Becoming a 'lifer'? Unlocking career through metaphor

Despite growing interest in the adoption of metaphor analysis as a method of studying organizational and working life, there have been few, if any, empirical studies of career metaphors. Although career scholars have imposed their own metaphors to help illuminate their conceptions of career, the metaphors employed by those having careers and the conceptual insight this might generate has been all but ignored. This paper seeks to address this gap. Drawing on the career accounts of graduate level employees within a large blue-chip corporation, the metaphors they employ are IF analysed. The dominant metaphors contained within the careers literature - spatial, journey, horticultural, and competition metaphors - are drawn on heavily by participants. So too are other groups of metaphors not acknowledged within the literature. These are revealed as imprisonment, military, school-like surveillance, Wild West and nautical metaphors. An analysis of these metaphors generates fresh insights into the concept of career and leads to the 'unlocking' of important, but to date neglected features of career. On the basis of this metaphor analysis, the paper argues that career may be better understood in terms of a politicized process in which discipline and control are key dimensions.