Identity Reconstruction:An IPA Research On The Adaptation Process During Career Transition

The changes in the macro employment environment and employees' perceptions of their careers have caused a substantial increase in the number of career transitions.Therefore,how to adapt to the new environment after the transition has become one of the concerns of all parties.A group of people who have changed careers have aroused widespread concern in society,and even caused a big debate about whether there is a “job hopping craze” in the society.They are the civil servants.In this paper,the ex-civil servant who has undergone career transitions is taken as the research object and the process of "ex-civil servant" adapting to the new environment outside the system by reconstructing identity is discussed based on the identity theory.The data were collected by the semi-structured interview method of 13 subjects,and the data were explained by the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis(IPA).Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis is a relatively new qualitative research method.Its goal is to explore how individuals give meaning to their personal world and social world,especially the meaning of special experiences,events and life states.Through analyzing the interview materials,four super-ordinate themes are identified,which are: the activation of identity awareness,the strategy of identity reconstruction,the result of identity reconstruction and the influencing factors of identity reconstruction.After a detailed analysis of the themes,it is found that People always tend to be stable,and the institutional environment is characterized by stability,so self-awareness is usually in a strong sense of inertia.Only when experiencing difficulties such as bottlenecks in career development,will selfconsciousness be activated and begin to get rid of the inertia of consciousness,which leads to the collapse of their original identity and the career transitions.In the new job environment,the new identity has not yet been reconstructed and will therefore experience inadaptation.In order to adapt to the new environment,identities need to be reconstructed.The reconstruction of identity requires the utilization of the strategic flow composed of multiple strategies,and the reconstruction process is influenced by a variety of subjective and objective factors.Being able to adapt to the new environment depends on the result of identity reconciliation.Only when both exogenous identity and endogenous identity are reconstructed can self-identity reconstruction be completed and the translator can adapt to the new environment.Exogenous identity refers to that the translators obtain the identification of other people and organizations,and endogenous identity refers to the career and/or the organizations are identitied by the translators.