infonet-economy

This chapter addresses the question of why some people may be more successful than others at creating an alternative identity in the course of a career change. Taking a narrative perspective, the author draws particular attention to a variety of transition narratives which function as legitimizing resources for people to distance
themselves from previous self-concepts, while at the same time allowing them to experiment with new sources of meaning and to create alternative identities.

The analysis, of how former management consultants narrated the story of their career shift, focuses on four particular transition narratives(re-invention, alteration, re-enactment and stagnation) which help to account for some of the variation observed in career change experiences. The analysis also reveals a good indicator of how successful speakers will be in achieving alternative identity constructions in a new work environment: the radicalness of the career change and the contextual resources those speakers can call on to tell more or less compelling transition narratives. Thus we see that choices around a career change are dynamic and
relational, as they are socially constructed in dialogue with others.