Rethinking Adult Career Development

Rethinking Adult Career Development explores the challenges, transitions, learning, and change adults experience as they navigate careers across their lifetimes. It considers what happens when adults realise they have chosen the wrong career, lose their jobs, experience injustice and discrimination, or are forced to make career shifts for which they are underprepared.

Laura L. Bierema discusses careers as lifelong learning, development, and change processes that are individual learning experiences and engagements within organizational, cultural, and community contexts. Chapters distinguish career explorers (those looking for an ideal vocation), from career sustainers (those maintaining their current vocation) and career changers (those seeking to shift to a new vocation). Assessing career development theories, practices, and outcomes using a critical, intersectional, feminist lens, the book emphasizes the importance of a healthy career-life balance. Theoretically grounded, the book also has practical applications, and features prompts for reflective practice to encourage interactive learning.

Providing a critical analysis of adult work and career issues, Rethinking Adult Career Development will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of business, human resources and organizational behaviour. Business managers, career advisers, career coaches, team leaders and policymakers will also benefit from the book’s exploration of systematic issues that can broadly affect careers.