This study uses metaphor analysis to examine the meanings of retirement for a group of 35 retired Canadian executives and managers. Our analysis identified eight metaphors relating to the meanings of retirement. The findings provide us with a range of insights into the experience of retirement, from loss of purpose and identity to liberation from the constraints of work to retirement being constructed as a new beginning or renaissance. Based on the accounts given by each manager, metaphors were collated and compared across retirees to reveal four distinct configurations that conceptualize retirement as exploring new horizons, searching for meaning, contributing on your own terms and putting your feet up. We discuss the implications of these metaphor configurations for understanding the consumer and producer-oriented meanings of retirement and challenge dominant career constructions of retirement as disengagement and decline. Our findings reveal that retirement appears to be better understood by incorporating future-focused and agentic forms that contribute to different types of identity work in retirement.
While many definitions of metaphor exist in the literature, most scholars agree that metaphor is an integral part of human language and thought (Lakoff, 1993) that can be understood as a cross-context mapping of meanings (Bowdle & Gentner, 2005) such that one thing is understood in terms of another (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Metaphors encourage creativity and help us to see things in new ways (Schon, 1993). Today, metaphor is widely accepted as a valuable tool for understanding processes and phenomena in organizations (Cornellisen, 2005). Grant (2004) argues that “metaphors act as generators of new meaning” that further research by creating new images and lines of inquiry. Moreover, while metaphor has clearly made its mark on the study of organizations, career theory has also been inspired by a metaphorical approach (e.g., El-Sawad, 2005 and Smith-Ruig, 2008). Metaphorical thinking is accepted as an inevitable component of human discourse and thought processes (Ortony, 1993), while the evaluation of how people tell their career stories is a valuable tool for gaining insight into how individuals understand and account for their careers (Cohen, 2006).
Marrying metaphor to careers has provided invaluable new insights and furthered the field (e.g., Mignot, 2004). For example, by employing Morgan's (1983) multiple metaphor approach, Inkson (2007) contends that nine careers metaphors—inheritances, cycles, actions, fit, journeys, roles, relationships, resources and stories—provide a balanced and integrated understanding of careers and how they work across the lifespan. In addition, Smith-Ruig (2008) found that accounting professionals use the metaphors of “journey,” “path” and “road” to make sense of and conceptualize their career trajectories. Today, scholars conceptualize careers as “protean,” “boundaryless,” and “kaleidoscope” (Sullivan & Baruch, 2009), demonstrating the use of metaphors to illuminate the changing nature of careers.
While several studies of career metaphors appear in the extant literature, there has been little research attention given to retirement metaphors and their meanings. Therefore, in this paper we are interested in studying two research questions: First, how does a metaphorical approach provide understanding of the variation in retirement meanings and experiences? Second, what are the implications for career theory of this variation, specifically as it relates to contrasting constructions of retirement? Next, we outline the methodological approach to our research
Our findings provide conceptual insights regarding the constructions, experiences and meanings of retirement. Our research makes four contributions. First, we identified eight metaphors that highlight the varying ways in which individuals understand and conceptualize retirement. Second, from a methodological perspective, our research contributes to a growing field of research examining combinations of metaphors (e.g., Pablo & Hardy, 2009), where the combinations and relationships among metaphors in talk or text provide us with a means of developing more complex, authentic and credible conceptualizations of phenomena of interest. On this basis our third contribution was the development of four configurations of retirement meanings; while this is not an exhaustive explanation, it does shed light on the unique meanings of retirement. Fourth, to assist in conceptualizing about retirement meanings we contrasted four different dimensions to explain the variation across our retirees: production and consumption activities in retirement, the narrative form and associated temporal orientation—past, present or future focus and the status of identity work in retirement. In summary, while it may not be time to retire retirement (Dychtwald et al., 2004); it is time to broaden the way we conceptualize and theorize about careers, working in later life, and the meanings of retirement.
