Time for a Change? Women's Accounts of the Move from Organizational Careers to Self‐Employment

This paper is based on a study of women's transition from careers within organizations into self‐employment. It focuses on three key issues: the ways in which women accounted for their career transition, their decisions to opt for self‐employment, and the extent to which, in telling their stories, respondents engaged with emerging career discourses. First, this paper considers recent debates within the literature on women's exit from organizations, and emerging discourses of career and self‐employment, focusing on the position of women within these changing discourses. Research findings are then presented, examining three central themes: entrepreneurial orientation, dissatisfaction with the organization and balance of personal and professional life. The concluding section considers how women made sense of the web of factors involved in their career transition and reflects on whether indeed it is ‘time for a change’.