“돈 얼마 더 주는 건 중요하지 않아요”: 일･가족 양립 경험에서 나타나는 자기타협적 경력전환 고찰

This study examines employees’ career transitions through their lived experiences of balancing work and family demands within organizational settings. Specifically, it investigates the conflicts and challenges employees face when utilizing family-friendly policies, and analyzes these tensions through the lens of institutional theory. To capture this phenomenon in depth, the study employs longitudinal interviews with both male and female employees, tracing their journeys from the decision to have children to their use of childcare leave and flexible work arrangements. The findings reveal that family-friendly policies often collide with performance-oriented human resource systems. While policies are designed to support work-family balance, their implementation is undermined by organizational logics emphasizing productivity and results. Employees consequently experience career penalties, stalled advancement, or recalibrated aspirations. These responses give rise to what this study conceptualizes as a self-compromising career path, representing a shift away from the traditional performance-based trajectory. Four distinct patterns of career transition emerge: career development, career maintenance, career adjustment, and career interruption. From an institutional perspective, these transitions can be understood as employees’ strategic responses to institutional complexity. They reflect efforts to reconcile contradictory expectations between family-supportive policies and performance-driven evaluation systems, often resulting in organizational decoupling where policies exist formally but are not effectively integrated into practice. By illuminating how individuals actively negotiate and adapt their careers in the face of such pressures, the study underscores the limitations of current HR systems and the unintended consequences of misaligned institutional logics. The study’s contributions are threefold. First, it advances theoretical understanding of career transitions by linking individual agency to institutional complexity. Second, it highlights the need for organizations to redesign HR practices that not only formalize family-friendly policies but also embed them meaningfully within performance management systems. Third, it positions organizations as critical intermediaries in addressing broader societal challenges, such as declining birth rates, by fostering sustainable career pathways that integrate work-family balance with self-directed career development. Finally, the study proposes concrete HRM improvements, emphasizing greater flexibility in evaluation systems, enhanced organizational support for employee career realization, and more effective integration of family-friendly practices into everyday organizational life.