Towards Meaningful Work: A Preliminary Understanding of Career Paralysis

This qualitative study aimed to explore the, as of yet, little understood phenomenon of career paralysis. Career paralysis is a new term adopted by the researcher to represent the increasingly common experience among adults today of wanting to make a career change toward something more meaningful but, for several reasons, being unable to actually make a change. The goal of this research was to develop a preliminary working model of career paralysis through an in-depth exploration of peopleâ s in-situ experience of the phenomenon. Eight females and five males, ranging in age from 26 to 41, participated in the study. Participants self-identified with a range of ethnocultural backgrounds and a range of professional backgrounds. Conducted within a phenomenological framework, open-ended semi-structured interviews were completed with each participant and interview transcripts were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Participants wanted to make a career change both from a desire for more meaningful work and from a desire to escape variables of job dissatisfaction. At the core of their lived experience of career paralysis, participants described an underlying knowledge or truth that change was needed that was in direct conflict with a deep sense of stuckness regarding the possibility of career change. This conflict of career paralysis was revealed to affect participantsâ lives across many dimensions of experiencing. Participants described both external and important internal barriers, which hindered their interest, motivation, and efforts toward change. The implications of the findings for theory are discussed and include the importance of meaning in career, and the role of inertia variables in adult career decision-making. In addition, the findings of the study gave rise to the two-part Emergent Model of Career Paralysis. The model describes both the maintenance of career paralysis through an examination of the relationships between barriers to career change, and describes the various dimensions of being within the experience as related by participants. The model may serve as a preliminary guide for practice and points to a need for thorough assessment of individuals experiencing career paralysis and integrative treatment with special focus on meaning and inertia factors. Finally, directions for future research are proposed.

Department dc:contributor.department

Applied Psychology and Human Development

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• McInnes, Taylor

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Chen, Charles

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/76556

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/76556