Retirement involves some institutional arrangements put together with socio-cultural meanings to sustain a distinct retirement phase with life course and also career pathways. Within this Introduction to the Special Issue: ‘Reinventing Pension: New Pathways, Brand new Arrangements, New Symbolism, ’ this article outline the historical development of retirement. We identify the dramatic broad-based changes that will recently have shaken this established construct to help its core. Here describe the primary organizational responses to help these changes, and how they have been associated with changing, multiple meanings regarding retirement.