Whole-Life Career Self-Management: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Contemporary careers require flexible career self-management across the life span that takes work and nonwork roles into account. However, existing models of career self-management do not focus on how work and nonwork life domains interact in this process and work–life research largely neglected a careers perspective. To address this issue, we present a new theoretical framework of career self-management that considers the intersection of work and nonwork roles. Our model integrates insights from career self-management, action regulation, and the work–nonwork interface to propose how goals, action plans, and behaviors across work and nonwork roles are dynamically linked and how these processes lead to career satisfaction, work–life balance, and psychological well-being, affected by contextual and personal role expectations and resources and barriers. Our framework has implications for the theoretical understanding of career self-management, the work–life interface, a whole-life perspective on career development, and contextual factors in career development across the life span.