Older Workers and Occupational Identity in the Telecommunications Industry: Navigating Employment Transitions through the Life Course
基于对英国电信（BT）老年及退休工程师的访谈，研究重组如何影响职业身份，以及职业社区在帮助老年工人应对就业转型中的作用。
The article examines the relationship between restructuring and work-based identity among older workers, exploring occupational identity, occupational community and their roles in navigating transitions in the life course. Based on working-life biographical interviews with late career and retired telecoms engineers, the article explores the role of occupational identity in dealing with change prior to and following the end of careers at BT, the UK’s national telecommunications provider. Restructuring and perpetual organizational change undermined key aspects of the engineering occupational identity, inspiring many to seek alternative employment outside BT. For older workers, some seeking bridge employment in the transition to retirement, the occupational community not only served as a mechanism for finding work but also provided a sustained collective identity resource. Distinctively, the research points to a dialectical relationship between occupational identity and the navigation of change as opposed to the former simply facilitating the latter.