Abstract
Everyone experiences major life transitions (e.g. relocation, job loss, birth of a child), and increasingly so as economic, technological, and social environments become more turbulent. Yet in accounting for how work-life decision-making associated with these transitions occurs, we argue that extant theory overfocuses on individual agency and rational thinking. In this article, we bridge an epistemological divide between the study of major life transitions and work-life decision-making by advancing a narrative theory of aberrant work-life navigation. Our theory overcomes blind spots around the study of “real life,” lived experiences, introducing work-life navigation as a messy, complex, and volatile process, capturing the ontology of how individuals experience major life transitions. We point out factors that inhibit rationality and constrain agency traditionally ascribed to work-life decision-making at the individual (intuitive and unconscious thoughts, emotions, impulsivity, and inaction) and contextual (work-life stakeholders, cultural norms, and regulations) levels. Further, we apply our theorizing to the most studied outcomes associated with major life transitions—work-life balance, conflict, and enrichment—to highlight how these are inherently subjective and, at times, determined by factors entirely beyond one’s control. We conclude by offering a future research agenda to empirically test our theory of aberrant work-life navigation.
Keywords
Introduction
Major life transitions—including common life cycle changes such as getting married or becoming a parent; voluntary decisions such as self-expatriating or launching a new business; and unexpected shocks such as being laid off or the start of a war that forces one to migrate—are large, durable, and sometimes radical role changes that simultaneously affect several life domains (e.g. work, family, community, and self-development) (Ashforth, 2001). Everyone experiences these transitions regardless of career path, life stage, family structure, or available resources, yet not everyone adapts to them in the same way (Schlossberg, 1981). Such transitions are increasingly frequent and drastic in environments of rapid technological advances, economic and climate instability, globalization, geopolitical tensions, and more diverse family structures (Blossfeld and Hofmeister, 2006; Greenhaus and Kossek, 2014; Meurs et al., 2008).
Given both the complexity and contemporary relevance of such transitions, we are interested in answering: how are major life transitions that affect both work and life outside of work navigated and experienced? Work-life decision-making theory offers a useful starting point in addressing how such transitions prompt cognitive processing involving work- and nonwork-related considerations that drive subsequent action (Powell and Greenhaus, 2006, 2012). While this area does well to capture complexities—including relational aspects (e.g. influence from a spouse or partner; Radcliffe and Cassell, 2014) and the (un)expectedness of such events (Crawford et al., 2019)—it heavily leverages the concepts of rationality and agency. Discerning an epistemological divide between the study of major life transitions and work-life decision-making (with studies occurring largely independent of one another and rooted in separate traditions), we argue that these two areas address the same core phenomena from an ontological standpoint; thus, incorporating complexities of major life transitions into work-life decision-making can enhance the comprehensiveness of work-life decision-making theory in multiple ways.
First, rooted in rational choice theory (March, 1994), a key assumption in much work-life decision-making research is that individuals navigate transitions logically (Cluley and Hecht, 2020). While this is valid and accounts for various heuristic biases that cloud judgment (Radcliffe et al., 2023), we contend that—as lived experiences—decision-making amidst the navigation of major life transitions is met with a range of intuitions (quick, automatic and often unconscious evaluations; Haidt, 2001), emotions, and other cognitive influences that may (or may not) be channeled into rational behaviors. Simply stated, work-life decision-making theory, grounded in the epistemology of psychology which foregrounds reasoning—a step-by-step process where at least some steps are performed consciously (Haidt, 2001)—tends to overlook certain factors that compel individuals to make somewhat irrational decisions.
Second, the framing of transitions as an “event” or “episode” belies that transitions are embedded in cultural and structural layers of context (Ollier-Malaterre and Foucreault, 2017), oversimplifying the navigation process to a matter of enacting the “right” strategies. Work-life stakeholders, cultural norms, and regulations set parameters around what is considered otherwise rational, limiting how individuals construe and enact decisions. Further, normative and regulative contexts are not always static, thus adding uncertainty to decision-making environments (Lupu et al., 2018). On top of this, transition outcomes may be shaped by factors entirely beyond one’s control (e.g. chance or luck; Liu and De Rond, 2016). Thus, the inherent assumption of rationality furthers an overemphasis on individual agency for generating optimal or desired outcomes.
Therefore, we conceptualize work-life navigation as the messy, complex, and volatile process capturing how individuals experience major life transitions and, in so doing, are influenced by individual (intuitive and unconscious thoughts, emotions, impulsivity, inaction) and contextual (work-life stakeholders, cultural norms, regulations) factors that inhibit rationality and constrain agency. This “messiness” lens—with the adjectives of messy, complex, and volatile referring to epistemological blind spots associated with how decisions and actions vary in the degree to which they are rational and agentic—brings a much-needed real-life perspective to understanding how major life transitions are navigated.
In the following sections, we adopt a narrative, phenomenon-based approach to develop our conceptualization of work-life navigation (Cornelissen, 2017; Fisher et al., 2021). First, we offer a nuanced analysis of work-life decision-making theory, highlighting important insights and relevant shortcomings. Next, we present a process model synthesizing both views, emphasizing different ways in which constraints on agency and inhibitions on rationality unfold, both of which are inherent to work-life navigation. Then, we address the subjectivity of commonly studied outcomes associated with major life transitions, noting how the individual and contextual factors we theorize affect both the work-life navigation process and the evaluation of its outcomes. We conclude with theoretical implications and an agenda for future research.
Theoretical background
Major life transitions have “long attracted scholars’ attention for (their) ubiquity and importance in people’s work- and non-work lives” (George et al., 2022: 102), tracing back to Schlossberg’s (1981) work from the 1970s addressing the “magnitude” of transitions (see Coddington, 1972; Holmes and Rahe, 1967; Tennant and Andrews, 1976). Major life transitions are large, durable, and sometimes radical role changes that simultaneously affect several life domains, encompassing ongoing role and identity (re)negotiation, embodied changes, and affective experiences (Ashforth, 2001; Ebaugh, 1988; Ladge et al., 2012). Work-life decision-making refers to how people make decisions that affect both work and nonwork roles (Greenhaus and Powell, 2016). Whereas the study of major life transitions is rooted in counseling psychology and psychosomatic research (close to individuals’ lived experiences), the epistemological origin of work-life decision-making comes from cognitive psychology and “incorporates many ideas from the broader decision-making literature . . . into the (work-nonwork) context” (Poelmans, 2005; Shockley and Allen, 2015: 286).
Despite these epistemological differences, the ontological overlap between these two areas of study is evident. Major life transitions such as getting married or becoming a parent, voluntary decisions such as self-expatriating or launching a new business, and unexpected transitions such as being laid off or forced into early retirement—and, broadly, career transitions (Louis, 1980), life spillovers (Ragins et al., 2014), and liminal periods of “parental, occupational and household identities” (Schaefer et al., 2025: 196)—are addressed in work-life decision-making as anchoring decisions (Radcliffe and Cassell, 2014), life shock events (Crawford et al., 2019), and major episodes “that lead to long-term changes in an individual’s work and family roles, such as quitting a job or entering the labor market” (Vo et al., 2024: 364).
Opportunities for symbiosis arise from these two distinct areas of study (epistemology) addressing a common phenomenon (ontology). Rather than position the phenomenon in chicken-or-egg terms (i.e. does work-life decision-making prompt major life transitions or vice versa; c.f. Nohe et al., 2015), we recognize the two are inherently intertwined given their complexity. Major life transitions encompass work-life decision-making as one factor that shapes the navigation of these experiential processes, whereas work-life decision-making includes cascading effects and negotiation with others when pursuing or responding to major life transitions (Radcliffe and Cassell, 2014). Our value proposition is two-fold: we (1) incorporate the complexities of major life transitions to expand work-life decision-making theory beyond its core epistemological foundation, and (2) use this expanded view of work-life decision-making theory—including our notion of aberrations—to broaden understanding of how work-life decisions (specifically) and major life transitions (broadly) are subjectively appraised and experienced. Since we root our work in the work-life decision-making epistemology, we offer a more detailed assessment of its nuanced insights and strengths, and a sharper critique of its shortcomings.
Building blocks to address ontological blind spots in work-life decision-making
Work-life decision-making is based on rational choice theory (March, 1994). The logic of consequences is “synonymous with rational decision making” where individuals weigh choices and select the one that maximizes utility, even though in reality “decision-makers are likely to consider some, but not all, available options and, to make choices that lead to sufficiently positive, not maximally positive, consequences” (Cluley and Hecht, 2020: 49). Under the logic of appropriateness, “decision makers follow rules or procedures that they see as appropriate to the situation and consistent with their socially-constructed identities” (Powell and Greenhaus, 2012: 323), such that “following (decision-making) rules is not a utility maximizing exercise” (Cluley and Hecht, 2020: 64). Navigating major life transitions involves a combination of the two logics (Vo et al., 2024), both of which are subject to heuristic biases (Radcliffe et al., 2023).
Our concern is that the progression of extant theory suffers from what Cunliffe (2022: 8) refers to as epistemological defensiveness, or ensuring “that particular types of knowledge, theorizing and theory are perpetuated.” While work-life decision-making theory does well to contest the rational choice paradigm in which it is rooted, it has failed to embrace the pursuit of antirationalist models and remains tethered to its rational choice origins born from the “cognitive revolution of the 1960s” (Haidt, 2001: 816). This remains problematic for three reasons.
First, work-life decision-making implies that even decisions subject to heuristic biases still embed some rationality (Oaksford and Hall, 2016). At the risk of introducing a sense of pessimism into an optimistic area of work-life research (c.f. Perrigino et al., 2018) and sensitive to the fact that this extends to the “more maligned aspects of human behavior and cognition” (Sullivan-Bisset, 2025), we encompass the ontological reality that individuals’ lived experiences span beyond decisions guided by consequences and appropriateness. Stated simply, humans are subject to acting irrationally. Thus, the first way we augment work-life decision-making theory is by tapping into the more irrational side of individuals—addressing, for example, instances of impulsivity and inaction—capturing not only cynical views of human nature (e.g. “functional stupidity;” Alvesson and Spicer, 2016) but also positive views in which intuitions and unconscious drives support decisions that reflect a person’s needs and values (Abadie and Waroquier, 2019). 1
Second, work-life decision-making theory overemphasizes individual agency, as per the depiction of proactive choices to pursue a transition and descriptions of how individual roles accumulate over time (Perrigino et al., 2022). The epistemological divide noted above has led to an underappreciation of how work-life decisions are socially constructed in the presence of multiple and at times competing cultural and regulative influences (Ollier-Malaterre and Foucreault, 2017). Thus, a second way we augment this area of study is by including situational context as a critical constraint on how “rational, intentional evaluative process(es)” unfold (Lupu et al., 2018: 155) and how transitions are embedded in layers of proximate (work-life stakeholders) and distal (cultural norms and regulations, in one or several countries) contexts.
Third, espoused theories culminate in an objectively “best” (logic of consequences) or “satisfactory” (logic of appropriateness) outcome: goal-achievement associated with enhancing work-life balance and reducing work-life conflict (Allen et al., 2020; Hirschi et al., 2019), successful work-life image adaptation (Ladge and Little, 2019), enhanced ability to cope with future work-life shock events (Crawford et al., 2019), and so forth. Missing is recognition that these outcomes are “inherently subjective” (Rothbard et al., 2005: 254). Thus, a third way in which we augment work-life decision-making theory is by addressing the post-hoc appraisal of decision-making outcomes to crystallize how major life transitions are experienced. Again, balancing cynicism with positivity, we recognize how individuals use counterfactual thinking to consider when hypothetical outcome(s) associated with major life transition could have been better or worse than the actual outcome(s) experienced. Linking to our second contribution, we also account for when outcomes are shaped by factors entirely beyond one’s control (e.g. luck).
A theory of aberrant work-life navigation
We present our theoretical framework in Figure 1 to depict work-life navigation as a messy, complex, and volatile process, capturing how individuals experience major life transitions that affect both work and life outside of work. Beginning on the left, we position major life transitions (as defined above) as the prompt for work-life navigation. As a boundary condition, we do not address why an individual pursues a particular transition—especially since transitions that come as an unexpected “shock” are not necessarily pursued or sought (Crawford et al., 2019). Instead, we focus on how decision-making unfolds and drives subsequent behaviors. This focus aligns with our research question, with the passive voice and “are navigated” (versus “navigate”) phrasing indicative of how the unfolding of both planned and unexpected transitions restricts agency in various ways, thus making navigation a more passive (versus agentic) process.
Framework for a theory of aberrant work-life navigation.
The boundaries of Figure 1 reflect the assumptions of extant theory: individuals use the logic of consequences to navigate major life transitions as rationally as possible (top portion) and/or the logic of appropriateness to navigate major life transitions within more bounded rationality constraints (bottom portion) (c.f. Radcliffe et al., 2023). As noted, both paths are logical, rooted in rational choice theory with a primary aim to enhance subjective outcomes—hence the cloud imagery on the right side of Figure 1—including work-life balance (satisfaction with and effectiveness in meeting expectations across work and nonwork roles; Wayne et al., 2017), conflict (the degree to which responsibilities and demands between work and nonwork roles are incompatible; Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985), and enrichment (the degree to which work experiences enhance nonwork experiences, and vice versa; Greenhaus and Powell, 2006).
In the center of Figure 1, we incorporate how individual and contextual factors collectively create aberrations to work-life navigation, where behaviors and decisions may be irrational. First, we refer to individual factors—intuitive and unconscious thoughts, emotions, impulsivity, and inaction—all of which are person-centric views where aberrations in work-life navigation are understood through the lens of the focal individual (Kossek et al., 2012). Second, we refer to contextual factors—work-life stakeholders, cultural norms, and regulations—that capture how work-life navigation occurs in specific family and societal contexts (Ollier-Malaterre et al., 2013) and can further induce aberrations that constrain agency and inhibit rational decision-making. Recognizing that most factors are inherently related (i.e. neither purely individual nor contextual), we depict these as overlapping circles at the center of Figure 1.
While it is tempting to infer that aberrations associated with work-life navigation are likely to yield sub-optimal outcomes, we refrain from caricaturing such relationships in an honest effort to break free from the pervasive epistemic bias toward rationality, agency, and the enactment of “right” responses. Instead, we offer the possibility that agency constraints and a lack of rationality also yield positive outcomes based on not only subjective appraisal but also—as depicted by the star in Figure 1—luck, which can course correct aberrant work-life navigation.
Individual factors that inhibit rationality and restrict agency
Work-life decision-making theory recognizes how heuristic biases prevent individuals from making thoughtful and holistic decisions—including reality blindness and option blindness, which emphasize how individuals have a propensity to either completely neglect or fail to fully appreciate nonobvious but still important factors (Radcliffe et al., 2023). Further, the positive illusion (Bazerman and Moore, 2012) speaks to the propensity for individuals to overestimate their ability to minimize or eliminate the detrimental outcomes associated with a decision. For instance, an individual focused on the potential career benefits of an international assignment may be overly optimistic that relocation will not cause practical or emotional difficulties for the family (Lazarova et al., 2010), failing to appreciate the implications for other family members.
We add to this body of work by noting that when navigating a major life transition in all its complexity and uncertainty, individuals appraise the upcoming change by relying not only on analytical assessments but also intuitive judgment and unconscious thoughts (Epstein, 1994; Simon, 1987). These assessments and subsequent behaviors may be laden with emotions (Lerner et al., 2015), accompanied by impulsivity (Ma-Kellams and Lerner, 2016), and undermined by inaction (Connor-Smith et al., 2000). In conceptualizing each below, we include select examples for our narrative theorizing. We add examples in Table 1 to highlight work-life navigation’s applicability to diverse employees and employment, social, political, and cultural contexts.
Illustrative examples of theorized individual factors.
Intuitive and unconscious thoughts
Because of the equivocality and uncertainty inherent in major life transitions, individuals’ appraisal and behaviors may be driven by instantaneous and automatic judgments—intuitions—stemming from knowledge, beliefs, patterns, and techniques that are the product of experience and learning (Barnard, 1938). In other words, individuals likely have “gut” reactions in how to navigate these transitions, which can provide valuable information (Sonenshein, 2007). Intuitions emerge suddenly and effortlessly as automatic reactions to equivocal and uncertain events (Dane and Pratt, 2007; Haidt, 2001); they are relayed to the conscious mind by affect and unconscious cognition (Dienes and Perner, 1999).
Moreover, unconscious wishes and biases also influence decision-making (Freud, 1950; Epstein, 1994). Unconscious thoughts are influential when people face complex decisions (Dijksterhuis and Nordgren, 2006), adding inefficiencies or oversights in decision-making when navigating major life transitions. The impact of such unconscious influences is disputed, as the argument that “sleeping on it” leads to better decisions (Hogarth, 2010) has been contested (Newell and Shanks, 2014). We argue that unconscious influences, to some degree, likely lead individuals to make decisions for which—even when and after consciously deliberating—they are unable to fully articulate the reasoning beyond attributing it to intuition (Lufityanto et al., 2016; McKenzie, 1994; Plessner and Czenna, 2008). An extreme case is self-sabotage (Freud, 1930), where individuals undercut their chances at successful work-life navigation—from pursuit of marriage (Peel and Caltabiano, 2021) to career success (Post, 1988)—due to unconscious bias.
Emotions
Emotions play a critical role in work-life decision-making: negative affect associated with relationship tension shapes decision-making among dual-earner couples (Crawford et al., 2019), guilt affects choices made by working mothers (Aarntzen et al., 2019), and fear can limit important career and life decisions (Greenhaus and Powell, 2016). On the one hand, emotions are a necessary function in this process, activating cognitive and motivational dispositions that influence appraisal (Lerner et al., 2015). Indeed, important goals and threats associated with major life transitions arouse a range of emotions that can vary in valence (e.g. excitement or fear) and energy (e.g. serenity or frustration) (Zajonc, 1980). Strong emotions triggered by a major life transition may alter cognition to induce systematic thinking and activate implicit goals that positively impact the appraisal of a major life transition and work-life navigation (Lerner et al., 2015).
On the other hand, however, emotions and energy (a state of arousal linked to affective experiences; Quinn et al., 2012) can restrict thought-action repertoires, particularly when emotions are high-arousal and negative (Barsade and Gibson, 2007; Fredrickson and Branigan, 2005). An individual who feels nervousness—a high-arousal, negative emotion—about a career transition might adopt a narrow focus on the job-related facets of the event (enhancing heuristic biases; Radcliffe et al., 2023), while remaining detached from other facets intentionally (e.g. explicitly discussing and delegating responsibilities to one’s spouse) or unintentionally (e.g. implicitly trusting or taking for granted one’s spouse to “pick up the slack” amidst the transition).
Emotions can create aberrations in decision-making involving major life transitions in various ways. Fear accounts for Akratic action, or instances characterized by a “weakness of will” where individuals hold a belief that they recognize as irrational or unjustified yet follow through with it anyway (Coates, 2012; Kalis et al., 2008)—such as when the male breadwinner of the family declines a promotion even though the decision to accept is consistent with both the logic of consequences and logic of appropriateness. Building on Lupu et al.’s (2018) work that formative experiences affect decision-making in adulthood, negative emotions associated with traumatic events can account for instances of self-sabotage and other unconscious influences noted above (Freud, 1930). Segueing to our next sub-section, emotions can also prompt impulsivity, or the “tendency to act with relatively little forethought” (Dickman, 1990: 95).
Impulsivity
Impulsivity, where individuals “go with the flow,” is a multidimensional personality trait characterized by a heightened sense of urgency, lack of perseverance, lack of premeditation, and sensation seeking (Whiteside and Lynam, 2001). Impulsive individuals engage in spontaneous or quick decision-making (Ma-Kellams and Lerner, 2016; Shiloh et al., 2002), where a lack of premeditation can result in decisions made “on the spot” (Jäger and Rüsseler, 2016)—as in the case of a “you only live once” approach to life (Smiley, 2015). As noted above, high-energy emotions can prompt individuals to act with passion (Hoffman and Friese, 2016), such as suddenly quitting one’s job based on the slightest provocation.
Beyond emotions, time also explains impulsivity. While work-life decision making accounts for the distinction between planned and shock events (Crawford et al., 2019; Vo et al., 2024), individuals may succumb to impulsive intertemporal choices, or “the tendency to forego a large but delayed reward and to seek an inferior but more immediate reward” (i.e. immediate versus delayed gratification; Kim and Lee, 2011: 1140). As a multidimensional, often maladaptive trait, impulsivity includes attentional, non-planning, and motor subtypes, with motor impulsivity referring to an “inability to inhibit an inappropriate action or response” (Baker et al., 2024: 1)—which may or may not manifest in the form of various psychiatric disorders (Miller et al., 2010), a point to which we return in the General Discussion. For example, a significant promotion might produce a rapid spending spree on luxury goods that goes beyond one’s means.
Inaction
Extant theory recognizes that choosing not to act is another rational decision that can contribute to generating preferred outcomes. For example, Hirschi et al. (2019) theorize disengagement strategies associated with delaying the pursuit of certain work or family goals (see also Carlson et al., 2025). Little et al.’s (2015) work highlights how a viable approach for pregnant employees is avoiding accommodations or assistance from a supervisor or co-workers. Verbruggen and De Vos (2020) draw on the psychology of doing nothing to argue for instances where people avoid action when pursuing or prematurely abandoning career-related goals. Still, the psychology of doing nothing—like these other examples—reflects a “rational-emotional model of the factors that predispose humans to do nothing,” such as calculating costs and benefits, and anticipating regret and negative emotions (Anderson, 2003: 139).
Yet the stress associated with major life transitions can make individuals susceptible to involuntary disengagement such as inaction (“freezing up”) and cognitive interference (when one’s “mind goes blank”) when action or decision-making is expected or required (Connor-Smith et al., 2000: 977). Such inability to make decisions can be caused by neurobiological mechanisms in the human brain (see Roelofs, 2017; Ward and Wegner, 2013). While inaction may be made manifest in individuals with mental health conditions (Vîslă et al., 2016), the magnitude of major life transitions can impact otherwise healthy individuals. Indeed, the stress associated with some major life transitions may be so intense that it creates musculoskeletal symptoms where an individual becomes physically incapable of acting (Broekman et al., 2023). This raises a critical distinction between the willful choice of not acting versus the inability to act. For example, an individual weighing whether to take an expatriate assignment might evaluate pros and cons, formally declining the role (“not acting”). In contrast, one might experience the sensation of freezing up when prompted with the decision (“inability to act”).
Summarizing the role of individual factors
While we consider recognition of automatic processing (Maertz et al., 2019) and habitual decision making (Radcliffe et al., 2023) as key features of extant work-life decision-making theory, Lindebaum and Zundel (2013: 867) warn that the “reducibility of psychological states to brain processes” is too great a simplification. Returning to Figure 1, we built on these foundational works to conceptualize four interrelated factors that account for aberrations in work-life navigation—intuitive and unconscious thoughts, emotions, impulsivity, and inaction—that begin to unpack the more irrational psychological states of decision-making that can occur when individuals navigate major life transitions.
Contextual factors that inhibit rationality and restrict agency
Work-life navigation does not occur in a vacuum but in levels of context, where decisions occur in relation to others and the social environments in which individuals are embedded. In this section, we explain how aberrations associated with work-life stakeholders, cultural norms, and regulations create further ripple effects that affect work-life decision-making. We include select examples in our narrative theorizing, below, and offer additional illustrative examples in Table 2.
Illustrative examples of theorized contextual factors.
MBA: Master of Business Administration.
Work-life stakeholders
Work-life decision-making is both an individual and relational process, including decision-making among dual-earner couples (Radcliffe and Cassell, 2014). Russo and Morandin (2023: 1) note that “various work and family stakeholders present in an individual’s network can create significant constraints and opportunities that are capable of inhibiting or enhancing their agency.” We raise this in reference to Crawford et al.’s (2019) suggestion that decision-making involves not only an individual decision, but also joint dyadic (e.g. dual-earner couples) or group (e.g. multiple family members; Vo et al., 2024) decisions based on the compilation of individuals’ perceptions (which may or may not be congruent).
First, compounding effects can reinforce aberrant work-life navigation to the extent that inhibitions on rationality are similar across the focal individual and relevant stakeholders. Individuals may not always choose the people they consult based on rational reasoning, with emotions shaping behavioral adaptation to a situation (Carver and White, 1994; Zajonc, 1980). If anxiety or preoccupation prevails, individuals may interact more with stakeholders who are likewise pessimistic, narrowing the range of options individuals explore as they navigate a major life transition. Unconscious drives can intervene in this process where people engage in selective interactions to create opportunity structures that confirm their sense of self (Swann, 1987). In other words, people may interact mostly with similar others who will concur with their own views, such that unconscious mechanisms of preferential attention (i.e. being more attentive to social feedback that meets self-conceptions), selective encoding and retrieval (remembering information that serves identity goals), and selective interpretation (i.e. granting greater validity to feedback that is congruent with one’s self-conceptions) may be at play (Swann, 1987).
A second possibility is that the focal individual is rational in their approach to work-life navigation, but subject to influence from stakeholders prone to their own unique individual factors described above (Lubit, 2002; Malhotra and Bazerman, 2007; Reh et al., 2018). When decision-making involves negotiation with others, individuals are prone to take an illogical position or succumb to an irrational impulse—potentially undermining their own interests (Grenny, 2016). In these scenarios characterized by an initial lack of consensus, work-life stakeholders’ intuitive thoughts and impulsivity prompt aberrations by influencing the focal individual (e.g. via emotional crossover; Rofcanin et al., 2019). One byproduct here is that stakeholders who are more peripheral to one’s social network—rather than those who hold a central position—may possess an outsized influence (Thomason, 2022). Indeed, the affect and unconscious desires that partly drive interactions with stakeholders help explain why navigating major life transitions is considered a process not fully under one’s control (Schlossberg, 1981).
Cultural norms
Major life transitions are embedded in the societal contexts in which they occur (Beham et al., 2023; Kossek and Ollier-Malaterre, 2013; Piszczek and Berg, 2014). Work-life decision-making theory recognizes how cultural norms create parameters on which the logic of consequences and logic of appropriateness are based (Poelmans et al., 2013). For example, Lupu et al. (2018: 155) draw on Bourdieu’s work to describe how “habitus—historically constituted and embodied dispositions—structures perceptions about what is ‘right’ and ‘normal’ for working mothers and fathers.” Indeed, parents prime their children’s expectations throughout adolescent development (Ary et al., 1999; Cochran and Brassard, 1979). Ample evidence supports asymmetrical effects of “sex typing” (Blair, 1992) children’s household labor where—in both traditional and gender egalitarian cultures—parents are more likely to assign certain chores (e.g. washing the dishes) to their daughters instead of their sons (Dotti Sani, 2016; Evertsson, 2006). Cultural context thus sets and limits the contours of individuals’ imagined possibilities of “future selves” (Markus and Wurf, 1987; Morandin et al., 2021) such as how heterosexual dual-earner couple partners internalize and jointly reproduce traditional gender roles (Radcliffe et al., 2023).
By setting boundaries around the logic of consequences and logic of appropriateness, cultural norms simultaneously establish expectations around what is not rational. Yet, critically, we recognize that individuals are still capable of agentic action despite embeddedness in their normative contexts (c.f. Holm, 1995). The concept of reactance captures how individuals experience a subconscious pull to engage in counter-normative behaviors when they feel that their ability to make their own choices is threatened or constrained (Brehm, 1966). This can occur when decisions and behaviors fall outside the scope of localized and global norms (Warren, 2003). For example, a young adult with overprotective parents—even though they are extremely close to their family—might disrespect their wishes and appear to forsake family values by pursuing an international job opportunity due to an implicit desire to attain greater independence and experience the world (Zhang et al., 2025). Paradoxically, this is one example that suggests individuals are more agentic than they are given credit for within work-life decision-making theory, albeit one characterized by a decision that is otherwise not rational.
Regulations
Long-standing statutes and laws create conditions that reduce uncertainty in decision-making environments. On the one hand, regulations—much like cultural norms—set the bounds for the logic of consequences and logic of appropriateness, albeit with more rigidity by distinguishing what is legal from illegal. Research on legal philosophy suggests that rational actors will follow (reasonable) laws (Aarnio, 1986), resulting in constraints on possible courses of action. For example, an employee may pursue uprooting their family for a “work from anywhere” opportunity, only to realize that their organization is not incorporated in the location to where they wish to move or that their desired location does not offer “digital nomad” work visas (Sánchez-Vergara et al., 2023). Thus, agency is constrained by regulative context.
On the other hand, just as work-life navigation is a dynamic process, so too are regulative (and cultural) contexts in which navigation occurs. As such change occurs, individuals are subject to get swept up in bandwagon effects, or “the propensity of an individual to adopt the viewpoint of the majority even if their own viewpoint is different” (Bindra et al., 2022: 305). For example, legislative changes prompting a crackdown on illegal immigration and an increase in deportations may compel migrant workers to leave the country in which they are residing—even though they are in the country legally and all their documentation and paperwork is up to date.
Summarizing the role of contextual factors
Returning to Figure 1, contextual factors involving interactions with work-life stakeholders and embeddedness in cultural and regulative contexts create aberrations to work-life navigation. Stakeholders can reinforce the focal individual’s aberrations (when consensus exists) or inhibit otherwise rational decision-making by virtue of their own individual factors (when disagreement exists). Cultural norms and regulations constrain agency by scoping out appropriate behavior, simultaneously creating the foundation for behaviors outside this scope to be perceived as irrational.
Work-life navigation outcomes
We now turn to the relationship between aberrant work-life navigation and outcomes associated with major life transitions (work-life balance, conflict, and enrichment), highlighting their inherent subjectivity and how, at times, they are shaped by forces beyond one’s control.
Subjectivity
Under the rational choice model, decisions produce a “best” (per the logic of consequences) or “satisfactory” (per the logic of appropriateness) outcome (Simon, 1955). In adopting this paradigm, work-life decision-making theory devotes surprisingly limited attention to the fact that work-life balance, conflict, and enrichment are “inherently subjective constructs, and the focal person is probably the most accurate source of information regarding his or her desires, perceptions, and attitudes” (Rothbard et al., 2005: 254). We crystallize this with the block arrow in Figure 1, reflecting the subjectivity of these outcomes in that interpretation is filtered through individual and contextual factors (Carlson et al., 2023). In extreme cases, outcomes may be interpreted with genuine illusion (where, “on a few moments’ prompted reflection they would be willing to admit [their interpretation] is invalid;” Cohen, 1981: 323) or with denial (“refusal to perceive the physical facts of the immediate environment [and] common reluctance to accept the implications of some event;” Baumeister et al., 1998: 1107).
We suggest that evaluating such experiences induces contrast effects, a cognitive bias in that one’s perspective is altered when comparing two different things rather than evaluating them independently. Specifically, outcomes associated with major life transitions invite counterfactual thinking, or “what might have been” scenarios (Miller et al., 1990: 305)—for example, a hypothetical outcome that would have been more aligned with societal expectations or one’s gender role beliefs had it happened (Manca et al., 2025). Because work-life navigation occurs in imperfect decision-making environments, individuals can always generate counterfactuals, “mental representations of alternatives to the past and produce consequences that are both beneficial and aversive to the individual” (Epstude and Roese, 2008; Roese, 1997: 133). They may consider some alternatives “that are evaluatively better than actuality” and others “that are worse than actuality” (Roese, 1999: 570–571), creating framing effects associated with how they appraise work-life outcomes. Even rational decision-making will not result in optimal work-life outcomes per se, in part because the (over)simplification of complex decisions can lead to more positive affective experiences associated with decision-making (Hanoch et al., 2007).
Further, contextual factors play a key role in framing how outcomes are appraised, particularly when social contexts are static and enduring (Suchman, 1995). For example, potential work and career paths for men (seeing no other options than providing for the family) and women (not questioning time or energy devoted to caregiving) may be obscured to the extent that individuals remain beholden to traditional gender role norms. Yet the male breadwinner who works excessively to provide for his family and spends limited time with his wife and children—what, objectively, work-life scholarship grounded in rational choice might regard as “low” work-family balance or “high” work-family conflict—might experience subjectively optimal outcomes in the sense that he perceives he is fulfilling his work and family role responsibilities in the best possible way(s). The same is true for regulations such as parental leaves: highly educated French mothers, for example, usually return to work full-time and enroll their babies for long days in childcare centers right after their short maternity leave (16 weeks, several of which are taken before birth). They may not realize that the length of this leave and societal expectations that they do not interrupt their careers stem from historical practices of the Parisian noblesse that used to send newborns to the countryside wet nurses so the mothers could meet their high-society entertainment obligations (Ariès, 1973). Thus, they may not imagine alternative paths and outcomes other than what they experience as their lived reality.
Luck
Extant work-life decision-making theory factors in uncontrollable shocks as a prompt for work-life navigation (Crawford et al., 2019). Interestingly, however, the prevailing assumption is that resource investment, collaboration with other work-life stakeholders, and other factors within the focal individual’s control allows them to “handle work-life shock events” (Vo et al., 2024: 381). We augment these views to recognize and account for the existence of external factors entirely beyond one’s control (either occuring later in the work-life navigation process or present throughout) that dictate outcomes largely regardless of agency.
Luck, or lack thereof, is a universal experience. Bad luck—for instance, a sudden economic downturn that occurs shortly after one quits their secure corporate job to start their own business—can create work-life conflict, and is understood through age-old axioms including the line from Robert Burns’s 1785 poem that reads “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry” and the Yiddish proverb, “we plan, God laughs.” Conversely, being in the “right place at the right time” speaks to experiences of good luck (Watts, 1999). In fairness, sometimes luck is “a post facto phenomenon that infers random variation” where subsequent sensemaking can account for the remaining unexplained random variation (Parnell et al., 2012: 107). Indeed, acknowledging the agentic capabilities of individuals, some outcomes attributed to luck may have more logical explanations within the scope of one’s own control (Spector, 1982), as in the case of how a “lucky” repatriation offer and subsequent improvements in work-life balance for the focal person and their family are driven by years of hard work.
Yet luck also exists as serendipity (Roberts, 1989). This includes scenarios “where one seeks A but finds B, and where B is ultimately more highly valued” or where “A is sought and A is found, but via a route quite different from that originally envisioned” (Liu and De Rond, 2016: 25–26). When one seeks A but finds B, consider a chance encounter during an interview trip where an individual—randomly seated next to a family-friendly executive on the flight—finds an even more ideal opportunity than the one for which they were interviewing (that gives them a flexible schedule, remote work access, and greater work-life balance). When A is sought and A is found but via a quite different route, here we need to look no further than to the self-serving bias where individuals erroneously attribute positive outcomes as caused by their own agency (Miller and Ross, 1975). An individual might believe they receive a promotion because of hard work and effort, leading to work-life enrichment where they are invigorated to invest greater energy and time in family activity. Yet, unbeknownst to them, they were passed over for consideration and only received the offer when the desired candidate(s) chose to pursue opportunities elsewhere.
General discussion
We developed a theory of aberrant work-life navigation, highlighting how individual (intuitive and unconscious thoughts, emotions, impulsivity, inaction) and contextual (work-life stakeholders, cultural norms, regulations) factors inhibit rationality and constrain agency, creating “messiness” in how individuals navigate major life transitions. Below, we discuss our theoretical advancements and provide generative ideas for future research.
Theoretical implications
We advance work-life decision-making theory by offering a more complex yet realistic account of lived experiences involving the process of (aberrant) work-life navigation. Our theory is as an important complement to—not replacement of—existing theory, encompassing not only the cornerstones of (bounded) rationality and individual agency but also their counterparts of irrationality and agency constraints. Further, we embrace the inherent subjectivity of work-life constructs and how major life transitions are socially constructed. Recognizing the importance of considering work-life issues in context, we raise important considerations associated with the underlying “meaning” of work-life balance, conflict, and enrichment as they pertain to the eye of the beholder. Thus, our work may prove informative for investigating issues of psychometric equivalence (Min et al., 2021), generating measures that capture psychological comparisons and contrast effects between individuals’ “real” versus “imagined” work-life outcomes (Manca et al., 2025), and epistemic discussions around construct conceptualization (Wayne et al., 2017).
We enhance work-life decision-making theory by encompassing multiple components into a unified framework (individual and relational decision-making; planned and shock events) and by broadening its scope. Whereas much focus is on specific events (“episode processing;” Maertz et al., 2019) and discrete decisions, our epistemological blending captures the fact that major life transitions—or what are often referred to as “anchoring decisions,” “life shock events,” and “major episodes of work-family conflict”—are long, complex, and dynamic situations where decision-making may incur aberrations as work-life navigation unfolds.
We further enhance the generalizability of work-life decision-making theory by demonstrating its applicability across multiple areas of study that capture work-life navigation as a key, phenomenological experience underlying numerous constructs and topics of investigation. This includes our narrative examples in the context of job loss, expatriation, pregnant employees, and the supplemental examples in Tables 1 and 2. The universality of our framework creates a host of possibilities for future research (discussed below), including its contextualization to non-Western and Global South settings (Ollier-Malaterre and Foucreault, 2017). For example, we can generalize that all of humanity is subject to the influence of emotions yet recognize that emotions are experienced differently across cultures (Mesquita et al., 2016).
Finally, we add nuance to work-life decision-making theory by addressing major life transitions as context-embedded phenomena. As an analogy, neo-institutional theory long argued actors are conditioned by the institutions in which they are embedded (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Similarly, work-life decision-making theory does well to recognize how cultural norms and regulations constrain agency by conditioning expectations (Lupu et al., 2018). Yet neo-institutional theory failed to account for the paradox of embedded agency—that is, how actors are agentic and reflexive within the same environments by which they are conditioned (Holm, 1995)—and subsequent views emerged to capture how actors are shaped by and shape their contexts (Lawrence et al., 2013). We used this to recognize that individuals are capable of agentic action at the intersection of their specific layers of contexts to account for how agentic action can produce “irrational” behavior (as defined by normative and regulative contexts). This point further highlights that, while we overall emphasized the need to better account for agency constraints and irrationality, these are two distinct pieces: individuals can exercise agency or rely on conditioned behaviors to pursue irrational or rational choices, respectively.
Directions for future research
We encourage future research to build on our three core theoretical contributions that extend work-life decision-making theory: inaction and impulsivity; constraints on agency; and the inherent subjectivity of outcomes associated with major life transitions. First, building on the idea that “any effort to be universally precautionary will be paralyzing” (Sunstein, 2002: 32), future research should explore instances of inaction such as when and why individuals “freeze up” when navigating major life transitions. The personality literature points to perfectionism and compulsive indecisiveness as contributing factors (Frost and Shows, 1993), while the motivation literature points to fear of failure (Cacciotti et al., 2016). These are enduring paradigms that work-life decision-making studies can integrate without the need to develop new scales or devise new study methodologies—and, from an individual factors standpoint, are natural complements for considering how values influence work-life navigation (via the logic of appropriateness).
In line with a series of essays published in Human Relations in the mid-2010s, we invite the application of neuroscience-based perspectives (Butler et al., 2017; Healey and Hodgkinson, 2014). We encourage cross-pollination with research on neurodiversity that “takes neurological developments traditionally regarded as atypical or even as diagnosable disorders. . .and conceptualizes them as normal human variation” (Krzeminska et al., 2019: 453). Just as Erbil et al. (2025: 455) criticize the assumption of neurotypicality as an “ignorant design” for human resource management that fails to “recognize, capture, and accommodate the unique needs of neurodivergent individuals,” so too do we argue that work-life decision-making studies theorize through the lens of neurotypicality. While there is much to unpack, we encourage strengths-based approaches (e.g. benefits associated with inaction and impulsivity) that seek to understand how neurodiverse individuals’ “unique perspectives, character advantages, and cognitive abilities” produce aberrations that enhance work-life navigation (Iqbal et al., 2025: 37).
Second, regarding agency constraints, we encourage integration of reciprocal determinism: in critiquing that “explanations of human behavior have generally favored unidirectional causal models emphasizing either environmental or internal determinants of behavior,” Bandura (1978: 344) asserted that “psychological functioning involves a continuous reciprocal interaction between behavioral, cognitive, and environmental influences.” Even though some work-life decision-making research recognizes that decision-making “does not progress in a logical sequence” (Radcliffe and Cassell, 2014: 793) and that the environment in which one is embedded shapes values and beliefs (Lupu et al., 2018), we encourage systematic attention to the role of environmental factors—especially when they are compounded and reinforced by individuals’ beliefs associated with predestination and fate.
Essentially, we charge future research with finding the middle ground in balancing agentic versus non-agentic considerations. Returning to our incorporation of luck, studies can investigate atypical major life transitions. Liu and De Rond (2016: 29) note that what some perceive as serendipitous events or luck can be attributed to recognition that “opportunities may exist when social dynamics discourage others to exploit atypical opportunities”—suggesting that what appears on the surface as a largely non-agentic influence may, in fact, be driven by agentic factors such as (implicit) recognition or foresight. Indeed, atypical transitions are ideally suited for this line of inquiry since “theory building can best be examined in extreme contexts because the dynamics being studied are more visible” (Ladge et al., 2012: 1453).
Third, by eschewing the proposition-based approach to theorizing in favor of a narrative approach, we remained largely agnostic about directionality and whether aberrations will result in more positive or more negative outcomes. Yet we also problematized the notion of “positive” and “negative” outcomes, given their inherent subjectivity. We encourage future research to lean into this idea, investigating whether inducing a post-hoc advantageous comparison (a “worse” hypothetical experience than the actual experience) alters an individual’s appraisal of their experience for the better. Quasi-experimental designs can determine whether individuals who are subjected to an advantageous comparison (versus a control group) generate more positive reassessments of prior experiences, with such designs yielding practical benefits for participants in terms of their mental health and well-being. Further, future research can incorporate social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954) and equity theory (Adams, 1963) to determine (whether and how) to which referent others’ outcomes individuals evaluate their own experiences.
We also encourage qualitative work not only because it is uniquely positioned for polycontextual analyses that account for multiple layers of context (Ollier-Malaterre, 2024) but also because of the practical impact it can have on study participants. Lupu et al. (2018: 163) observed during their data collection that “participants referred to the [interview] process as “cathartic” and many expressed gratitude for the reflection space that the interview process allowed.” In this sense, we hope that future research not only advances understanding of aberrant work-life navigation but also, in doing so, provides a forum for study participants to engage in retrospective sensemaking that better equips them to navigate future major life transitions.
Conclusion
Since the turn of the century (c.f. Friedman and Greenhaus, 2000), work-life decision-making theory has made many advancements under the rational choice paradigm. Yet given the current state of extant theory, we argued for the necessary departure from the rational choice paradigm—advancing our theory of aberrant work-life navigation—to better capture the messy, complex, and volatile nature of major life transitions and individuals’ lived experiences. Importantly, our theory is not a replacement for but rather a complement to extant theory (per our framework) such that the two can be paired together. Thus, we hope that our ad maiora (“toward greater things”) sentiment invigorates research on work-life decision-making theory and expands its applicability across areas of management and interdisciplinary scholarship.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Jeffrey Greenhaus for his insights associated with the development of our manuscript. We are also grateful to our Associate Editor, Yasin Rofcanin, and two anonymous reviewers for their guidance and developmental feedback throughout the review process.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded through support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to the Canada Research Chair on Digital Regulation at Work and in Life (#CRC-2021-00534).
AI usage declaration
The authors acknowledge that they have followed Human Relations’ AI policy. No AI was used for preparing the manuscript.
