By Nadya A. Fouad, Beatrice I.J.M. van der Heijden, and Dora Scholarios
The following is adapted from Chapter 1: Introduction – Rethinking vocational behavior: past, present, and future directions from the upcoming Research Handbook on Vocational Behavior, edited by Nadya A. Fouad, Beatrice I.J.M. van der Heijden, and Dora Scholarios.
Over the past century, a number of disciplines and fields have studied people’s experiences of work, how they make choices and decisions about working (or not working), as well as the organizational, sociological, and economic conditions influencing work. In particular, various sub-fields of psychology have been involved in the study of vocational behavior, but too often these have been siloed. Vocational and counselling psychology have largely been shaped by individual-focused models rooted in career choice, decision-making, and development. These frameworks, from trait-factor models to lifespan developmental approaches, laid an important foundation for understanding how people navigate work across their lives (e.g., Crites, 1969; Holland, 1985; Super, 1980).
Research Handbook on Vocational Behavior
Edited by Nadya A. Fouad,
Beatrice I.J.M. van der Heijden, and
Dora Scholarios
450 pp | Hardback | eBook
ISBN: 978 1 0353 2262 6
Building on these principles, the field of career studies emerged to understand individuals’ transitions within, out of, and between organizations, with particular interest in the determinants of objective and subjective career success (e.g., Spurk et al., 2019). Other fields also have informed vocational themes. Work and organizational psychology has focused on core psychological constructs as they relate to work and careers, including employee well-being, motivation, expertise, and commitment (e.g., Cascio & Aguinis, 2008), and critical work psychology has highlighted the role of social forces, such as inequality and precarity, in shaping individual behaviors and choice (e.g., Bal et al., 2019; McWha-Hermann et al., 2025). Human resource management examines practices which enhance both individual development and performance (e.g., Kwon et al., 2010; Pahos et al., 2024), drawing attention to distinctive and sometimes conflicting employer and employee perspectives (Guest, 2017; Thompson, 2011). Work sociology, critical management, and labor studies each expand on how work is organized, contested, and transformed by competing interests (e.g., Adler et al., 2007; Budd, 2020; Cadenas & McWhirter, 2022; Marchington, 2015), and labor economics maps wider socio-economic conditions and their impact on the workforce, e.g., labor market opportunities, participation and employment outcomes, such as earnings, under/unemployment, or job quality (e.g., Fauser & Mooi-Recci, 2025; Kuhn & Chanci, 2024; Lavetti, 2023; Sehnbruch, Apablaza, & Foster, 2024; Yu, Smith, & Dimotakis, 2025).
Such diverse perspectives encourage us to think broadly about the structural determinants of individual choice, the dynamics of power within and outside organizations which influence such choice, and what constitutes meaningful work (e.g., Laaser & Karlsson, 2022) and “vocation” (Dik & Duffy, 2009; Lysova et al., 2019). We wish to build on the richness in understanding offered by each of these perspectives. This is all the more vital given that the social, political, economic, and cultural conditions under which individuals work and live have shifted dramatically, particularly in the last two decades. The time is ripe—and arguably overdue—to reimagine vocational behavior beyond its traditional scope, challenging the field to address today’s complexities with renewed relevance, rigour, and social responsibility.
The Research Handbook on Vocational Behavior emerged from shared concerns about the limitations of current career models and a belief in the transformative potential of work. Our initial conversations as an editorial team reflected our mutual recognition of a moment of global and disciplinary inflection, particularly since we are each in different countries. The possibility of the three of us approaching this as a team offered particular advantages, allowing us to draw from multi-cultural frames of reference and different research networks—Nadya from vocational and counselling psychology, Beatrice from career studies, work and organizational psychology, and human resource management, and Dora from human resource management, and work and personnel psychology.
We invited contributors not just to summarize, but to interrogate and innovate—to offer provocations and future research agendas, not just state-of-the-science reviews. In particular, we wanted to collaborate on an edited book which moved beyond the privileged lens of individual career development, and into wider territories: sociological, political, and economic structures; cultural conditions; precarious work conditions; technological transformations in work and employment; global migration; critical and decolonial epistemologies; and the existential questions of meaning, identity, and sustainability that increasingly define modern working lives. We included scholars from a variety of perspectives and career stages in order to foster multi- and trans-disciplinary and critical perspectives, and tried to reflect a global perspective. In short, we aimed to:
1. Integrate perspectives across disciplines and fields of study: Bridging vocational and other psychology sub-fields with different perspectives (e.g., from career studies, sociology, or management), to address complex, real-world career phenomena.
2. Examine the broader ecology of work and life: Moving beyond workplace outcomes to include family, peers, community, migration, sustainability, and existential meaning.
3. Embrace diverse epistemologies and methodologies: Encouraging pluralism—positivist, constructivist, critical, decolonial epistemologies—and methodological innovation across levels of analysis to move the field forward.
4. Advance a social justice agenda: Recognizing that work is not equally accessible or meaningful for all, and that power, privilege, and policy deeply shape vocational outcomes.
5. Acknowledge disruption and complexity: Moving away from static models of “choice” to embrace uncertainty, agency-structure dynamics, and new constructs like career shocks, identity multiplicity, and sustainable career narratives.
The 28 chapters that follow this introductory chapter in the Handbook are divided into six parts. Part I (Theoretical Contributions for the New World of Work) offers five chapters with different approaches to theoretical integration recognizing agency-context debates and considering the contemporary challenges of working life. Part II (Vocational Behavior across the Lifespan) reflects four distinct views of work transitions, from career guidance for children to individuals with autism and aging workers. These chapters highlight the need for life-long vocational guidance in increasingly complex working environments. The four chapters in Part III (Methodological Approaches) reflect the broad arsenal of methodologies required to take the field forward, covering qualitative, person-centered, predictive analytic, and multidisciplinary perspectives, and Part IV (Questioning the Tenets of Vocational Behavior Research) promotes further critical reflection with four chapters which call for recognizing the assumptions which drive much of vocational, career, and employability research, and greater integration of multidisciplinary and social justice concerns. The seven chapters in Part V (Contemporary Challenges) each focus on specific features of today’s work environment (e.g., precarity, technology, displacement) and its implications for future research agendas. Finally, in Part VI (Final Commentaries: Challenges and Opportunities) we invited commentaries from four eminent scholars, each coming from different disciplines of psychology and based in different parts of the world. Their commentaries are not conclusions drawn from the other chapters, but rather we asked them to provide perspectives and reflections on how future research can engage with efforts to manage working life and careers in the face of global instability and changing employment relationships.
Nadya A. Fouad is the Distinguished Professor Emerita, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA.
Beatrice I.J.M. van der Heijden is a Professor of Strategic HRM, Institute for Management Research, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Dora Scholarios is a Professor of Work Psychology, Strathclyde Business School, University of Strathclyde, UK.
