionals can build bridges over career breaches and offers practical recommendations on both the individual and organizational levels to put people on career paths with a heart.