key: cord-0851298-ydhf1cnh
authors: Akkermans, Jos; Richardson, Julia; Kraimer, Maria
title: The Covid-19 crisis as a career shock: Implications for careers and vocational behavior
date: 2020-05-08
journal: J Vocat Behav
DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2020.103434
sha: 58977e3b090b79249467ba10c8e308d8aa4af92b
doc_id: 851298
cord_uid: ydhf1cnh

The covid-19 pandemic is a career shock for many people across the globe. In this article, we reflect on how insights from the literature on career shocks can help us understand the career consequences of the pandemic and offer suggestions for future research in this area. In particular, we offer three “key lessons”. The first lesson is that the implications of Covid-19 reflect the dynamic interplay between individual and contextual factors. Here, we argue that although the pandemic was difficult to predict and control, research shows that certain psychological resources – such as career competencies and resilience – could make this career shock more manageable. The second lesson is that the pandemic may have differential implications over time, as suggested by research that has shown the consequences of career shocks to differ between short-term vs. long-term time horizons, and across life- and career stages. The third lesson is that, even though the pandemic is clearly a negatively valenced shock for most people, further into the future it may allow for more positive outcomes. This lesson builds on research showing how negative career shocks have long-term positive consequences for some people. We hope that these insights will inspire both scholars and practitioners to study and understand the work and career implications of Covid-19 as a career shock, as well as to support people in dealing with its consequences.

The Covid-19 crisis as a career shock 3 A career shock can be defined as "a disruptive and extraordinary event that is, at least to some degree, caused by factors outside the focal individual"s control and that triggers a deliberate thought process concerning one"s career" (Akkermans et al., 2018, p. 4) . In this regard it comprises two key elements: (1) an event, and (2) a process of initial sensemaking, which means that a disruptive and extraordinary event is not necessarily a career shock in itself. For example, unexpectedly losing a mentor or valued coworker can be interpreted as a major shock by one person, whereas another may continue with "business as usual". Indeed, Akkermans et al. (2018) argue that career shocks can have different attributes, which potentially determine their impact on people"s careers, such as frequency, controllability, intensity, valence, and duration. For example, a single career shock may be low in intensity (e.g., a colleague leaves the organization), meaning it might not cause significant deliberate thought processing at first. However, if it happens multiple times (e.g., a number of colleagues leave), that is when frequency is high, the cumulative effect could be profound.

Applying this conceptualization to current events, it is clear that the Covid-19 pandemic is a highly disruptive and extraordinary event. While it is low in frequency, its low controllability makes it more likely to initiate a deliberate thought process (Akkermans et al., J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f indirectly related to perceived employability via subjective career success (i.e., an "individual agency process"), yet that negative career shocks weakened this relationship, whereas positive shocks strengthened it. Though not explicitly framed in terms of career shocks, Baruch et al. (2016) argued that a major earthquake (i.e., an external event) explained the lack of a relationship between turnover intentions and actual turnover in their study. Furthermore, Baruch and Lavi-Steiner (2015) showed that career events moderated the effect of a protean career orientation on career outcomes, and Hirschi and Valero (2017) showed that there are dynamic patterns in how people"s career decidedness relates to the impact of career events.

Event Systems Theory (Morgeson et al., 2015) supports the notion of contextual and individual interactions. It argues that events are external, and that they are at the intersection of an action with its context (Rousseau & Fried, 2001 Seibert et al. (2013) found that a positive career shock (receiving a quick raise or promotion) positively related to the employee"s intentions to pursue graduate education (measured cross-sectionally), but negatively related to that employee"s likelihood of applying to graduate school 16 months later. And, two negative career shockshaving a mentor depart the organization and a significant organizational changedid not impact the employee"s immediate intentions to attend graduate school, however, did impact the likelihood that the employee subsequently applied to graduate school 16 months later. As these findings demonstrate, the actual impact of a career shock on one"s career outcomes may not be immediate, but rather only manifest over time.

Research has also found that specific career shocks may impact one"s career outcomes in different ways based on one"s career or family stage. For example, in a sample of academics, Kraimer et al. (2019) found that the positive career shock of publishing a paper in a top-tier journal positively related to work engagement among late-career academics, but positively related to salary among mid-career academics. And, the shock of not receiving an administrative position negatively related to career satisfaction for early-and late-career academics, but not those in mid-career. Related research has also found that a significant national shock impacts individual"s stress levels based on their family status. In particular,

The Covid-19 crisis as a career shock strongly (positively) related indirectly to physical symptoms of stress, through negative hometo-work spillover, among individuals with family responsibilities, compared to those without dependents.

The above research has two important implications for scholars studying the career consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. First, studies should be designed to capture both short-term and long-term consequences. Although research is likely to find that this specific career shock has mostly negative career and psychological consequences in the short-term (e.g., job loss, reduced salary, lower career and work satisfaction), over time some individuals (see lesson #1) may move into more satisfying careers or job roles through their own proactive career behaviors. Indeed, research has demonstrated that employees who experience a novel and critical negative workplace event were more likely to engage in improvisation behaviors such as taking advantage of opportunities and "thinking outside the box" (Chen et al., in press) . Conversely, other individuals may be in occupations that have been able to adapt to the pandemic requirements of social and physical distancing (e.g., education, journalism, and government), thus, the effects of the pandemic shock on respective career outcomes may be neutral or even positive in the short term. But the long-term economic consequences of social distancing and closure of non-essential businesses to industries dependent on

The Covid-19 crisis as a career shock 8

For younger or early-career adults the Covid-19 pandemic may be their first experience through a significant global crisis, thus it may have long-term psychological effects on them.

Moreover, from the accumulative advantage perspective (Miller et al., 2005) , a disruption to an early career path, caused by the pandemic, may have significant career consequences for several years. At the same time, very early career adults may be less likely to currently have children or a mortgage loan, giving them one less "worry" during the pandemic. Mid-career individuals may be more established in their careers, but for those who did lose their jobs, finding a new job may take more time. Mid-life also means one is more likely to have the added stress of work-family conflict and financial debt (Ragins et al., 2014) . For later-career adults and retirees, the pandemic may be especially stressful given the higher rates of death among the elderly and economic implications for pensions and investments. Some may take this opportunity to start retirement planning, others, especially in non-profit and health care sectors, are coming out of retirement to help their former colleagues cope with the high demand of their services. Resource-based theories, such as Job Demands-Resources theory (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017) and Conservation of Resources theory (Hobfoll et al., 2018) , and work-life spillover theories (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000) provide useful lenses to help identify how and why various work and family experiences associated with the pandemic crisis impact individual"s career, work, and psychological outcomes across various life and career stages.

The Covid-19 crisis as a career shock 9 may give rise to opportunities for career exploration and change. Indeed, many of the managers in their study indicated that what had initially seemed like a negative experience, had ultimately allowed them to make positive career changes increasing their job-satisfaction and opportunities for life balance. Similarly, Rummel et al. (2019) showed that for some young entrepreneurs, being forced to leave a corporate career was initially a negative experience but ultimately led them into becoming a successful entrepreneur. Similarly, other workers whose organizations have moved to provide much-needed medical supplies are also developing new skill sets and finding new meaning in their work. The "silver lining" of these trends may, therefore, be that some individuals who may have otherwise been reluctant to engage in proactive skill development and career behaviors have augmented both their short-and long-term career sustainability by effectively dealing with the current changes in work demands (De Vos et al., 2020) .

In this article, we have argued that the Covid-19 pandemic can be considered a career shock that will have a major impact on people"s work and careers. We set out to achieve two goals:

(1) to offer ways of understanding this impact through recent insights from the career shocks literature, and (2) to help guide future research based on these insights. Specifically, we argued that the impact will be the consequence of a dynamic interplay between contextual and individual factors, which will differ for people across career and life stages. Also, we argued that there may be differences between short-term and long-term consequences, for example that even though the pandemic is a negative career shock, it may have longer term positive implications for some. We hope that these insights will inspire scholars and practitioners alike to study and understand the work and career implications of Covid-19 as a career shock, as well as to support people in dealing with this shock.

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