Sustainable careers: Towards a conceptual model

This paper aims to move the research field on sustainable careers forward by building conceptual clarity about what a sustainable career means and delineating what distinguishes sustainable from non-sustainable careers, thereby providing key indicators of a sustainable career. Moreover, we approach sustainable careers from a systemic and dynamic perspective and address influential factors associated with stakeholders situated in multiple contexts and evolving over time. We elaborate on core theoretical frameworks useful for enhancing our understanding of what makes careers sustainable and present three key dimensions that can help to analyze and study sustainable careers: person, context, and time. Finally, we propose a research agenda that we hope will spur scholars to examine the topic in more detail in future empirical work.