Making sense of renouncing: A typology of types, motives, and approaches to renouncing at work

Abstract

In this paper, we provide an exploratory account of the experience of renouncing at work—giving up a work-related aspiration. Despite the importance of the phenomenon, the conceptualization of renouncing has been overlooked by the literature. Taking a narrative sensemaking approach to renouncing, we document variance in individual experiences to renouncing, that is, how they subjectively understand what, why, and how they renounce at work. Through a qualitative approach, we investigate the case of 30 academics working in three French business schools characterized by an increasingly influential managerialist “publish or perish” regime, a context conducive to renouncing. Based on our findings identifying various experiences of renouncing, we inductively build a matrix and a model connecting six experiences of renouncing based on the type of renouncing (renouncing in order to succeed vs. renouncing success itself) and how people approach renouncing (suffered, accepted, or chosen renouncing).