Transitioning into retirement: the interplay of self and life structure

Abstract This paper explores the psychological, social, and behavioral ways in which professionals end their corporate careers and reorient themselves and their lives in the transition from employment to retirement. Framed within life course theory, specifically the adult development literature, this study leverages Levinson’s construct of life structure in relation to the self as a lens for understanding the developmental work undertaken in different phases (“phase-tasks”) of the retirement process. We define life structure as a person’s system of contexts—the roles, relationships, activities, groups, organizations, and physical settings in the person’s life—and the dynamic interconnections among them. Our research focused on the underlying micro processes of the interplay between self and life structure. This qualitative study followed 14 knowledge workers through their retirement transitions, using multiple in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Data analyses revealed that the self and the life structure co-evolve, exerting mutual influence across the four phase-tasks of the retirement transition, driven by the individual’s desire for a life structure that is both suitable for the self and viable for the foreseeable future. Two in-depth case studies and data from the other 12 participants illustrate the interplay, throughout the transition, between moves made by the self on the life structure and claims and changes from the life structure influencing the self. We present an induced process model of this reciprocal influence between self and life structure across the retirement transition, and discuss our contributions to the retirement, adult development, and identity literatures, as well as practical implications.