(Un)sustainable working healthiness: A processual organizational lens to promote sustainable working and careers

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The paper considers careers embedded in the complexity of the current scenario. It highlights how organizational critical events, at different and intertwined levels (macro, meso, micro), threaten and challenge good work and working healthiness in contemporary workplace contexts. This contribution underlines the dual connotation of opportunity and risk that the theme of (un)sustainability suggests for careers, soliciting clear connections with real organizational life. The prefix “un” in brackets alludes to this structural duplicity, to be crossed and regulated. We explore the evolution of a paradoxical scenario in the relationship between people and work and the theoretical framework of the sustainability of/at work. We underline the structural ambivalence of the meaning of work, pointing out the polarizing tension to construct meaningful balance inside livelihoods, work and lives. We claim for processual organizational lens to tackle with the (un) sustainability and sustainable development of socio-material workplace conditions for sustainable working and careers.