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This study seeks to explore the key themes in identity play during unemployment and the potential obstacles faced by unemployed individuals.

This qualitative study is based on 23 interviews with unemployed individuals in Germany.

The authors identify three obstacles to identity play during unemployment: a lack of psychological safety to explore possible selves, a lack of opportunity to try out possible selves and a lack of social validation for possible selves. Several interviewees highlight the impact of social context, creating an absence of institutional support and a limited identity “playspace.” As such, the authors illustrate that when faced with these obstacles, the unemployed individuals of this study predominantly focus on identity work instead of identity play. Only a few interviewees seem to engage in and sustain identity play. The authors propose that the elaborate nature of their possible selves and their focus on future opportunities may overshadow the present self and immediate obstacles.

The authors argue that identity play is not readily available to all individuals in all situations. Instead, they suggest that some psychologically and socially threatening contexts such as unemployment are characterized by obstacles that constrain individuals' identity play and prevent the adoption of new work identities. Hence, the authors call for a more balanced and localized understanding of identity play.

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of identity play process by including the stories we live by in depth. Over the past decade, identity play literature has placed more emphasis on the role of self-narratives. Yet, the “stories we live by”, including the told or untold stories of past and imagined events of the future, have not been considered in depth in these self-narratives.

This conceptual paper draws on the personal construct theory, narrative identity and constructivist psychotherapy literatures and attempts to include the stories we live by in scholarly conceptualizations and explorations of identity play processes.

Drawing on the personal construct theory, narrative identity and constructivist psychotherapy literatures this paper offers a comprehensive conceptual model of how the stories we live by infuse individual identity construction processes. The model highlights the inter-connectivity among stories we live by, identity play, identity work, sensemaking and social validation. Looking through the lens of the personal construct theory and taking these inter-connectivities into account lead to the observation of temporality in identity construction and the plurivocality of self-narratives.

This paper looks at identity play through the lens of the personal construct theory. However, self-narratives are seen as a medium for manifestation of personal constructs. Thus, this paper also draws on the narrative identity literature and dialogical-self concept, which helps access the multiplicity of the self-narratives to widen our grasp of personal constructs. This paper combines discourse of deconstruction with the dialogical-self concept and provides more means for the explication of identity play.

This article aims to introduce the special issue entitled “the role of career shocks in contemporary career development,” synthesize key contributions and formulate a future research agenda.

The authors provide an introduction of the current state-of-the-art in career shocks research, offer an overview of the key lessons learned from the special issue and present several important avenues for future research.

The authors discuss how the special issue articles contribute to a better understanding of career shocks' role in contemporary career development, focusing on (1) conceptual clarity of the notion of career shocks, (2) career outcomes of career shocks, (3) mechanisms that can explain the impact of career shocks and (4) interdisciplinary connectivity.

This article offers a synthesis of the critical contributions made within this special issue, thereby formulating key ways to bring the field of career shocks research forward. It also provides new avenues for research.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a synthesis of the contingent work field and to advocate a sustainable career perspective on contingent work.

Adopting a broader review approach allowed to synthesize the contingent work literature across contingent work types (temporary agency work, gig work and freelance work) and develop a sustainable career perspective on contingent work. The authors searched for empirical, conceptual and review articles published from 2008 to December 2021. In total, the authors included 208 articles.

The authors advocate a sustainable career perspective that allows for organizing and synthesizing the fragmented contingent work literature. Adopting a sustainable career perspective enables to study contingent work from a dynamic perspective transcending one single organization.

The field is suffering from fragmentation and most importantly from an oversight of how contingent work experiences play a role in a persons’ career. This paper addresses this problem by adopting a sustainable career perspective on contingent work.