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Home  >  All Issues  >  2023  >  No.06  >  Article Details
Sustainable Careers: Connotation, Management Strategies, and Prospects
Wu Zhongda, Liang Jinghan, Lu Changqin
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Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 45, Issue 06, pp. 68 - 83 (2023)  DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.20230324.301
First published at:Jun 20, 2023
Summary
References
Summary

In the current workplace with constantly changing and uncertain environment, sustainable careers are of vital importance for both organizations and individuals. Recently, sustainable careers have become a hot topic in the field of career research. Thereby, we aim to provide a conceptual framework of sustainable careers by systematically reviewing the relevant literature, and elaborate on its significance for organizational and individual career management in uncertain career environments.

Firstly, we introduce the background, connotation, theoretical interpretation and influencing factors of sustainable careers. With the increasing complexity and uncertainty of the workplace, the concept of sustainable career has been proposed based on previous career-related theories such as protean career and boundaryless career. The career experiences allow individuals to balance health, happiness, and productivity, which are the three core elements of a sustainable career. Based on this, we theoretically interpret the sustainable career from the perspectives of resource conservation theory, career capital theory, self-determination theory, and life-span development psychology, and also sort out the influencing factors of the sustainable career from the perspectives of individual, organization, and non-work domain.

Then, we clarify how to tackle the challenges of environmental uncertainty and build sustainable careers at individual, organizational, and non-work domain levels. Specifically, three core strategies are proposed: (1) cultivating a “sustainable” mindset; (2) implementing sustainable human resource management and improving organizational identity; and (3) promoting work-family balance and positive social interactions.

Finally, the following research directions are proposed: (1) conducting more empirical research on sustainable careers by integrating relevant theories; (2) exploring life-span sustainable careers from a time-continuity perspective; (3) exploring the spatial flexibility of sustainable careers by focusing on diverse social spaces; (4) investigating people-centered sustainable careers by focusing on human agency; (5) understanding the dynamic process of sustainable careers by focusing on meaning pursuit; and (6) conducting cross-cultural research on sustainable careers.

The main contributions of this paper are as follows: First, it comprehensively introduces the background, connotation, theoretical interpretation, and influencing factors of sustainable careers, providing a comprehensive framework to better understand the research of sustainable careers. Second, it elaborates on how to build sustainable careers from individual, organizational, and non-work domain levels in uncertain environments, providing valuable suggestions for career management practices. Third, it provides an overview of the latest research advancement on sustainable careers, and proposes potential research directions to move this field forward.

Keywords
sustainable career; uncertain environments; sustainable development; career management
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Cite this article
Wu Zhongda, Liang Jinghan, Lu Changqin. Sustainable Careers: Connotation, Management Strategies, and Prospects[J]. Foreign Economics & Management, 2023, 45(6): 68-83. 
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