Protean and boundaryless careers as metaphors

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Abstract

The terms “protean career” and “boundaryless career” are metaphors. This paper outlines the nature of metaphor and its use in contemporary social science, particularly in the study of careers. It identifies five characteristics of metaphors, which serve as a guide to analyzing and evaluating them. These are (1) literal and figurative meaning; (2) elaboration in theory; (3) external understanding; (4) relationship to other metaphors; and (5) accuracy and constructiveness. The protean and boundaryless career metaphors are examined in relation to each characteristic. Both concepts have developed in understanding outside their literal and figurative meaning. Both however appear functional in the current shifting careers environment. Suggestions are made for the further development of the concepts.

Introduction

A metaphor is “the application of a descriptive term or phrase to an object or action to which it is imaginatively but not literally applicable” (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1990, p. 745). Metaphor typically gives physical or visual texture to abstract concepts such as “career,” and thereby provides a currency for understanding one’s situation and that of others, and for developing new insights. If someone tells us that their career is “a roller-coaster ride” or “a maze,” what they say is not literally true, but it may be imaginatively true, and it provides us with a more immediate and vivid sense of how they see their career than might a more elaborate and literal account.

But metaphor can also be used to describe broader concepts—for example not just specific careers, but broad groups of careers, or careers in general. The use of metaphor has become part of a growing challenge to positivist thinking in organization theory and analysis (Grant and Oswick, 1996, Morgan, 1986). Metaphor is also of increasing interest in career studies (Baruch, 2004). Individuals’ career thinking can be effectively analyzed using metaphor (Mignot, 2004). Career counselors working with metaphor can encourage their clients to develop their own, familiar metaphors, construct new metaphors and sometimes consider alternative metaphors introduced by the therapist (Amundson, 1998, Inkson and Amundson, 2002). Well-known theories of career are based on archetypal metaphors (Inkson, 2002, Inkson, 2006).

The terms “protean career” and “boundaryless career” are, in essence, metaphors. That is, the terms “protean” and “boundaryless” have literal meanings pertaining to the concrete world of objects and organisms that are applied, for explanatory and imaginative effect, to the abstract concept “career”. The nature of protean and boundaryless careers as metaphors enables the career scholars who use them to describe them as “ideal types” of career that can be considered functional in today’s career environment (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996, Hall, 1976, Hall, 2002). The status of “protean” and “boundaryless” as metaphors gives the concepts a special vividness, reinforces their meanings, and stimulates imaginative development.

The protean and boundaryless career metaphors appear right for the times. The meanings of the terms and the imagery that they convey are in sympathy with conditions of rapid technological, organizational and social change. The metaphors are also ideological in that they legitimize individual career actors’ emancipation from the constraints of “traditional” careers. The new metaphors implicitly and sometimes explicitly extol individual agency over organizational structure as a basis for career development, and advocate individual adaptability and pro-activity in changing or ambiguous circumstances.

In this paper therefore, I seek to evaluate the two concepts specifically as metaphors. To do so I need to consider the nature of metaphor in general, and the criteria that might be used to evaluate specific metaphors.

Section snippets

Metaphor

There is nothing unusual about using metaphor to understand and explain social phenomena. Whether we wish it or not, metaphor is an inevitable, inbuilt process within human thinking (Ortony, 1993). Indeed, it is likely that even carefully constructed empirically based theories of phenomena have their own metaphorical starting-points (Morgan, 1996). Furthermore, the same phenomenon may legitimately be described by different metaphors (Morgan, 1986). The essence of a metaphor is that it reveals

Evaluating metaphors

From the above discussion of the nature of metaphor, we can develop a set of questions enabling us to understand and evaluate specific metaphors.

  • We need to identify both the denotative or literal meanings of metaphors and the connotative or figurative meanings. For example, a well-known gasoline advertising campaign claimed that a particular brand would “put a tiger in your tank.” Customers understood that no tiger was injected when they filled up. The tiger was a label for something else. But

Literal and figurative meaning

The word “protean” is synonymous with flexibility, with a special connotation of changing shape. For example, the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1990, p. 960) definition of “protean” is “taking many forms” or “versatile”. Webster’s Dictionary (1971, p. 670) has a similar definition: “readily assuming different shapes; exceedingly variable.”

To understand the figurative meaning of “protean,” we need to consider the origins of the word. Some metaphors represent archetypal human myths and ideals

Literal and figurative meaning

The term “boundary” means “a line marking the limits of an area, territory, etc.” A synonym of “boundary” is “bound,” meaning “a limitation or restriction,” and the suffix “-less” means “not having, without, free from” (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1990, pp. 130, 679). So, if we take the term “boundaryless career” literally, it is a career either with no limits to the territory into which it can extend, or at least no clear line or barrier marking, where those limits are.

While boundarylessness

Elaborating archetypal metaphors

What value do the protean and boundaryless career metaphors add to the metaphors already available in career theory?

In relation to the nine archetypal career metaphors suggested by Inkson (2004), the protean career in its literal and mythological versions appears to be an extension of the “fit” or “match” metaphor, exemplified by the phrase, “You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole.” The fit metaphor emphasizes the necessary isomorphism of careers with occupational and job structures, and

Accuracy and constructiveness

Protean and boundaryless careers are models of particular types of career rather than full-blown theories of career. The broad propositions based on them are that (1) because of changes in the world of work, particularly the reduction of career continuity and support that organizations give their members, these types of career are increasing in frequency and importance, and (2) the career behavior implicit in such careers is functional because it enables people to direct and manage their own

Conclusion

If I might coin three new metaphors, metaphors are themselves researchers’labels, lamps, and lathes. (They are also labyrinths and laboratories, but that’s another story). As labels, metaphors enable us to understand ongoing events broadly and quickly and to respond emotionally. As lamps they provide greater illumination of events, but cannot overcome our tendency to perceive what we want to perceive. As lathes they enable us to fashion new and unique insights.

I have provided some evidence that

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Michael Arthur, Sherry Sullivan, and two anonymous reviewers for their reviews of earlier drafts of this paper, Tim Hall for his thoughtful and constructive editorial guidance, and Jon Briscoe for informal assistance throughout the process. These interventions enabled very substantial improvements to be made.

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