Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which employees' perceptions of alienation (personal and social) are related to positive (career satisfaction) and negative ...(careerist orientation) career-related outcomes and to examine the mediating role of career satisfaction.Design methodology approach - The paper used a cross-sectional design, with questionnaires administered to 165 employees working in organizations in the USA to test the relationship between alienation and careerism through career satisfaction.Findings - Alienation was found to be a positive predictor of employee careerism, and a negative predictor of their career satisfaction. The data were consistent with a model positioning career satisfaction as a mediator of the alienation to careerism relationship.Research limitations implications - Future research should examine the relationship between alienation and career outcomes in other organizations and job families, to enhance generalizability. Data should be also collected longitudinally, to extend the current cross-sectional design.Practical implications - Understanding the empirical link between alienation and career outcomes can provide useful information to reduce negative career outcomes.Originality value - The findings point toward a positive relationship between employee alienation and their careerism. In doing so, the paper adds to a body of work where careerism was connected with structural rather than individual predictors.
We describe how idiosyncratic deals (I-deals), in this case I-deals focused on workers’ employability enhancement, can serve as a powerful strategic HR tool for simultaneously meeting both the ...strategic goals of employers and the career goals of employees. Building on a sustainable career perspective, I-deals are interpreted as highly valuable, as they can help individual employees to more easily adapt to the fast-changing environments that nowadays characterize society and the labor market. After theoretical outlines on the concepts of I-deals and employability, we argue that I-deals can form the basis for integrative employment relationships aimed at employability enhancement. This article concludes with concrete recommendations for practice, indicating that in order to enable the sound use of I-deals as a strategic HR tool, organizations should discuss I-deals and employability openly through constructive dialogue. Moreover, examples for achieving this through specific practices, such as working with employability coaches and world cafés on employability, are described.
Career transitions and employability De Vos, Ans; Jacobs, Sofie; Verbruggen, Marijke
Journal of vocational behavior,
April 2021, 2021-04-00, 20210401, Letnik:
126
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
How individuals can be employable and make successful career transitions throughout their working life is gaining increased attention from scholars in the field of vocational and organizational ...psychology for several decades now. Although contemporary career literature implicitly or explicitly assumes a strong connectedness between career transitions and employability, these two concepts have their own historical development in the literature. In this paper we provide a historical account of how the research fields around both have evolved, and we highlight some key insights from seminal work. We then review the literature to explore in more detail how the relationship between career transitions and employability has been empirically studied in the vocational and organizational psychology literature so far. We end with discussing the major observations from this review and formulate pathways for future research.
•An overview and integration of the research fields on career transitions and employability are given.•Both vocational and organizational psychology literature on the topics are reviewed.•We elaborate upon the conceptual relatedness of career transitions and employability.•A literature review is conducted of empirical research on the relationship between career transitions and employability.•Avenues for future research are formulated.
In addition to acquiring occupation-specific knowledge and skills, students need to develop a set of career self-management skills - or resources - that helps them to successfully maneuver the ...various career-related challenges they face and that stimulate their well-being, engagement, and performance in studying tasks. In the current study, we apply the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory in an educational setting and suggest that career adaptability and career competencies are important career resources that predict both life satisfaction and academic performance via students' satisfaction with the choice of their major and study engagement. Undergraduate students (
= 672) from nine different colleges and universities in Lithuania participated in the study. The results revealed that career adaptability and career competencies were positively linked to students' life satisfaction, both directly and via study engagement. In addition, these career resources were positively, yet indirectly, related to academic performance via study engagement. Overall, the results suggest that career resources contribute to study engagement, life satisfaction, and academic performance. The results of our study further support JD-R theorizing and its applicability in student samples. Further theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Purpose - The purpose of this study is two-fold. The first is to relate the negative image of older workers to stereotype threat and to propose that effective retention management should start by ...replacing this negative image. The second is to assess the needs, perceptions and preferences of older workers regarding their career-ending.Design methodology approach - A total of 266 employer questionnaires and 1,290 older worker questionnaires identified the employers' perceptions of older workers and the career-ending needs and preferences of older workers.Findings - The results provide indirect support for the hypothesis that the negative image of older workers forms a self-fulfilling prophecy due to the mechanisms of stereotype threat. Furthermore, the results indicate that job involvement plays a crucial role in the preference for retirement or to keep on working.Research limitations implications - Stereotype threat promises to be very important when it comes to career-ending measures for older workers. However, the empirical design of the study limits the possibility of drawing direct inferences about the effects of stereotype threat on older workers.Practical implications - Measures and policies aimed at prolonging the participation of older workers at the labor market should be tailored to the specific needs, perceptions and preferences of older workers.Originality value - The concept of stereotype threat has never been connected with the perceptions of older workers. Further, the assessment of the needs, perceptions and preferences related to the career-ending of older workers has never before been examined in a European study.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between self-perceived employability resources and perceived psychological contract (PC) obligations. To examine the extent to which ...organizational ratings of potential, through their “signaling” function, might serve as a buffer between employability and PC perceptions that are undesirable from an employer's point of view.
Design/methodology/approach
– Both self-report data (i.e. self-perceived employability resources and perceived PC obligations) and data reported by the HR departments of the participating organizations (i.e. organizational ratings of potential) were collected in a case-control design (n=103).
Findings
– Self-perceived employability resources are not related to lower intentions to stay with one's current employer. High-potential employees did not perceive themselves as particularly obliged to reciprocate their organizations’ additional investments in them by expressing longer term loyalty, or a higher performance level.
Practical implications
– Organizations should not be hesitant to assist their employees in enhancing their employability resources. In addition, they should engage in deliberate PC building with their high-potential employees so as to align their perceived PC obligations with the organizational agenda.
Originality/value
– The relationship between self-perceived employability resources and perceived PC obligations has been underexamined; hardly any PC research has taken organizational variables into account; hardly any research exists on the psychological implications of being identified as a high potential; and the study draws both on self-report data and data reported by the HR departments of the participating organizations.
Based on the theoretical framework of newcomer sensemaking this study examines factors associated with changes in newcomers' psychological contract perceptions during the socialization process. More ...specifically, two mechanisms are addressed that could explain changes in newcomers' perceptions of the promises they have exchanged with their employer: (1) unilateral adaptation of perceived promises to reality and (2) adaptation of perceived promises as a function of the reciprocity norm. To test our hypotheses, a four-wave longitudinal study among 333 new hires has been conducted, covering the first year of their employment relationship. Results show that changes in newcomers' perceptions of the promises they have made to their employer are affected by their perceptions of their own contributions as well as by their perceptions of inducements received from their employer. Changes in newcomers' perceptions of employer promises are affected by their perceptions of employer inducements received, but the impact of perceived employee contributions is less clear. The data provide limited support for the idea that the adaptation of perceived promises to perceived inducements and contributions occurs to a stronger extent during the encounter stage than during the acquisition stage of socialization.
Research has shown the importance of engaging in networking behaviors for employees' career success. Networking behaviors can be seen as a proactive way of creating access to career-related social ...resources and we argue that this type of proactive career behaviors might be particularly relevant for freelancers who cannot depend on an organizational career system supporting their further development, yet whose careers are characterized by high levels of uncertainty and unpredictability. To date, however, our understanding of how freelancers, being a category of workers that are deprived of an organizational context of support for career development, can safeguard their employability, is limited. Therefore, this study addresses this gap and investigates whether freelancers' networking behaviors are positively associated with career outcomes, through the mediating role of the need for relatedness fulfillment and employability-enhancing competencies. Hypotheses are tested via Structural Equation Modeling using a sample of 1,874 freelancers from Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The results generally support our hypotheses, providing evidence for a significant association between networking behaviors and need for relatedness fulfillment, and between networking behaviors and employability-enhancing competencies. Moreover, we found a significant association between need for relatedness fulfillment and employability-enhancing competencies, being the mediators in our research model and the outcomes of career satisfaction and perceived future career opportunities. Implications for career development in the contemporary workplace are discussed, with particular attention for need for relatedness fulfillment, employability-enhancing competencies, and sustainable careers of freelance workers.
PDF
