Coping with Job Transitions over the Work Life

Career Pathways and Professional Transitions: Preliminary Results from the First Wave of a 7-Year Longitudinal Study

“…Due to the changing social and economic conditions, the work context -and consequently professional pathways -has profoundly changed over the last two decades (Rudisill et al 2010). The current labor market requires individuals to face increasing job instability and demands related to flexibility and geographical mobility, productivity and management of constant insecurity (Kanfer et al 2001;Rudisill et al 2010).…”

“…However, current career paths and professional development are challenged by increased instability and demands related to -amongst others -productivity and coping with constant uncertainty (Rudisill et al 2010). In addition to unemployment, in the current world of work other risk-situations may contribute to the emergence of critical situations, such as frequent transitions and unstable or precarious situations (e.g., time-limited employment and positions with a high risk of lay-off and minimum wage employment).…”

Surveying Human Vulnerabilities Across the Life Course: Balancing Substantive and Methodological Challenges

“…The whole resulted in a relatively normative but very transparent system, and provided a general sense of security about the life course. Then, with the globalization of the economy and increasing demands for flexibility in more competitive environments (Rudisill et al 2010), with the myriad of changes affecting family and the multiplication and growing complexity of living arrangements (Fokkema and Liefbroer 2008), with the expansion of individualistic values (Giddens 1991;de Singly and Martucelli 2009), and the (albeit incomplete) gender revolution (Esping-Andersen 2009; Levy and Widmer 2013), life courses became de-standardized, desynchronized, more heterogeneous or disordered, more turbulent, less predictable, and increasingly insecure.…”

“…) and to be accountable for his/her successes, but consequently also for his/her failures. It is obviously a source of stress that can also result from uncertain or insecure social interactions in a "liquid" (Baumann 2006) and competitive world (Rudisill et al 2010). Biographization is mainly concerned with event-based vulnerabilities associated with health problems, family discontinuities, and professional uncertainty.…”

“…Pearlin (1989) explicitly associated a lower position in the socioeconomic structure with greater exposure to stress. More recently, as we discussed briefly earlier, postmodern or post-industrial societies have also been seen as structural producers of stress through their demands for flexibility and competition (Rudisill et al 2010) and, more generally, through the ambivalence of the ideal of self-realization (Giddens 1991), the burden of being the actor of his or her life (Ehrenberg 1998). Pressure, insecurity, chronic strain, daily hassles, incivilities are obvious sources of vulnerability when their effects accumulate over time.…”