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Career sustainability of digital micro-entrepreneurs: strategic insights from YouTubers in India

Career sustainability of digital micro-entrepreneurs: strategic insights from YouTubers in India
Career sustainability of digital micro-entrepreneurs: strategic insights from YouTubers in India

Purpose: Drawing on a framework of sustainable career theory, this paper aims to understand the interplay of agentic and contextual factors for digital micro-entrepreneurs to lead sustainable careers. Design/methodology/approach: Eighteen YouTube content creators in India participated in semi-structured interviews, offering coverage of digital content creators across acting, cosmetics, finance, fitness, food, law, modelling, music, teaching, travel, and video games. Findings: The findings showed three agentic and three contextual themes associated with the career sustainability of a digital micro-entrepreneur. Additionally, four paradoxes were identified, capturing the interplay between the agentic and contextual themes. Practical implications: The career of a digital micro-entrepreneur is a dichotomy of promising hope, stardom, and flexibility while concealing challenges like precarity, hate comments, and financial instability. Knowing this can help individuals make better-informed career decisions. Originality/value: The study advances sustainable career theory by capturing insights from digital micro-entrepreneurs in India to understand the interplay of agentic and contextual factors that create a series of paradoxes for such individuals to navigate over time.

Agentic, Contextual, Digital micro-entrepreneur, India, Sustainable career, Temporal, YouTube
1362-0436
434-451
Mishra, Abhyudaya
783e9a9c-5668-403a-93ec-2a7047b704ba
Maheshwari, Mridul
6406b061-06b6-40a7-a37c-bdacedab0174
Donald, William E.
0b3cb4ca-8ed9-4a5f-9c10-359923469eec
Mishra, Abhyudaya
783e9a9c-5668-403a-93ec-2a7047b704ba
Maheshwari, Mridul
6406b061-06b6-40a7-a37c-bdacedab0174
Donald, William E.
0b3cb4ca-8ed9-4a5f-9c10-359923469eec

Mishra, Abhyudaya, Maheshwari, Mridul and Donald, William E. (2024) Career sustainability of digital micro-entrepreneurs: strategic insights from YouTubers in India. Career Development International, 29 (4), 434-451. (doi:10.1108/CDI-09-2023-0334).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Purpose: Drawing on a framework of sustainable career theory, this paper aims to understand the interplay of agentic and contextual factors for digital micro-entrepreneurs to lead sustainable careers. Design/methodology/approach: Eighteen YouTube content creators in India participated in semi-structured interviews, offering coverage of digital content creators across acting, cosmetics, finance, fitness, food, law, modelling, music, teaching, travel, and video games. Findings: The findings showed three agentic and three contextual themes associated with the career sustainability of a digital micro-entrepreneur. Additionally, four paradoxes were identified, capturing the interplay between the agentic and contextual themes. Practical implications: The career of a digital micro-entrepreneur is a dichotomy of promising hope, stardom, and flexibility while concealing challenges like precarity, hate comments, and financial instability. Knowing this can help individuals make better-informed career decisions. Originality/value: The study advances sustainable career theory by capturing insights from digital micro-entrepreneurs in India to understand the interplay of agentic and contextual factors that create a series of paradoxes for such individuals to navigate over time.

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Mishra et al. (2024) - Accepted Manuscript
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 20 February 2024
Published date: 23 July 2024
Additional Information: Publisher Copyright: © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited.
Keywords: Agentic, Contextual, Digital micro-entrepreneur, India, Sustainable career, Temporal, YouTube

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 487842
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/487842
ISSN: 1362-0436
PURE UUID: 18f76954-3fd1-4c93-ad9d-04d44e35f418
ORCID for William E. Donald: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-3670-5374

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 06 Mar 2024 17:43
Last modified: 30 Jul 2024 04:01

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Contributors

Author: Abhyudaya Mishra
Author: Mridul Maheshwari
Author: William E. Donald ORCID iD

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