Increasing dynamics of careers make the development and application of different career resources important for successful career development. The study aimed to understand how different career ...resources are related to each other and different forms of career success. Examining 574 employees with 3-waves of 1-month time lags, we assessed relations between key resources (i.e., self-esteem and optimism), career adaptability resources (i.e., concern, control, curiosity, confidence), and knowledge/skills, motivational, and environmental career resources and their predictive utility for different forms of subjective and objective career success (i.e., salary). Results showed that career adaptability resources are highly related to other types of career resources, but career adaptability and other career resources each explain unique variance in different facets of career success. Using relative weight analyses, we found that especially motivational and environmental career resources are meaningfully positively related to different facets of subjective career success, whereas knowledge and skills career resources are most prominently positively related to objective career success. Under consideration of other career resources, career adaptability related negatively to salary. The findings contribute to career construction theory by situating career adaptability within a broader resource framework in relation to career success.
•We consider career adaptability (CA) resources in a broader resource framework.•CFA support the theoretically presumed distinction between CA and other career resources.•Subjective career success (SCS) was assessed with a multidimensional measurement.•Objective career success (OCS) was assessed in terms of salary.•We found incremental utility of different career resources for SCS and OCS beyond CA.
Career decision making is among the key notions in vocational psychology. At the core of career decision making is the process comprised of compiling a list of promising alternatives, confirming ...which are suitable to the individual, and, after comparing them, identifying the best one. This review begins by delineating career decision making, highlighting its unique features, and justifying focusing on the process involved in reaching a career choice. Next, we describe three types of decision-making models—normative, descriptive, and prescriptive—and briefly review constructs related to the career decision-making process. While focusing on prescriptive models that promote a more systematic process in career decision-making, the challenges in applying general decision-making models to a career decision-making process are also discussed. Given the rise in the frequency of career decisions, it is of utmost importance for individuals, organizations, and society that individuals' career decision-making process be optimal, thereby decreasing the prospect of regret and facilitating individuals' transitions from job to job in the course of their careers. Four related issues have grown in salience in today's world—willingness to compromise, adopting a maximizing or satisficing strategy, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, and grasping the role of unconscious processes. We reflect on the future of career decision making and its role in confronting the emerging challenges of the 21st century. Career decision making will benefit by adopting AI-based career decision-support systems designed to cope with the job market's unpredictable nature. The challenge is how to promote embracing ICT to enhance the quality of individuals' current and future career-transition decisions.
•The core of career decision making is the process of choosing among career alternatives.•Decision-making models have been adapted to the unique features of career decisions.•Prescriptive career decision-making models propose ways of making decisions.•The goal of prescriptive models is to facilitate making better career decisions.•The challenge is to embrace technology to achieve this goal.
PurposeThis article aims to introduce the special issue entitled “the role of career shocks in contemporary career development,” synthesize key contributions and formulate a future research ...agenda.Design/methodology/approachThe authors provide an introduction of the current state-of-the-art in career shocks research, offer an overview of the key lessons learned from the special issue and present several important avenues for future research.FindingsThe authors discuss how the special issue articles contribute to a better understanding of career shocks' role in contemporary career development, focusing on (1) conceptual clarity of the notion of career shocks, (2) career outcomes of career shocks, (3) mechanisms that can explain the impact of career shocks and (4) interdisciplinary connectivity.Originality/valueThis article offers a synthesis of the critical contributions made within this special issue, thereby formulating key ways to bring the field of career shocks research forward. It also provides new avenues for research.
This study focuses on the undergraduate self-perception of employability. We aimed to explore the impact of human capital, which incorporates social capital, cultural capital, psychological capital, ...scholastic capital, market-value capital, and skills. We also examined the role of careers advice and career ownership (protean career). Additionally, moderators of gender, degree subject, and year of study offer further contribution. Running a two-wave study (Model I) and a cross-sectional study (Model II) of undergraduates at a UK university, our findings draw on 387 students. Findings indicate that human capital, careers advice, and career ownership are important components of self-perceived employability. The study advances human capital theory and contemporary career theory at the transition from higher education into the labour market. Through advancing understanding of the undergraduate self-perception of employability, all stakeholders may benefit, via better-informed strategies for preparing, attracting, hiring, and retaining graduates.
Career decision‐making is a critical task for high school students, yet little is known about how career interventions affect their decision‐making skills and self‐efficacy. We investigated the ...outcome of a career intervention in a Chinese high school setting to determine whether it would reduce the difficulties students faced in making a career decision and elevate their self‐efficacy in career exploration. A career intervention course was delivered to 413 high school students (228 female, 185 male) who completed a demographic questionnaire, the Major Decision‐Making Self‐Efficacy Scale (Peng & Long, 2003), and the Career Decision‐Making Difficulties Questionnaire–Chinese Version (Shen, 2005) before and after the intervention. Results indicated that the intervention had a positive impact on reducing students' difficulties making career decisions but had mixed results on career self‐efficacy. Proactive, systematic, multilevel, and structured interventions over longer periods of time would likely help youth develop their career decision‐making skills.
Change agents, in any capacity and environment, play a pivotal role in moving new knowledge and ideas forward. Their role is complex and requires an array of skills that allows productivity and ...relationship building. This book investigates the change agent role within one large-scale educational initiative, providing an in-depth examination of the entry skills brought to the role, how skills develop over time, and their influence as boundary brokers across all levels of the initiative.This work has implications for any agency with the responsibility of hiring and creating a positive environment for change. It provides insights into the variety of strength profiles that change agents possess, and how constellations of strengths in a group may support one another. The conclusions also shed light on how the skills of change agents may be developed over time in ways that include attention to ongoing, multi-level professional development, support during destabilizing events, ongoing emotional and cognitive support, and using questioning as a powerful tool. Agencies with change agent hiring and support responsibilities will be able to use this information to craft job postings and to design short- and long-term support structures.
PurposeThis study investigates when and why negative organization-related career shocks affect career optimism, which is a positive career-planning attitude. The indirect effect of negative ...organization-related career shocks on career optimism via job insecurity and the role of perceived organizational career support as a first-stage moderator were investigated.Design/methodology/approachThree-wave time-lagged data from a sample of 728 employees in Switzerland was used. Time-lagged correlations, an indirect effect model and a conditional indirect effect model with bootstrapping were used to test the hypotheses.FindingsFirst, this study showed a significant negative correlation between negative organization-related career shocks (T1) and career optimism (T3), a positive correlation between negative organization-related career shocks (T1) and job insecurity (T2) and a negative correlation between job insecurity (T2) and career optimism (T3). Second, findings revealed that negative organization-related career shocks (T1) have a negative indirect effect on career optimism (T3) via job insecurity (T2). Third, perceived organizational career support (T1) buffers the indirect effect of negative organization-related career shocks (T1) on career optimism (T3).Originality/valueThis study provides an initial examination of the relationship between negative organization-related career shocks and career optimism by applying assumptions from the JD-R model and Conservation of Resources theory. Implications about how to deal with negative career shocks in HRM and career counseling are discussed.
This paper is a comprehensive update of the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) Position Stand on career development and transitions of athletes issued a decade ago (Stambulova, ...Alfermann, Statler, & Côté,
2009
, ISSP Position Stand: Career development and transitions of athletes. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 7, 395-412.). A need for updating the 2009 Position Stand has grown out of the increasing inconsistency between its popularity and high citation, on the one hand, and its dated content that inadequately reflects the current status of athlete career research and assistance, on the other. During the last decade, sport psychology career scholars worked on structuring the athlete career knowledge and consolidating it into the athlete career (sport psychology) discourse (ACD). The aims of this paper are to: (1) update the decade-long evolution and describe the current structure of the ACD, (2) introduce recent trends in career development and transition research, (3) discuss emerging trends in career assistance, and (4) summarise in a set of postulates the current status and future challenges of the ACD.