Conference Agenda

This study explores career development among Japanese business professionals by examining how they experience internal conflict and internal dialogue while learning and working in different linguistic and cultural environments. The focus is on how such experiences are described and understood over time. The participants had no overseas upbringing or special foreign language backgrounds. All began their careers in Japan and later encountered turning points through which they voluntarily moved into overseas or intercultural work contexts.

Multiple in-depth interviews were conducted with four Japanese business professionals. Based on their narratives, Trajectory Equifinality Modeling (TEM) was used to describe their career development processes over time, identifying bifurcation points, obligatory passage points, and relevant social forces. Dialogical Self Theory (DST) as proposed by Hermans was then employed to examine how internal dialogues unfolded across different phases of these processes, with attention to experiences of movement and tension in intercultural contexts.

The analysis showed that participants repeatedly experienced internal conflicts—understood here as lived contradictions—such as tensions between seeking challenges and desiring stability, between responding to others’ expectations and following their own orientations, and between cultural understanding and professional competence. These contradictions became salient at moments of cultural friction, linguistic difficulty, and career transition. Rather than being resolved, they were experienced as ongoing tensions that were negotiated through internal dialogue among multiple I-positions, through which participants reconsidered their values, working styles, and positioning over time.

By using TEM and DST in combination, this study offers a way of understanding career development in intercultural contexts as a non-linear process characterized by polyphony and equifinality. The findings highlight career development not only as adaptation or achievement, but also as an ongoing re-positioning of the self-shaped through internal dialogue among Japanese business professionals working across linguistic and cultural boundaries.