WORKING INDENTITIES AND CAREER REINVENTION - Several links and articles ...
Herminia Ibarra, chaired professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD in France, has researched and written about working identities and reinventing one's career. Her ideas are equally relevant to those moving from pre-retirement to post-fulltime work lives. Following is a link to her book, Working Identity, and some articles about these topics:

Working Indentity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career
[2003 - Harvard Business School Press] A call to the dreamer in each of us, this book explores the process for crafting a more fulfilling future. Where we end up may surprise us.

Nine Unconventional Strategies For Reinventing Your Career
[10 February 2003 - Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge] Here are nine unconventional strategies for reinventing your career: act, then reflect; flirt with your selves; live the contradictions; make big change in small steps; experiment with new roles; find people who are what you want to be; don't wait for a catalyst; step back periodically but not for too long; and seize windows of opportunity.

Provisional Selves: Experimenting With Professional Identity
[1 February 2000 - Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge] Herminia Ibarra's research into professional identity reveals three basic tasks in the transition of professionals to more senior roles: 1) observing role models to identify potential identities; 2) experimenting with provisional selves; and 3) evaluating experience against internal standards and external feedback. This excerpt looks at the second part of the process. See the sidebar, About the Provisional Selves study, for more information.

Managing take off and re-entry
[Summer 2003 - European Business Forum] To make the most of a leadership development programme, participants need to think about the 'before' and 'after'. (pdf)

How to Stay Stuck in the Wrong Career [PDF available from Amazon.com]
[December 2002 - Harvard Business Review] HBR OnPoint articles include the full-text HBR article, plus a synopsis and annotated bibliography. Everyone knows a story about a talented businessperson who has lost his passion for work or a person who ditched a 20-year career to pursue something completely different and is the happier for it. "Am I doing what is right for me, or should I change direction?" is one of the most pressing questions for today's midcareer professional. A true change of direction is hard to swing. Many academics and career counselors contend that the problem lies in basic human behavior: We fear change and don't want to make sacrifices. But author Herminia Ibarra suggests another explanation. People most often fail, she says, because they take the wrong approach to finding new careers. Indeed, the conventional wisdom on how to change careers is a prescription for how to stay put. Most of us have heard that the key to a successful career change is figuring out what we want to do next, then acting on that knowledge. But change actually happens the other way around. Doing comes first, knowing second, because changing careers means redefining our working identity--our sense of self in our professional roles, what we convey about ourselves to others and, ultimately, how we live our working lives. Who we are and what we do are tightly connected, the result of years of action. And to change that connection, we must first resort to action.