A Fresh Look at the Dark Side of Contemporary Careers: Toward a Realistic Discourse
| Author | Yoav Vardi,Yehuda Baruch |
| Date | 01 April 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12107 |
| Published date | 01 April 2016 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 27, 355–372 (2016)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12107
A Fresh Look at the Dark Side of
Contemporary Careers: Toward a Realistic
Discourse
Yehuda Baruch and Yoav Vardi1
Southampton Business School, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17, 1BJ, UK, and Audencia
School of Management, Nantes, France and 1Department of Labor Studies, G. H. Gordon Faculty of Social
Sciences, Tel Aviv University, TelAviv 69978, Israel
Email: y.baruch@soton.ac.uk; yvardi@tau.ac.il
In this paper we proposethat careers be considered as both oering promise and the source
of potential disillusionment. While the changing nature of careers and of career manage-
ment requires a comprehensive perspective to highlight the characteristics and nature of
careers in their entirety, most published work predominantly addresses the positive as-
pects of careers, leaving their darker dynamics almost untouched. We argue that while
career scholars tend to clothe such concerns in euphemistic terms, contemporary career
experiences may often be quite dark and include a number of undesired consequences.
By linking selected career constructs and notions of organizational dark sides, we aim
to advance a more balanced framework,oering a career perspective that consists of op-
portunities versus threats, truth versus untruth and positiveversus negative aspects, all of
which are inevitably embedded in careers. Thus, we call forcareer conceptualization and
research to be less normativelybiased and prescriptive and to be more grounded in reality.
‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seek-
ing new landscapes but in having new eyes’ (Marcel
Proust)
Because careers in general and organizational
careers in particular are considered attractive
personal and social endeavours, scholars natu-
rally prefer to study career success and achieve-
ment as both significant subjective and objective
desired outcomes (see Judge and Kammeyer-
Mueller, 2007). However, careers and experiences
related to career endeavours can be positive but
can also be negative, can reflect success but also
failure, may manifest strong and fine decisions
but also indecision and regret. We argue for the
need to pay attention to, recognize and study the
less celebrated facets of careers, including their
darker sides (Vaughn, 1999). Such are the as-
pects of careers that relate to the dark side of the
organizational phenomena of misbehaviour, de-
viance, counterproductive and dysfunctional con-
duct, unethical behaviour, and insidious workplace
behaviour (e.g. Burke, Tomlinson and Cooper,
2011; Gabriel, 2012; Greenberg, 2010; Linstead,
Mar´
echal and Grin, 2014; Liu et al., 2013; Vardi
and Weitz, 2004). These phenomena have indeed
attracted marked scholarly interest in the last two
decades (Richards, 2008). We suggest that the the-
oretical lenses of deviant workplace behaviours
(e.g. Robinson and Bennett, 1995) actually cover
workplace behaviour that may generate severe
consequences for individual careers, hence also
organizational career systems. Acts of improper
conduct and career experiences may not be inde-
pendent phenomena and therefore should be stud-
ied in tandem in much the same way that werelate
career experiences to positive factors. One cannot
comprehend the true nature of careers by employ-
ing constructs and measures that presume positiv-
ity without at least considering notions of failure,
job insecurity, unfair treatment, harassment and
incivility in the same analysis. These critical dark
side issues tend to garner much less attention when
© 2015 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
356 Y. Baruch and Y. Vardi
career scholars introduce new concepts that pur-
port to tap new career realities. We acknowledge,
of course, that dark sides of individual and orga-
nizational phenomena are not new – yet they have
not been seriously considered in established career
concepts and theories nor in the ‘new’ contempo-
rary approaches. In general, seeing and presenting
the world through rose-tinted glasses is theoreti-
cally misleading and practically wrong.
Our aim is to propose a balanced view of con-
temporary careers and enhance the theoretical
underpinning of career studies. To this end, we
oer counter-point arguments that are by and
large missing in the mainstream career literature
(for exceptions see Arnold and Cohen, 2008; Ink-
son et al., 2012; Richardson and Mallon, 2005).
We discuss the dark side of contemporary ca-
reers, presenting several novel career perspectives,
and indicate how they have been portrayed as
essentially positive to the academic scholarly com-
munity as well as to the business world. We claim
that not only is this at best a na¨
ıve view, but that
adopting a positively biased view may incur harm-
ful outcomes for individuals and organizations
alike. In order to demonstrate such conceptually
possible balances, we associate notions of careers
with notions of organizational misbehaviour. To
that end we treat both phenomena, careers (Vardi,
1980) and misbehaviour(Ackroyd and Thompson,
1999), as transpiring and observableat the individ-
ual as well as the organizationallevel. Because, tra-
ditionally,organizational careers have been associ-
ated with positive experiences while misbehaviour
connotes dark side experiences, we suggest that re-
lating the two mayindeed oer the conceptual bal-
ance to which we strive here.
The study of organizational careers has benefit-
ted from a numberof innovative and inspiring con-
cepts, as presented in the core careerliterature (e.g.
Arthur, 2008; Sullivan and Baruch, 2009). While
in the early days of career management practice
and theory the responsibility for employees’ ca-
reers resided with the organization (Lips-Wiersma
and Hall, 2007), by the end of the twentieth cen-
tury the responsibility for steering a career through
rough terrains had shifted in many ways from the
organization to the individual employee (Arthur,
Inkson and Pringle, 1999). Thus, one major char-
acteristic of these conceptual contributions is the
entrepreneurial quality of individuals as driving
forces behind their careers, which can lead to pos-
itive career outcomes (Schjoedt and Shaver, 2007).
This view has significant implications for the se-
lection, planning, directing and managing of ca-
reers in general. For instance, as time goes by, not
only has the terrain become even more uncertain
and challenging, but the competences and skills re-
quired for career navigation must be acquired and
utilized under stressful conditions ( ¨
Ozbilgin and
Malach-Pines, 2007).
Another common denominator across the ca-
reer literatureis the underlying positive perspective
that many authors take, oering hope and man-
ifesting an optimistic, constructive and even up-
beat view. This perspective (career as basically a
‘good thing’) posits that, with the right approach,
everything is possible, that things will inevitably
work out, and that a successful career will eventu-
ally unfold (Hall and Chandler, 2005). Career suc-
cess comprises objective and subjective facets and
refers to the achievement of intrinsic and extrinsic
outcomes, such as satisfaction and self-fulfilment
on the one hand and progress in status, hierarchy
position and income on the other hand (Baruch
and Bozionelos, 2011; Ng et al., 2005). Indeed,
positive psychology (Seligman and Csikszentmi-
halyi, 2000) can be a significant constructive fac-
tor when it leads to vigour (Shirom, 2003), hope
and optimism (Seligman, 1998). Yet, in reality,
contemporary labour markets and workplace con-
ditions reflect lurking threats and bleak oppor-
tunities (Kalleberg, 2009; Lane, 2011) as well as
mutual commitment decline (Baruch, 1998) and
rising job insecurity (Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt,
2010; Sverke,Hellgren and Naswall, 2002). Labour
markets within the new economy pose a high
risk of involuntary unemployment with major
redundancies influencing more and more firms
(Gennard, 2009). Whereas positive thinking is in-
strumental in generating better attitudes and work
outcomes,such aective reactions might not in fact
make career navigators more resilient (London,
1983), let alone change actual circumstances. False
hope related to positively loaded career promises
might convert to frustration and reduced ambi-
tion, which, in turn, can lead to failure and missed
opportunities.
Undoubtedly, academic writing should provide
a true and fair, holistic view of the complexity
and unpredictability of careers – the negative and
shadowy aspects as well as the attractive and pos-
itive sides. Further, we suspect that, in many ca-
reers, negativeexperiences might be more substan-
tial than positive ones in influencing career insights
© 2015 British Academy of Management.
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