Documents Martin, Bill 3 results

"Private sector managers' pathways through late career and retirement are important, but insufficiently studied. Based on a large qualitative study of retiring managers in big Canadian firms, this article explores the relationships between managers' work during their careers, their retirement transitions and their retirement activities. Three distinctive patterns of managerial work and careers are found: those of expert managers, organization managers and strategic managers. They are strongly related to how managers end their ‘full commitment' careers and then build retirement lives by combining leisure activities, family commitments, civic involvement and paid work. Variations in retirement pathways are not well predicted by either individualization theory or theories based on generational or class habitus. Managers appear to develop distinctive orientations to acting with agency that arise from the way managerial work is organized; and these frame managers' retirement pathways. These findings may indicate why individualization does not necessarily lead to life course destandardization."

"Retirement involves a set of institutional arrangements combined with socio-cultural meanings to sustain a distinct retirement phase in life course and career pathways. In this Introduction to the Special Issue: ‘Reinventing Retirement: New Pathways, New Arrangements, New Meanings,' we outline the historical development of retirement. We identify the dramatic broad-based changes that recently have shaken this established construct to its core. We describe the main organizational responses to these changes, and how they have been associated with shifting, multiple meanings of retirement. Finally, we present a model that frames two general forms of reinvention of retirement. The first involves continuation of the idea of a distinct and well-defined period of life occurring at the end of a career trajectory, but with changes in the timing, the kinds of post-retirement activities pursued, and meanings associated with this period of life. The second represents a more fundamental reinvention in which the overall concept of retirement as a distinct period in an individual's life is challenged or rejected, whether because it is not appealing or no longer realistic. We provide examples of how both types of reinvention may manifest in individuals' careers and lives, and suggest future research directions that follow from our model."

"Managers' careers and career orientations have changed significantly since the era of organizational change that began around 20-30 years ago. This article focuses on how managers have responded to these changes. It suggests a significant change in the kinds of ‘capital' that managers mobilize, and the uses to which they put it. At least some managers now mobilize a form of ‘social capital' in the form of reputations that are grounded in informal networks. However, this reputational capital can be difficult to stabilise and therefore risky to hold. Managers therefore attempt to convert it into wealth - economic capital. The article illustrates these arguments using interview data from a longitudinal study of Australian managers."