A Psychology of Sustainable Career Development: Hypernormalized Ideology or Inherently Sustainable?

Abstract

Sustainable career development is a great priority for organizations, governments and individuals alike. Facing the grand challenges of our global world, careers and their development have to be re-designed to incorporate more sustainable ways of living and working. However, most work around sustainable careers is centered around neoliberal modes of organizing, amplifying individual responsibility of individuals for their careers, while treating careers merely as an instrumental ‘tool’ towards organizational performance and viability. Hence, sustainable careers are a hypernormalized ideology. In the current paper, a psychology of sustainable career development is introduced that deviates from earlier, more conservative models, of career development towards a more radical interpretation and recognition of truly sustainable ways of organizing and developing careers. Anchored in an interpretation of sustainable careers as promoting dignity and capabilities of people, this conceptual paper formulates a new psychology of the sustainable career, towards integration rather than individualization.