The Chaos Theory of Careers

Abstract

Most contemporary theories of career development have difficulty taking into account current realities of career decision-making including complexity, change, constructivism and chance. We sought a conceptual formulation that incorporated the best of contemporary theories in a larger framework, which at the same time incorporated such realities. Under the influence of four intellectual currents—contextualism/ecology; systems theory; realism/constructivism; and chaos theory—an attempt was made to adumbrate a chaos theory of careers emphasising complexity, order, randomness and sensitivity to non-linear change.