Revealing latent career scripts in a change context: analyzing the case of a Tunisian company

Rihab El Adel (), Hazem Ben Aissa and Narjes Sassi
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Rihab El Adel: ESSECT - Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales de Tunis - Université de Tunis, LARIME - Laboratoire de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les Mutations des Economies et des Entreprises [Tunis] - ESSECT - Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales de Tunis - Université de Tunis
Hazem Ben Aissa: ESSECT - Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales de Tunis - Université de Tunis, Université Paris-Saclay
Narjes Sassi: ISG - ISG International Business School [Paris]

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Abstract: This paper explores how latent and invisible career scripts can be revealed and interpreted within a family-owned organization undergoing strategic, organizational, and cultural transformation. Drawing on a three-year intervention research project at the Tunisian industrial group SOTUPA, the study examines how employees construct and negotiate their professional trajectories amid shifting managerial paradigms. A qualitative single-case study combining forty-five comprehensive interviews with managerial employees and long-term observation of the transformation process identifies five coexisting career scripts (Expert, Strategic Manager, Protean Challenger, Stabilizer, and Social Humanist) that structure collective career sensemaking within the company. These scripts illustrate the paradoxical interplay between heritage and innovation, where inherited norms of loyalty and hierarchy coexist with emerging logics of autonomy, learning, and purpose. By revealing implicit scripts, the study contributes to the reflexive design of career management tools, providing collective spaces, where employees and managers co-construct shared meanings of success and progression. The paper advances scholarship on career scripts, and intervention research by conceptualizing careers as hybrid, evolving systems of meaning.

Keywords: Career management; Intervention research; Family business; Organizational paradox; Career scripts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06-16
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Published in EURAM 2026 Navigating high waters : Managing in an age of disruption, Jun 2026, Kristiansand, Norvège, Norway

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05571281

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