Work, Employment & Society, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp.

329352

June 1999

Abstract: The focus of this paper is the transition of managers and professionals out of organisational employment into portfolio work. The interest in this individual transition is its resonance with wider debates about the changing nature of career. The demise of the traditional hierarchical career is widely predicted as is its replacement by a proliferation of more uid and individual career choices, encompassed in the over-arching notion of the boundaryless career. The two studies on which this paper is based have taken an in-depth look at individuals who appear to exemplify this move out of organisational employment and into more independent working. The paper draws inductively on interviews with individuals who had left organisations to set up on their own. Hence the data is grounded in the accounts of individuals and seeks to explore their interpretations of their experiences. The paper focuses on participants expectations of their new employment context and its realities. In considering the major implications of these ndings, it questions dualistic conceptualisations of career and argues for theoretical frameworks based more on synthesis and linkage.

THE TRANSITION FROM ORGANISATIONAL EMPLOYMENT TO PORTFOLIO WORKING: PERCEPTIONS OF BOUNDARYLESSNESS

Laurie Cohen and Mary Mallon
Career change is at the centre of this study: change both in the careers of individuals and in career forms. A study of career orients attention not only to the external features of working lives the posts, the promotions and organisational and occupational career structures but also to how the individual perceives them and the relationship between the two. It can allow for a wide ranging examination of the intersection of individuals, organisations and social structures over time and space. As such it can be a useful vehicle in the study of social change (Collin and Watts 1996; Herriot 1992; Arthur et. al. 1989). The focus of the paper is the transition of managers and professionals out of organisational employment into portfolio work (Handy 1989; 1994; Ball 1996; Grigg 1997). Portfolio work is understood as packages of work arrangements for the plying and selling of an individuals skills in a variety of contexts. The interest in this individual career transition is in its

Laurie Cohen is Lecturer in Human Resource Management and an ESRC Research Fellow at the Business School, Loughborough University. Mary Mallon is Senior Lecturer in Management at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

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resonance with wider debates about the changing nature of career (Arthur and Rousseau 1996; Kanter 1989). The demise of the traditional, hierarchical career is widely predicted, as is its replacement by a proliferation of more uid and individual career choices, encompassed in the overarching notion of the boundaryless career (Arthur and Rousseau 1996). There is growing debate about new career forms and a new way of talking about career (e.g. Arthur and Rousseau 1996; Golzen and Garner 1990; Handy 1994; Bridges 1995). Yet there is a dearth of empirical, qualitative studies that seek to understand how individuals experience changing careers (Bailyn 1989; Ornstein and Isabella 1993). While there are valuable qualitative studies about career (Young and Collin 1992) and some empirical evidence about changing careers within organisations (e.g. Amin 1996) there are very few studies of individual experience of careers outside of, or tangential to, organisations, linked to the debate on changing careers and changing organisations. The two studies on which this paper is based have taken an in-depth look at individuals who appear to exemplify this move out of organisational employment and into more independent working. Drawing inductively on interviews with the participants, this paper explores how individuals who had left organisations to set up on their own experienced their new employment context and the light this career transition can shed on the emerging literature on careers. It has been said that career itself is a very elastic construct, amenable to both positivistic and constructivist interpretations (Collin and Watts 1996: 392); this paper acknowledges it as a social construction (Barley 1989). The rst section of the paper introduces the two studies and explores the linkages between them. The paper then reviews the emerging literature on new careers arguing that it proceeds from a weak empirical base and sets up an untenable dichotomy between old and new careers. The paper is primarily concerned with peoples experience of portfolio working but the issue of why they left organisations and turned to portfolio work is an essential contextual matter and so it is addressed in section three. The fourth section focuses on participants expectations of their new employment context and its reality. Finally the paper considers the major implications of these ndings, questioning dualistic conceptualisations of traditional and non-traditional careers and arguing for theoretical frameworks based more on synthesis and linkage. The Research Context This paper uses two qualitative studies into professionals and managers who left their positions within organisations and set up their own businesses. These studies were based on in-depth interviews with individuals who had made this career transition. In both cases the approach

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taken can be described as non-probability sampling, the purpose of which is not to establish a random or representative sample but rather to identify those people who have information about the process (Hornby and Symon 1994: 169). Thus, the samples were constructed through networking: accessing relevant participants through organisations such as the Chamber of Commerce, business networks and voluntary associations. Interviews lasted between one-and-a-half and two hours, and were typically conducted in the participants place of work. All of the interviews were fully transcribed and analysed thematically (King 1994). The rst study, which took place between 1994 and 1995, focused on 24 women who left middle and senior positions within organisations to start up their own businesses. As employees they had worked in a variety of sectors, including social and community work, psychology, healthcare, hotel management and catering, sales and marketing, journalism, graphic design and public relations, and computing. They subsequently set up businesses as independent trainers and management consultants, graphic designers, marketing and public relations consultants, alternative health therapists, and in professions such as law and psychology. In the interviews participants discussed their background, signicant aspects of family life, education and training, their experiences of organisational life and the decision to leave, the transition from employment to self-employment and their expectations of the new context, the realities of business ownership/ management, and about future directions. This study was particularly interested in investigating the experiences of women because, despite the signicant increase in womens involvement in business ownership/management in the last decade (Cohen 1997; Marlow and Strange 1994; Carter and Cannon 1992; Moore and Buttner 1997), the eld remains relatively unexplored. While there is a burgeoning literature on small business ownership/management generally, many of these studies have a distinctly male bias (Lee-Gosselin and Grise 1990; Allen and Truman 1993), resulting in a lack of theoretical understanding of womens experiences. In addition, although women who moved from employment to self-employment have been singled out as representing an important (and growing) group (Goffee and Scase 1985; Carter and Cannon 1992), research into this area remains limited. This study thus sought to develop existing understandings of their careers. The second study, conducted between 1995 and 1997, focuses on 25 people (8 men and 17 women) who had achieved middle and senior management positions in the National Health Service and left to develop their own portfolio of work. The majority went on to work as management consultants, not within, but alongside the NHS. Many also combined this role with part-time or xed term contracts and/or consultancy relationships with other organisations. In the context of public sector employment on managerial grades, the promises of the traditional progressive career in

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a secure internal labour market was potentially salient. This sample offered opportunities to explore the implications of changes to the structure and values of the public sector for individual careers. The study aimed to nd out how it feels to leave an organisation and strike out alone. Why would anyone make this choice and having done so, how is it experienced? The concept of career and the debate on changing career was central to the study. The interviews focused on how individuals had understood their career to date; how they accounted for the decision to leave their organisation; how they understood and experienced their new context; how they dealt with issues of personal and professional development; their changing relationship with organisations; the implications of this transition for participants understanding of career and their own career identity. In discussions of our two studies it soon became apparent that there were signicant areas of overlap between the data sets in terms of content, research approach and ndings. As far as the substantive area is concerned, both were grounded in individuals accounts of their transition out of organisational employment and (more interestingly) to some form of independent employment context. More specically, the majority of participants (nearly two-thirds in the rst study and all in the second) were working without employees at the time of interview. As mentioned in the introduction, despite the increased interest in people working independently without employees (Granger et al. 1995; Stanworth and Stanworth 1995), this group has received relatively little research attention. Thus it seemed to us that our studies could be brought together to constitute an expanded data set, which would add new insights to an emerging literature. Finally, on a more theoretical level, the different foci of the two studies are mutually enhancing. For example, the rst studys exclusive focus on women ensures that a gender perspective is central to our analytical agenda, which the second studys examination of a particular industrial context contributes insights into issues concerning a changing managerial labour market. Finally, on a more processual note, these were both Ph.D. studies and were thus conducted individually rather than as collaborative projects. While this is clearly the norm in doctoral research in the social sciences, it has been argued that qualitative research can be considerably enhanced through consultation and collaboration with others (Reason and Rowan 1981; King 1994). This paper provides us with an opportunity to work together, and to explore our data in a more collegial way. This paper is thus based on a synthesis of 39 accounts (14 from study one and 25 from study two) of people who left their positions in organisations and, at the time of interview, were working independently, without employees. They were a well-qualied group with the majority having degrees and/or professional and vocational qualications. The ages

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of the sample ranged from 32 to 55 with the majority of people (24) between the ages of 35 and 45. The vast majority of people lived with a (working) partner. However, only a third of the sample (including 2 single parents) had dependent children. Changing Careers This section briey explores what is being said about careers, with particular emphasis on the notion of portfolio work and the boundaryless career. It highlights the ambiguous evidence on the nature of managerial and professional career change and concludes by raising concerns about the developing literature. While there are conicting denitions of career, there has been a widespread (although highly debatable) conjunction of the idea of career with advancement from humble beginnings to more senior positions (Pahl 1995) in an organisational or occupational hierarchy (Van Maanen and Barley 1984; Inkson 1995; Gowler and Legge 1989; Tolbert 1996; Arnold 1997; Arnold and Jackson 1997). This view of career (variously described as bureaucratic, traditional, corpocratic, managerial) is by now deeply embedded in our Western consciousness (Gowler and Legge 1989). The limited applicability, indeed mythical elements (Nicholson 1996), of this view of career have been extensively noted (Tolbert 1996; Kanter 1989; Pahl 1995; Thomas 1989). The exclusivity implied in such a model of career has also been heavily criticised, particularly in questioning its relevance to people (primarily women) who wish to combine childcare and career (Gallos 1989; Bailyn 1993). Career theorists have routinely offered several other models of what could constitute a career (e.g. Driver 1982; Derr 1986; Schein 1978). However, as Marshall (1989), argues, while theoretically, a range of career possibilities are mooted, they remain tinged with failure if they do not conform to the prevailing norm of upward and onward. Recently there has been a spate of predictions about the demise of this traditional career (e.g. Holbeche 1995; Bridges 1995; Waterman et al. 1994; Golzen and Garner 1990; Arthur and Rousseau 1996; Handy 1994; Herriot and Pemberton 1995). Such careers are increasingly being discredited as stultifying individuals initiative and creativity and promoting an unhealthy dependence on organisations for the conduct of ones working life. (Golzen and Garner 1990; Waterman et al. 1994). People are encouraged to weaken their ties with organisations and develop relationships built less on the expectations of a relational, long term commitment and more on transactional, short-term, nancial and demarcated exchanges (Rousseau 1996). It is pertinent to consider why the terrain of career debate has shifted so markedly in recent years. V. S. Naipaul, remembering his time as a

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freelance worker with the BBC in the 1950s, elegantly illustrates how forms of working have acquired new meanings:
The BBC had set aside a room for people like me, freelancers to me then not a word suggesting freedom and valour, but suggesting only people on the fringe of a mighty enterprise, a depressed and suppliant class: I would have given anything to be staff (1984: 15).

Naipaul suggests that there has been a dramatic shift in how freelance work (clearly related to portfolio work) is viewed. The extent to which the mighty enterprise is indeed being challenged is open to debate, yet his words echo themes in the literature on changing career patterns which attribute a valiant dimension and enhanced personal freedom to the decision to leave organisational employment. The new career debate chimes with other contemporary discourses about exibility in organisational form (Clegg 1990; Hecksher and Donnellon, 1995) and in employment patterns (Pollert 1991); enterprise and entrepreneurialism (du Gay 1996); competition, privatisation and the import of business principles to government and the public sector (Pollitt 1993; Hood 1991); the changing nature of society itself (e.g. Hage 1996; Bell 1973) and its economic, social and political base (e.g. Piore and Sabel 1994; Lash and Urry 1987); individualism and personal choice reected in consumption patterns all in the context of what can be termed a post, late or reexively modern approach to life (Giddens 1991; Beck 1992; Bauman 1992). Whereas the move out of employment may previously have been regarded as an individual idiosyncrasy or indeed derided as falling off the career ladder (Marshall 1989) it now appears to reect the zeitgeist. Boundaryless Career: An Emerging Career Discourse A convenient way to consider the literature emerging on careers is the image of the boundaryless career (Arthur and Rousseau 1996) in opposition to the bounded organisational, bureaucratic career. Boundaryless careers are characterised very broadly as a range of possible career forms which defy traditional employment assumptions (1996: 3). For example Mirvis and Hall describe them thus:
The boundaryless career . . . will be marked by a variety of tasks, that may or may not be bundled easily into a job, periodic redenition of ones profession and ts and starts over the course of a career (1994: 366).

Against this background, new ways to describe career forms have emerged which attempt to capture the idea of individuals career self management and lack of dependence on a single organisation. Handys notion of the portfolio career is a signicant example:
more and more individuals are behaving as professionals always have, charging

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fees not wages. They nd they are going portfolio or going plural. Going portfolio . . . means exchanging full-time employment for independence. The portfolio is a collection of different bits and pieces of work for different clients. The word job now means a client (1994: 175).

Certainly, the boundaryless or portfolio career invites us to consider that career can occur both within and beyond the boundaries of an organisation. It acknowledges that the boundaries of work and non-work, paid and non-paid work are (or certainly can be) permeable. This answers the calls (Marshall 1989; Bailyn 1993) to take a wider, more exible, more embracing idea of what constitutes a career. Although this concept of portfolio working is neither clearly specied nor empirically grounded, it has become incorporated into ways of thinking and talking about careers (Ball 1996; Sonnenberg 1997; Comfort 1997). Because of its resonance in public debate (Cohen and Trapp 1994), in this paper, we have with reservations adopted the use of the term portfolio work to name the contexts in which the participants in both studies now operate. However, the emerging literature on new careers should be treated with caution. Whether the ideas of Handy and fellow management prophets constitutes prediction, description (or indeed prescription) is a moot point. Three particular concerns about the available literature can be highlighted: rst, the empirical base on which assertions of new development in careers are made is modest at best; secondly, the debate is riven with untenable dichotomies about old and new careers and nally, little is written about the potential downside of more exible careers. A Modest Empirical Base Despite much rhetoric about such change it is more difcult to trace the extent and nature of change in work place or in individual career. Consistent with the debates about the emergence of an enhanced role for small business there has been a signicant rise in the numbers of people in self employment (Daly 1991), particularly those with few or no employees about whom we generally know little (Stanworth and Stanworth 1995). The assault on secure employment and the emergence of a contract culture in the public sector (Hood 1991; Pollitt 1993) may have a manifestation in the growing amount of temporary work within that sector (Casey et. al. 1997). It has also become something of a truism that managers have been disproportionately affected by the spate of organisational restructuring and downsizing of recent years (Wheatley 1992; Dopson and Stewart 1990). However, at the same time, it appears that there has been an increase in managerial jobs (Skills and Enterprise Network 1996; Institute for Employment Research (IER) 1994; Bevan et al. 1995) (although more generous attribution of the title of manager

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clouds the picture) and that people continue, stubbornly, to prize security and career advancement (Wheatley 1992; Worrall and Cooper 1997). Furthermore, while organisations have undoubtedly been inuenced by the emerging career debate, there is little evidence of signicantly changed career practice (Halford and Savage 1995; Guest and MacKenzie Davey 1996). Untenable Dichotomies in Career Thinking Like much career theory which preceded it, the debates on emerging careers are grounded in dichotomies which are highly questionable. Career literature is generally held to over-emphasise individual or organisational levels of analysis; to look at the external career at the expense of individual interpretation; to take an under or oversocialised view of the individual (Derr and Laurent 1989; Gunz 1989; Evetts 1992; Barley 1989; Nicholson and West 1989; Ornstein and Isabella 1993) and the emerging literature tends to the same (Nicholson 1996). A new dichotomy is being set up which suggests that old careers are stultifying and must be overturned, and that the new hold out great possibilities for liberation. In this case the new career is set in opposition to the old. Raising Questions About Boundaryless Careers Voices are raised about potential implications of new careers (Hutton 1995; Pahl 1995; Hirsch and Shanley 1996) but they are largely drowned by the chorus of approval. Hence a set of normative assumptions about what careers will be like and what kind of people can best navigate them has already emerged. Hirsch and Shanley (1996: 224) suggest that the boundaryless career could be experienced as benecial or hostile depending on an individuals situation with change hitting hardest those people with signicant sunk career investments that are rendered obsolete by changes in business conditions and practices (1996: 224). Interestingly, while traditional career thinking typically views these alternatives as second best (Marshall 1989; Gallos 1989) advocates of new career forms tend to put such alternatives on a pedestal (Hirsch and Shanley 1996), assuming that new forms of careers can emerge and ourish without preconceived status rigidities (Arthur and Rousseau 1996: 372). In light of context outlined above, the advocacy of boundaryless careers could be seen as having a role in legitimising the effects of organisational downsizing and delayering and the reduction in traditional career opportunities. In taking as its starting point the notion of career as a social construction, this paper emphasises the process by which the participants construct their reality(ies) (Harrison 1994; Meyer and Rowan 1977;

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Noon and Blyton 1997). That is, as researchers it was our preunderstanding (Packer 1985) that there was no particular truth that would give a universal picture of portfolio workers understandings (Cohen 1997; Mallon 1998; Collin 1996). Instead, we set out to explore the ways in which participants negotiated between emerging career discourses in the construction of their careers. Leaving the Organisation and Going Portfolio Only two of our participants were made redundant against their will. All of the others went voluntarily (although with reluctance in many cases), raising questions about why they left and why, instead of looking for employed work elsewhere, they decided to go portfolio. Corporate Flight: Organisational and Personal Dimensions In their decisions to leave an organisational context, two themes emerged. First, over half our sample explained how they felt frustrated by what they saw as few opportunities for professional development within their organisations, in terms of promotion through organisational hierarchies as well as professional learning and growth. For such people, work had lost its challenge feelings of stagnation, wasting time and being stuck were cited as triggers for change. Second, on a slightly more abstract level, a signicant number of participants explained how their decisions were linked to an inconsistency between their own systems of values and those of their organisations. Such clashes were frequently described in the context of change, particularly where such initiatives were seen as fundamentally at odds with participants own values and principles. This was particularly the case for people working in the public sector who had experienced structural and cultural changes in their organisations prompted by new legislation. However, it was not only around the process of organisational change that such clashes emerged. The literature on organisational t (Cassell and Walsh 1992; Marshall 1995) considers the process by which certain individuals are constructed as the other. Likewise, for a number of participants, the issue was not that their professional values were out of synch with a changing organisation, but that the individuals themselves were somehow not quite acceptable. For these participants the decision to leave resulted from an unwillingness to tolerate the lack of recognition and value afforded to them because of this difference. Exit, in such cases, was described as a means of regaining a sense of oneself. It is important to note that while this issue is frequently discussed in relation to the experiences of women (Davidson and Cooper 1992; Cassell and Walsh 1992; Marshall 1995), it is not only gender that is at issue here. Rather,

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gender must be seen as one in a constellation of variables that serves to construct an individual as different. Alongside organisational factors, some participants explained how their decisions to leave their organisations resulted, in part, from personal circumstances, in particular, domestic responsibilities which were seen as conicting with their organisational positions. However, two important points must be noted. First, popular myths suggest that women in particular experience an incompatibility between personal and professional roles and responsibilities (Rosin and Korabik 1992). However, one-third of the participants who described such conict were men who had responsibilities caring for aged parents, and whose organisations were reluctant to countenance any temporary change in their working arrangements. Second, of the women who cited parental duties as their principal reason for leaving their organisations, it became apparent in the course of their interviews that their motivation was far less straightforward, that motherhood was one in a web of factors that led them to that decision. This was discussed explicitly by one respondent who explained how family responsibilities had provided her with a socially legitimate reason for leaving her job. Whereas the desire for more autonomy and greater control at work may not have been seen (by herself or others) as an acceptable reason to leave, the desire to do the best for her child made sense. Considering the decision at the time of interview, she said that her child had probably been used as an excuse. She explained that her decision to leave her organisation had been an attempt to resolve much more fundamental issues about employment, and about her identity as a working woman. In sum, in deciding to leave their organisations participants rejected a context in which many found themselves merely surviving instead of thriving, in which reality was frequently dened by others, and which in some cases was seen as conicting with their personal circumstances. An adequate framework for understanding this decision must account for both organisational and personal factors. However, these must not be reduced to a simple dichotomy. That is, it is not enough to explain the decision to leave as either individual phenomenon or an organisational one. Instead, we would argue that personal and organisational factors must be seen as inextricably linked, and mutually reinforcing. Opting for Portfolio Careers While an examination of those factors identied above may help to explain the decision to leave the organisation, the choice of portfolio working raises additional questions. In their research into the move from organisational employment to self-employment a career transition which has obvious salience for this study the analyses of Hakim (1989) and

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Bogenhold and Staber (1991) are based on a push/pull model. Push is regarded as responses to economic and labour market factors, while pull refers to the potential for greater independence, exibility and choice. While this framework may be convenient analytically, like Granger et al. (1995) we feel it is too stark, resulting in understandings which are overly reductionist and which fail to account for the complexity of this career transition. Instead, we would argue that what is needed is a more holistic perspective which captures the rich and historic interweaving of personal, structural and discursive motives which may propel an individual towards self-employment or portfolio work. A split emerged between those participants who saw portfolio work as their only option, and those for whom it represented the best option in their current circumstances. Just over half of our participants suggested that because of factors such as age, disability and occupational sector, portfolio working was their only choice. However, although these participants recognised their limited employment possibilities, it should not be assumed that their move to portfolio working was wholly negative. On the contrary, in many cases it was viewed as an exciting though worrying prospect, offering autonomy, control and a real opportunity for professional and personal growth. In contrast, others chose portfolio working as the best alternative in their circumstances. Although they felt sure that they could have found positions within other organisations, these participants had made the decision to opt out of organisations altogether. For them, the decision to embark on portfolio careers can be understood as a rejection of organisational employment, a desire to nd an employment context which offered both the opportunity for professional growth and exibility, and consistent with Birleys (1989) analysis, situational factors which provided the immediate impetus to make the change. And signicantly, on the more abstract level of language and meaning-making, this career transition took place in the context of their reexive awareness of an emerging discourse on new career forms (Mallon 1998), central to which are the apparent pitfalls of organisational employment and the benets of more exible arrangements. Expectations of Portfolio Working As suggested above, participants decisions to become portfolio workers were multi-faceted. However, there was a certain consensus in expectations of what the new employment context would offer: most specically, ideas that permeate academic debate about exibility, autonomy, individualism, freedom, independence and control came up frequently. Many participants explained how when they embarked on portfolio careers they expected to be in charge implicit in this control was the

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power to make important decisions, and a sense of not being accountable to anyone but themselves. Such expectations represent a stark contrast to the organisational experiences of many of the participants, frequently characterised by diminishing control, and marginalisation. In contrast, in their new contexts they themselves would be central and in charge and the business would be constructed around their interests and values. Experience of Portfolio Working Issues relating to individuals experience of new career forms included the extent to which expectations of greater freedom and control were fullled, the balance between work and family, the value of previous organisational experiences, and relationships with other portfolio workers. These are considered below. Finally, this section questions whether portfolio workers can be seen as pioneers of emerging career forms. Freedom and Control Participants spoke about freedom in two ways. On the one hand they talked about freedom from . . . (bosses, departments, and organisations more generally); on the other they talked about portfolio working giving them the freedom to . . . (create, develop, manage). While the former relates to perceptions about who is in charge, the latter is more specically concerned with the extent to which people feel able to work in the way they see t. Having left their organisations, many participants described their feelings of sheer terror at the apparent limitlessness of their new situations. While for some, this panic was expressed through their early frantic attempts to nd jobs; others described their exhilaration at this new found freedom, a feeling which persisted for most of our participants:
The freedom is wonderful. This is work as it should be done and you can make time for other things. Its my big secret. It protects me against all those people who think I have committed career suicide.

However, a number of intriguing contradictions soon began to emerge. On the one hand, participants realised that in some ways their organisations had not been as restrictive as they had thought. Rather, some aspects of their organisational experiences had been liberating not least job security, regular income, and a ready-made structure of the working week. And with that stability came a sense of freedom and a feeling of being in control of ones life. At the same time, though, while portfolio work connotes a certain sense of freedom, in every case, it presented very denite constraints and limitations, including greater insecurity, irregular working patterns and a feeling of being tied to their work on an everyday, operational level (Scase and Goffee, 1980):

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But now Im more tied, obviously, cause I cant just think, well, when I was employed if I got fed up I could just move on. You could say, Well, Im going abroad, you could do whatever you liked. Youve got your six weeks holiday, youve got your health insurance.

Permeating these contradictions was a sense that participants were struggling to redene their notion of appropriate (and socially legitimate) career behaviours. Evident in the interviews (more glibly addressed in the emerging literature) was a sense of struggle to redene what work and career meant to them, particularly in the face of what they saw as a lack of wider social approval. That is, it appeared that participants had some trouble relaxing into their new situations, always judging themselves (and feeling judged) by prevailing norms of organisational career behaviour. This sense of discomfort aptly illustrates the failure of the literature to adequately address the very genuine difculties that individuals encounter in their attempts to forge new career paths in the face of deeply embedded constructions of career (Pahl 1995). For example, one woman discussed the issue of balance in her new role and saw it, as others did, as double edged:
I love being able to work from home with the children around. It refreshes, replenishes and re-energises me. Of course I cant admit that, not as a working mother, its just not the thing to say.

Work and Family Our ndings are ambiguous. On the one hand, it appears that the move to portfolio working made little or no difference to participants domestic arrangements. People who were well supported before the move continued to be so and those who were not continued to be unsupported, and to take on the bulk of the responsibilities. Although their employment contexts had changed, their positions within the family had remained the same. In this sense, the move to portfolio work could be seen as enabling people to more effectively manage the competing demands of both paid and unpaid work (Cohen and Green 1995). On the other hand, data on participants perceptions of the differences between the two contexts and on their thoughts about the future suggest that the move led to them think about their careers and themselves in quite different ways. Managing their own portfolios, several participants explained how they could be themselves a stark contrast to the feelings of marginalisation and otherness experienced by some in their organisations. And particularly signicant is the sense of empowerment and control which underpinned peoples ideas about the future. The data thus suggest that it is not the case that participants were locked into particular structural positions, positions which were merely reected in their

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patterns of thought and sense-making (Weick 1995) Rather, they were active participants in the construction of their careers, and in the labour market, negotiating with it, making sense of it and nding their own way through. Having left their organisations, many participants set up their new businesses from home. Several felt that there were distinct advantages to such an arrangement. Most typically, participants found that after years of working outside the home, sometimes commuting, sometimes travelling on a regular basis, this greater integration of life and work came as a welcome contrast. Central to questions about particular work setting is the issue of professional identity. While some found that working at home was entirely consistent with their sense of themselves as professionals, and felt that home was the appropriate setting in which to develop their businesses, others found it difcult to take their businesses (or themselves as business people) seriously until they had moved into business premises. The extent to which participants saw themselves as professional was inextricably linked to how others saw them. The importance of appearing credible, not only to clients, but also to professional peers (as well as to oneself), came up time again in the data. For example, one man operates a career consultancy and executive coaching service from home:
I operate from home now, its do-able but I often wonder, as many of my clients are richer than me, they come to this modest house, what is their perception? They are coming to a homely, lived-in atmosphere with young kids, does it feel business-like? Ive asked some of them, their answer is we come to see you Mark.

The Value of an Organisational Past in the Experience of Portfolio Work In spite of their initial rejection of organisational employment what emerges very strongly from the data is the extent to which these people feel that their experiences within their organisations had prepared them for portfolio work. In particular, they highlighted the skills and condence they had acquired, and the value of organisational relationships. Many participants explained how, in embarking on portfolio careers, they had found themselves drawing on dormant skills, what one person called the mothballed professional and technical skills they had had less need for as they moved up the managerial ranks. As independents, they were required to reach way down, way back in the skill tool bag and haul them out. To market oneself as a manager, for example, seemed far less feasible than to describe oneself as a trainer, or an accountant or a workforce planner. Furthermore, working on a daily basis without the support structures of an organisation, previously acquired skills became valued.

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On-going training, too, was a signicant issue. As independent operators they felt that they simply could not afford the cost or the time for high quality training and indeed mourned what one man called the blue sky time he had enjoyed previously, when ideas could be aired and concepts explored with colleagues. Similarly Handy (1994), the very proponent of portfolio working, shares the concern that skills can atrophy in isolation. In the absence of training opportunities, they therefore found themselves referring back to and valuing anew (or indeed for the rst time) courses they had participated in as employees. A number of participants described how reputations and relationships established within their organisations were central to the success of their portfolio ventures, most particularly at the start. Many people continued to rely on the strong relationships they had developed for support, information, professional development, and for giving them a degree of structure in their more uncertain working life. These long-standing relationships provided them with continuity which was extremely benecial during the period of change and afterwards. It was notable that the vast majority of people were awarded their work contracts by ex-colleagues once they went independent. Although many people expressed a desire to secure work with a wider range of clients, the majority continued to rely on the wider boundaries of the organisation they had just left. For many, the net result of this was a continuing and, in fact dependent, relationship with that organisation. Relationships with other Portfolio Workers While a few people had set up in association with others and a couple had developed partnerships, an intriguing aspect of the ndings was the extent to which they sought to dissociate themselves from other portfolio people. It is perhaps paradoxical that while relationships established within their organisations which they had chosen to leave proved to be highly valued (and valuable), it seemed that entering into too close an association with fellow portfolio workers was judged risky:
I detect a professional wariness of other consultants about each other . . . After all we are rivals and so you need to be wary. Im worried that people might want something from me for nothing, pick my brains and give nothing back.

Having come to recognise that they themselves had brought forward a solid base of skill, condence and credibility from their previous employment, they insisted that other people did not which undermined their own chance of portfolio success. An important point here is how participants can begin to gain a sense of legitimacy about their career move, given their awareness of more negative interpretations that they attributed to family, friends, excolleagues and the wider public: as borne out of necessity; as a cover for

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redundancy, or incompetence; as the making the best of a bad circumstance; as being marginalised from the real world of work and career. Cognisant of new ways of thinking about career, they are able to construct themselves as people more in tune with the zeitgeist who have seen the writing on the career wall, unlike their contemporaries who have buried their heads in the sand. However, being equally aware of an opposing view, ultimately their own sense of being ahead of the game provides scant comfort. They struggle to nd a group(s) they can orient towards for a vocabulary of motive (Mills 1940) and collective comfort in the face of change (Barley 1989). Herein lies their most acute problem: many people apply a negative interpretative scheme for portfolio working, not to themselves, but to those with whom they share this world. Therefore, in many cases, rather than feeling some safety in numbers, they feel sullied by some of the people with whom they share the portfolio world. Pioneers of Emerging Careers? A key question is whether this group are indeed examples of pioneers of an emerging career form. There is evidence that self employment is episodic and it may well be that portfolio work will prove to be so. This exploratory study cannot yet answer the questions of who will and will not adopt this way of working on a long term basis, but some interesting angles for future research are suggested. Clearly this study has focused on those who are relatively privileged in labour market terms: skilled, qualied and experienced. And for the most part the decision to go portfolio was not forced by labour market circumstances, although some individuals may well have felt that they had little choice. But even within this group, experience of the transition is mixed at best. There was a marked lack of propensity to return to organisational employment. We do not argue that this should be taken to indicate the intrinsic merits of portfolio work and in any case, it must be placed alongside a generally negative view of options in the external labour market (Riley 1995). However, it does indicate that participants were keen to make a personal success of this transition and were able to draw on an emerging career discourse to legitimise their decision. Only two people had returned to employment by the time of the interview and only three were actively seeking work. All ve were people who had been made redundant or left feeling they had no option but to so do. Conversely most people had not categorically rejected organisational employment; the majority entertained the possibility of return, particularly if senior level part-time work could be found. Indeed three-quarters of the sample sought to secure longer term, relational contracts (Rousseau 1996) within organisations. This was partly

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due to the pragmatic consideration of regular income but was also rooted in a desire to belong:
I go for two days input and I have an ofce and I must say I am loving it, having a stake, having a secretary, being part of the team, and that is what I have been missing being out on my own.

Even those eager to make a personal success of this transition felt a keen sense of exclusion from the world of employment
I do miss the work, the title, the job to do, the position, they give you an authority, but now you are just expected to get through as yourself. Before you could ring people up and you could expect to be put straight through, but it is not like that now when you are ringing to sell yourself.

An ideal, a reality for a few and aspiration for most, was to combine freelance type work with some form of part-time employment. One woman who had achieved this remarked:
Well the ideal is what I have, a foot in the door with the job share and long-term consultancy and that fulls my belonging needs,- which I must admit are quite high. But the creative part of me and the entrepreneurial part can be more satised by one-off consultancy.

That very few people express any alternative view attests to the strength of these needs in the participants. Hence it seems that the link to the organisational world has not been severed. There is indeed an expressed appreciation of some of the benets of independence yet, far from wanting to escape into some wholly new way of working, what these participants are seeking is a near approximation to the world they left. Several people had begun, with little personal doubt, to make their peace with portfolio working. One of the older people in the study, a man of fty, hinted that age was an issue. He was positively enjoying the wide ranging portfolio he had and feeling free at last to be a dabbler:
Im fty now, and there is more sand in the bottom than the top so those at the top take on a golden glow and I dont want to waste them. I will do bread and butter work to get us through but I dont desperately want a job. I know salary is an anchor, but I dont want an anchor, a rudder maybe, I do my career tricks on myself and think where was I happiest and it is when I have been doing my own thing, those few moments when it has felt like my show were the best, why would I not want to feel that it is my show.

This participant is at odds with the vast majority of people in both studies who have high hopes of their show but have not yet reconciled it with their frames of reference from their previous career. One woman neatlyand rather sadly expresses a prevailing view:
If I could relax with all this, everything would be absolutely ne and what I would feel that I have done is restyle my life to make it more rewarding, but I havent actually done that yet, Im anxious so I havent achieved all the rewards that I think are potentially there, I hope they are.

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What is interesting about her comment is that she, too, is aged fty and her contrasting experience warns against any simplistic assumption of age or any other factor and portfolio work. Further avenues for research are thus suggested. Discussion and Conclusions Portfolio work is portrayed in the literature as a liberation from organisational employment. Where organisations are seen as stiing their employees, both professionally and personally, portfolio careers are expected to provide professional freedom and the opportunity to learn and develop. Where organisations are experienced as rigid and inexible, portfolio working is expected to accommodate individuals varied needs and circumstances. And where organisations are described as controlling and highly exclusive, within the context of portfolio working individuals expect that they will be in charge, that they themselves will make the rules, and take the decisions. Our ndings present a more ambiguous picture and to that extent they provide an important corrective to the overly optimistic and upbeat literature about emerging career forms. However, on one level, our data is also upbeat. As suggested earlier, the majority of participants explained how, notwithstanding intrinsic constraints and limitations, they actually felt freer and more in control, and many said they had more fun and variety as portfolio workers. Most also managed to achieve a far greater degree of balance in their lives then was the case in organisational employment. On another level though, important questions about the nature of this new context, and its supposed boundarylessness remain. Examining the data it becomes apparent that participants experience of portfolio working does not always conform to this rosy ideal. Instead the stories we heard were less about breaking free than about reconstructing the boundaries: both structural and ideological. Seeking long-term contracts with organisations, they hoped to re-embed themselves within organisational worlds. On an ideological level, the participants struggled to rewrite their views about work. Most still judged themselves by the codes of employment. It appeared that participants were attempting to establish new employment contexts which in some ways approximated those that they had only recently left. Each merit of portfolio working was constructed as a draw back and vice versa. So, while there may be more variety, this leads to a loss of deeper attachment; while there may be a chance to grow and develop, this proves difcult outside the umbrella of organisational employment; while they are more free to pick and choose work, nancial matters have to be considered; while they want to believe they have made a positive and successful move, the reputation of portfolio working, as many perceive it,

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rather taints and undermines them; while they feel they have more freedom, they still constrain their own behaviour by reference to workplace norms. Participants had begun to recognise the enduring value of much from their organisational pasts. In contrast to a dichotomy between organisational employment and new career forms, in which one is seen as wholly good and the other as irredeemably bad, the experience of these participants suggest that the two are much more closely linked (and possibly more similar) than was previously acknowledged. A related question from the literature which suggests that new careers are a way to throw off the chains of organisational dependence is the extent to which people perceive their new context as liberating or marginalising. It could be said that these individuals participate in their own exploitation (Rainbird 1991) losing the benets of employment but acquiring a number of the risks (Beck 1992) but that is to deny the strength of their perceptions of the benets to them. The question, of course, is what are they assumed to be liberated or marginalised from and that depends on the standpoint of the situated individual. Given the prevalent discourse about individualism, choice, autonomy, one could construct them as liberated from the crushing demands of a careerist world. On the other hand, the organisational world is the conduit for a number of material benets, not least regular income, but also a sense of belonging and purpose. On the whole, judging from this data, they point to a series of tangible losses by liberation from organisational employment like salary, pension, a place in the employed labour market, access to training opportunities but a number of more abstract gains balance, autonomy, integrity and a consolidation of skills and interests within portfolio. A couple of images illustrate the permeating themes in this paper. Beck (1992: 194), in common with some other authors who theorise transformation in work (e.g. Casey 1995; Noon and Blyton 1997), sees new worlds of work coming into view against the old. He offers the image of individuals with a foot in each world:
Individuals still communicate in and play along with the old forms and institutions, but they also withdraw from them with at least part of their existence, their identity, their commitment and their courage. Their withdrawal however, is not just a withdrawal but at the same time, an emigration to new niches of activity and identity. The latter seems so unclear and inconsistent not least because this inner immigration often takes place half-heartedly with one foot, so to speak, while the [other] foot is still rmly planted in the old order.

Hence, Beck captures the situation of the majority of these participants, still attached to their old organisational careers in some ways having left with reluctance or mixed feelings at best; now experiencing some confusion and anxiety in attempting to come to terms with their new career context, and feeling the pull of both change and continuity.

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While thus poised, it may also be that participants are attempting to have their cake and eat it, to introduce the second image voiced by one of the participants. If this means they are actively attempting to identify and derive the best from both worlds, then it may well be that new careers, like portfolio careers, can deliver the personal liberation that much of that literature promises. On the other hand it may be that they have difculty in coming to terms with what has been won and what has been lost and feel unable (and indeed prevented, by the actions of others) to make a full commitment either way (as Becks image suggests). Having known what it was to have the cake in their past life security, status, linear progress, a sense of pride at working for the public sector, training and personal and professional growth they are far from sure how the cake will taste in their new career world. However, a particularly interesting nding is the extent to which these participants do see their personal change as mirroring a social change (Giddens 1991). To that extent, Kanters (1989) contention that these micro career changes are indicative (and Giddens (1984) would add constitutive) of macro change in career is pertinent.

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Accepted October 1998