Involuntary career transition and identity within the artist population
| Published date | 05 September 2016 |
| Date | 05 September 2016 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-01-2015-0020 |
| Pages | 1114-1131 |
| Author | Sophie Hennekam,Dawn Bennett |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
Involuntary career
transition and identity
within the artist population
Sophie Hennekam
Human Resources Management Department,
ESC La Rochelle School of Business, La Rochelle, France, and
Dawn Bennett
Research and Graduate Studies, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine artists’experiences of involuntary career
transitions and its impact on their work-related identities.
Design/methodology/approach –Semi-structured interviews with 40 artists in the Netherlands
were conducted. Self-narratives were used to analyze the findings.
Findings –Artists who can no longer make a living out of their artistic activities are forced to start
working outside the creative realm and are gradually pushed away from the creative industries.
This loss of their creative identity leads to psychological stress and grief, making the professional
transition problematic. Moreover, the artistic community often condemns an artist’s transition to other
activities, making the transition psychologically even more straining.
Originality/value –This study provides in-depth insights into how artists deal with changes in their
work-related identities in the light of involuntary career transitions.
Keywords Qualitative, Identity, Creative industry, Artist, Involuntary career transition
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
In the past, careers were thought of as linear pathways of individual development
within a stable employing organization (Schilling, 2012). Now, many workers encounter
interruptions, setbacks, highlights and downtimes during their working lives as
they follow meandering career paths that feature many organizational and thematic
changes (Sabelis, 2010).
It follows that in today’s labor market, which is characterized by more or less
fragmented contexts, people continuously shape their identities (Alvesson et al., 2008) in
line with context and opportunity. One of the major risksassociated with non-linearity is
that of sudden and involuntary unemployment, which threatens workers across firms,
occupations and industries (Lippmann, 2008). Changing labor marketdynamics can also
prompt and at times force workers to explore the labor market (Briscoe and Hall, 2006),
transit between jobs, companies or sectors, or change careers altogether.
These factors present additional challenges to self and identity (Alvesson et al.,
2008), therefore understanding work-related identity transit ions is particularly
important in cases of non-linear and boundaryless careers. This is an understudied
area in the HRM literature and little attention has been paid to how people claim work
identities that are seemingly discontinuous, or how they otherwise deviate from
socially scripted or highly institutionalized trajectories (Ashforth, 2001).
The qualitative study reported here sheds light on the situation of workers who are
forced to work in a different industry. We look at how they experience this transit ion,
Personnel Review
Vol. 45 No. 6, 2016
pp. 1114-1131
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-01-2015-0020
Received 22 January 2015
Revised 29 July 2015
Accepted 16 September 2015
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
1114
PR
45,6
how they deal with the loss of their professional identity, how they “sell”this
involuntary decision to others, and the influence of their environment.
The study contributes to the existing body of knowledge in three ways. First, it
provides insights into how individuals cope with involuntary career transitions. Such
transitions are both costly and increasingly prevalent, and they have received only
limited attention from HRM scholars. Second, the study sheds light on the coping
mechanisms of affected workers and the reactions of others. Third, by adopting a focus
on the arts, wherecareer commitment tends to be strongand careers are often precarious,
the study illustrates that involuntary career transitions can involve the loss of an
important professional identity and can encompass psychological stress and grief.
2. Context
The prevalence of involuntary transition in the arts is such that the artist population
presents a unique opportunity to look at how career change influences work-related
identity transition. This study focusses on workers in the Netherlands, where over
130,000 individuals are active as artists (Statistics Netherlands, 2011). These artists
often hold multiple concurrent roles (according to Schreven and De Rijk, 2011, 16 vs
7 percent in the total working population) and, similar to artists elsewhere, they are
likely to experience multiple career transitions (Bennett and Bridgstock, 2014).
Moreover, previous research in the Netherlands has shown that between 60 and
70 percent of graduate artists cease their artistic activities in the first four years of
professional life (Schreven and De Rijk, 2011; Van Winkel et al., 2012). In the study
reported here, the primary reasons for attrition were given as economic, familial
or multiple unsuccessful entry attempts.
3. Literature
3.1 Identity
For this study we adopted a commonly used definition of identity as a “self-referential”
description that provides contextually appropriate answers to the question, “Who am
I?”(Ashforth et al., 2008). Identity construction in organizations has been conceived as a
mutually co-constructive interaction between individuals and social structures (Ybema
et al., 2009). While people may have many identities, some are more central to self-
definition and are more deeply embedded into daily life, while others are relevant only
in specific contexts and situations (Leary and Tangney, 2005).
Previous researchers have distinguished between how individuals identify themselves –
their subjective identity –and how they are portrayed in external discourses: their objective
or social identity (Watson, 2009). These two identities are not always in line, and
incompatibility between the two is understood to cause dissatisfaction with work
and career (Bennett, 2009; Mills, 2004). People who are intensely involved in two or more
different social worlds premised on different identities have to manage competing role
demands, which can lead to identity conflicts or tension. They also have to make different,
sometimes opposing public representations of each world. As a consequence, people can
feel fragmented (Ibarra, 2003) and can oscillate between “holding on”to and “letting go”of
established identities (Shepherd, 2003).
In the case of artists, deep emotional commitment to career (Duffy et al., 2011) and
the artist identity as the “authentic self”(Costas and Fleming, 2009) implies that
workers who no longer perform artistic activities may continue to identify as artists;
yet there is little understanding of how these individuals negotiate potentially opposing
identity states and inconsistent engagement with their desired careers as artists.
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career
transition
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