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Sub-theme 20: Contemporary Careers: Arenas, Power, Rules and Shadows

Convenors:
Nawel A. Sidi Ali Cherif
Toulouse School of Management, France
Katharina Chudzikowski
University of Bath, UK
Wolfgang Mayrhofer
WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Contemporary careers unfold in complex contexts, are part of a complex and emergent system of relations and shaped by individual actors navigating careers within institutional norms, and broader socio-technical infrastructures. Career boundaries are shifting and becoming more blurred, power dynamics among multilevel actors are being reshuffled, and transformations in work—such as AI, digitalization, and hybrid arrangements—are redefining the rules, thereby challenging established career conceptualizations as well as narratives and measures of career success. This multilayered career complexity can be understood as a dynamic arena of play where rules shift, power is (re)negotiated, and rewards remain uncertain. This foregrounds tensions between agency and structure, autonomy and control, and playfulness and performance.

Against this backdrop, the metaphor of the “career game” becomes particularly revealing. It raises questions about how we play the game of career and, how the game plays us: what constitutes the arena of play, who gets to play, who defines the rules, how do individual and collective actors navigate the game and interplay within it, and what does it mean to win or lose in today’s career landscape.

It also draws attention to what happens in the shadows of the career game—hidden, ambiguous, and darker dynamics influencing careers. Power operates unevenly across career players; career rules may be tacit, contested, or exclusionary; and shifting boundaries can reinforce or disrupt career inequalities. Contemporary career-making may foster destructive forms of competition, instrumentalism, and self-commodification, driven by performative pressures toward self-optimization. Yet, in response, individuals also can enact innovative and ethically grounded strategies of resistance, highlighting the potential for more responsible, inclusive, and empowering engagement within the career game.

This sub-theme welcomes contributions that illuminate the multilevel complexity of careers as games in motion across different contexts, drawing on diverse theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary perspectives.

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following:

  • How do actors—e.g., individual, organizational, institutional, political—(co-) construct, contest, or transform the career game over time?

  • What explicit or implicit rules—e.g., social, professional, institutional, organizational—structure contemporary career games, and who defines, negotiates, or controls them?

  • How do power dynamics manifest in career contexts, and how do they privilege some players while disadvantaging others?

  • How do economic uncertainty and geopolitical instability disrupt, reinforce, or reconfigure the rules, power dynamics, and boundaries of the career game?

  • In what ways do hybrid work arrangements, digitalization, AI, and other work transformations redefine the boundaries and rules of playing the career game?

  • Who is invited into the career game, who is excluded, and how do these dynamics produce or reinforce systemic inequalities?

  • What can underexplored populations, sociocultural contexts, and non-traditional career forms reveal about how the career game is played and contested in the shadows?

  • How does today’s career game challenge, disrupt, or reimagine traditional notions of career success?

  • What contradictions and tensions are experienced by individual actors in contributing to the career game?

  • What characterizes the “dark side” of the career game—exclusion, manipulation, inequity, competition?

  • Does the contemporary career game contribute to or hinder the development of a sustainable career ecosystem?

  • Do the rules and power dynamics of the contemporary career game affect actors’ career wellbeing and their capacity to shape meaningful careers?

  • Can relational ontologies and imagining careers as relationally intertwined help to better understand the contemporary career game?

References

  • Baruch, Y., & Vardi, Y. (2016). A fresh look at the dark side of contemporary careers: Toward a realistic discourse. British Journal of Management, 27(2), 355–372. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12107
  • Chudzikowski, K., Gustafsson, S., & Tams, S. (2020). Constructing alignment for sustainable careers: Insights from the career narratives of management consultants. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 117, 103312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2019.05.009
  • Donald, W. E., Van der Heijden, B. I. J. M., & Baruch, Y. (2024). Introducing a sustainable career ecosystem: Theoretical perspectives, conceptualization, and future research agenda. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 151, 103989. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2024.103989
  • Gunz, H., & Mayrhofer, W. (2017). Rethinking career studies: Facilitating conversation across boundaries with the Social Chronology Framework. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781107414952
  • Hug, K., Chudzikowski, K., & Gustafsson, S. (2025). Navigating professional careers and internal activism: A Bourdieusian lens. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2025(1). https://doi.org/10.5465/AMPROC.2025.247bp
  • Kozhevnikov, A., Mayrhofer, W., & Chudzikowski, K. (2026). Enhancing career studies with realist social theory. Work, Employment and Society, 40(3), 555–576. https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251408620
  • Mayrhofer, W., Meyer, M., & Steyrer, J. (2007). Contextual issues in the study of careers. In H. Gunz & M. Peiperl (Eds.), Handbook of career studies (pp. 215–240). Sage Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412976107.n12
  • Potgieter, I. L., Ferreira, N., & Coetzee, M. (Eds.). (2019). Theory, research and dynamics of career wellbeing: Becoming fit for the future. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28180-9
  • Seibert, S., Akkermans, J., & Liu, C.-H. (2024). Understanding contemporary career success: A critical review. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 11(1), 509–534. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-051543
  • Sidi Ali Cherif, N., & Garbe, E. (2025). Navigating complexity and uncertainty: Rethinking “career scripts” in a dynamic world (Symposium). Academy of Management Proceedings, 2025(1). https://doi.org/10.5465/AMPROC.2025.19196symposium
  • Tams, S., & Marshall, J. (2011). Responsible careers: Systemic reflexivity in shifting landscapes. Human Relations, 64(1), 109–131. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726710384292
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Nawel A. Sidi Ali Cherif is an Associate Professor, specialized in Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour at the Toulouse Capitole University, Toulouse School of Management, France. After 18 years of experience in Communication and then HR consulting, she earned her PhD in Management Sciences in 2023 and was appointed Associate Professor in 2024. She conducts research in the field of careers and career management, using a multilevel approach, in emblematic contexts such as judicial systems.
Katharina Chudzikowski is an Associate Professor of Organisation Studies and Human Resource Management at the University of Bath, School of Management, UK, and holds a visiting position at WU Vienna, Austria. Her research focuses on career development in various contexts, including professionals in different fields. Her work has been widely published in journals such as 'Human Relations', 'Journal of Vocational Behavior', 'Journal of Organizational Behavior', 'Human Resource Management Journal', and 'Work, Employment and Society'.
Wolfgang Mayrhofer is Full Professor and head of the Interdisciplinary Institute of Management and Organisational Behaviour, WU Vienna, Austria. He previously has held full-time positions at the University of Paderborn, Germany, and at Dresden University of Technology, Germany. He conducts research in comparative international human resource management and work careers, spirituality, management and religion as well as systems theory and management and has received national and international awards for outstanding research and service.