‘Ultimately the question always is: “What do I have to do to do it right?”’ Scripts as explanatory factors of career decisions

Abstract

In this article, we address one of the recurrent problems of career theory, namely the integration of individual agency and structural conditions of action in explanations of career decisions, and through them, career trajectories and their outcomes. We draw on Barley’s suggestion to include scripts as mediating between institutions and individual actions. By theoretically specifying scripts as collectively shared interpretive schemes that describe successful careers, we are able to introduce them as a specific factor that contributes to the explanation of career decisions. We demonstrate with a study of German early career researchers in two fields how scripts can be empirically identified and used in combination with other explanatory factors. Our analysis demonstrates how the concept ‘career script’ captures a specific social influence on career decisions that is different from rules governing behaviour and individual interests, goals and plans for a career.