Personal orientation as an antecedent to career stress and employability confidence: The intervening roles of career goal-performance discrepancy and career goal importance

Linking undergraduates' future orientation and their employability confidence: The role of vocational identity clarity and internship effectiveness

Given the growing research interest in students' school-to-work transition, we examine the positive effects of undergraduates' future orientation on their employability confidence. Specifically, building on social cognitive career theory which suggests that career choices are influenced by a person's experiences, beliefs, interests, and values, we explore the mediator of vocational identity clarity and the positive moderator of internship effectiveness in this association above. Two studies were conducted to test our model. Study 1 included a laboratory experiment (N = 136) and tested the positive association between undergraduates' future orientation and their employability confidence through vocational identity clarity. Study 2 used a time-lagged research design from undergraduates (N = 315) to replicate the results and to additionally test a mediating role of internship effectiveness. We find that undergraduates' future orientation has a strong positive relationship with employability confidence, and this relation is mediated by vocational identity clarity. Additionally, the results show a positive moderation effect, that is, when undergraduates' internship effectiveness is high, the above indirect relation becomes stronger. The current research enriches the existing understanding of how and when the students' future orientation can contribute to employability confidence theoretically and empirically. Meanwhile, these findings indicated valuable practical applications by encouraging universities to promote undergraduates' future orientation and provide effective internships for them towards enhancing their vocational identity clarity and ultimately boosting their employability confidence.

The Relationship between Discrepancies in Career Anchors of Information Technology Personnel and Career Satisfaction

The career anchors of information technology personnel (ITP) are critical factors influencing their career satisfaction (CS), and these factors are also influenced by national culture. Although a number of scholars have studied the internal CS of employees, these scholars have not explained how to increase the CS of ITP from both individual and organizational perspectives and to further improve the success rate of IS projects. Thus, this study adopts the goal-achievement gap (discrepancy) theory to explore the gap between the "internal career desires (career wants, CW)" and "external career opportunities (career have, CH)" of ITP in two different cultural societies, namely mainland China and the United Arab Emirates, and whether the gap impacts their CS. The data in this study were collected from the Internet. A survey was posted on Internet discussion forums for full-time ITP participants within organizations in China and the United Arab Emirates; thus, the results of this study are possibly only generalizable to these two countries. Finally, the results of this study provide the following contributions: (1) There are 13 career anchors (technical competence, managerial competence, autonomy, organizational stability, challenge, lifestyle, identity, creativity, variety, service, entrepreneurship, geographic security, and learning motivation) of ITP in China, which can be divided into three categories, and these are totally different from the four categories identified by ITP in the United Arab Emirates. (2) The surface analysis approach (RSA) to test the curvilinear relationship between the CW, CH, and CS of ITP indeed can explain more than the linear SEM (structural equation modeling) test between the CW and CS, CH, and CS separately, both tests are in two different cultural societies, China and the United Arab Emirates.

The impact of future work self on perceived employability and career distress

Future work self is a promising concept to understand how young people view and plan their careers in the contemporary workplace. In this study, we attempt to investigate its impacts on two career-related outcomes, namely, perceived employability and career distress. Informed by social cognitive career theory, we also explore the mediating role of career decision self-efficacy in the above relationships. Several hypotheses were developed and tested with a sample of 208 final-year undergraduate students (with a mean age of 21.5 and 145 of them are female) in China. The results of structural equation modeling and bootstrapping indicated that future work self has a positive relationship with perceived employability and a negative relationship with career distress, while these relationships are found to be mediated by career decision self-efficacy. Our study has advanced our understanding about how future work self contributes to career-related well-being among Chinese students.

Motivational Conflict and Volitional Career Actions in Young Adults: Ego Depletion as an Explanatory Mechanism

We assessed the underlying mechanisms through which career motivational conflict was related

to career volitional action in young adults. We tested a model in which career motivational conflict (parent-child career incongruence and career goal progress discrepancy) was related to reduced career volitional actions (career decision self-efficacy and career engagement) via self-regulatory failure (ego depletion in reference to talking to parents about their careers or thinking about their careers). Participants were 260 young adults (75.8% female; M age = 19.89 years) enrolled at a large, multi-campus university in South-East Queensland, Australia. We confirmed greater career-related motivational conflict, in both forms, was associated with lower volitional actions. Furthermore, self-referenced depletion explained the relationships between career goal progress discrepancy and poorer career decision self-efficacy and less career engagement. These findings have implications for how counsellors might assist young people to improve their career volitional actions by reducing the effects of career motivational conflict.

Young Adults’ Self-Regulatory Responses to Positive Career Goal Discrepancies: Testing Cross-Lagged Relationships

Researchers have assessed young people’s outcomes when they do not meet their career goals, but little is known about the consequences when they do better than expected (positive discrepancies). We (a) tested the cross-lagged relationships between positive career goal discrepancies and the career-related outcomes of upward goal revision, career exploration, and career coasting, and (b) assessed the indirect relationships between positive career goal discrepancy and outcomes through self-efficacy and outcome expectations. Using a sample of 314 young adults (76% female, Mage 19.13 years), we found that the standard causation model was the most parsimonious. Positive discrepancies predicted more upward goal revision and exploration and less coasting after a 6-month time lag, both directly and indirectly through outcome expectations. The findings highlight the importance of positive career goal appraisals in career goal setting, exploration, management and clarify the roles of agency (self-efficacy and outcome expectations) as explanatory mechanisms in these relationships.

Norm and Deviance-Seeking Personal Orientation Scale (NDPOS) Adapted to the Organisational Context

Deviance theory introduces a behavioural view on constructive and destructive deviance to explain how an individual's intent can harm or improve organisational well-being. However, to our knowledge, no scale exists that evaluates the personal orientation aspect of deviance and normativity. This article discusses the creation of the Norm and Deviance-Seeking Personal Orientation Scale (NDPOS). To create this scale, we studied the psychometric properties of the instrument using data from French workers. NDPOS exploratory analysis indicated a 12-item scale composed of four factors: normative conformity, normative rule adequacy, deviant performance seeking, and deviant proactivity seeking. Confirmatory factor analysis corroborated the factorial structure in four sub-scales. Convergent and discriminant validity indicated that deviant dimensions were positively related to expressing voice, cognitive flexibility, and deviant behaviours, whereas normativity dimensions were negatively or not related to these behaviours. Furthermore, opposite relations between the conformity construct and the four factors were observed. Practical implications and suggestions for the development of future research on constructive deviance theory are discussed.

When Is Proactivity Wise? A Review of Factors That Influence the Individual Outcomes of Proactive Behavior

There is solid evidence that proactivity, defined as self-initiated and future-focused action to change oneself or the situation, can positively benefit individuals and organizations. However, this way of behaving can sometimes be ineffective or have negative consequences. We seek to understand what factors shape the effect of proactivity on individual-level outcomes. On the basis of a review of 95 articles, we identify three categories of factors that mitigate or exacerbate the effectiveness of proactive behavior: task and strategic considerations (e.g., situational judgment), social and relational considerations (e.g., having an open leader), and self-regulatory considerations (e.g., learning orientation). We then extrapolate from this review, and draw on psychological theories of wisdom, to suggest that individuals can be more or less “wise” in the proactive goals they set, and in how they pursue those goals. In closing, we identify further research directions that flow from the notion of wise proactivity.