Exploring the path through which career adaptability increases job satisfaction and lowers job stress: The role of affect

Abstract The construct of career adaptability, or the ability to successfully manage one's career development and challenges, predicts several important outcomes; however, little is known about the mechanisms contributing to its positive effects. The present study investigated the impact of career adaptability on job satisfaction and work stress, as mediated by individuals' affective states. Using a representative sample of 1671 individuals employed in Switzerland we hypothesized that, over time, career adaptability amplifies job satisfaction and attenuates work stress, through higher positive affect and lower negative affect, respectively. The data resulted from the first three waves of a longitudinal project on professional paths conducted in Switzerland. For each wave, participants completed a survey. Results of the 3-wave cross-lagged longitudinal model show that employees with higher career adaptability at Time 1 indeed experienced at Time 3 higher job satisfaction and lower work stress than those with lower career adaptability. The effect of career adaptability on job satisfaction and work stress was accounted for by negative affect: Individuals higher on career adaptability experienced less negative affect, which led to lower levels of stress and higher levels of job satisfaction, beyond previous levels of job satisfaction and work stress. Overall results support the conception of career adaptability as a self-regulatory resource that may promote a virtuous cycle in which individuals' evaluations of their resources to cope with the environment (i.e., career adaptability) shape their affective states, which in turn influence the evaluations of their job.

[1]  J. Boudreau,et al.  The relationship between employee job change and job satisfaction: the honeymoon-hangover effect. , 2005, The Journal of applied psychology.

[2]  Andreas Hirschi,et al.  Career adaptability development in adolescence: Multiple predictors and effect on sense of power and life satisfaction , 2009 .

[3]  P. Bentler,et al.  Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis : Conventional criteria versus new alternatives , 1999 .

[4]  N. Ashkanasy,et al.  Emotion as a mediator of work attitudes and behavioral intentions , 2002 .

[5]  J. Rossier,et al.  Professional Trajectories, Individual Characteristics, and Staying Satisfied and Healthy , 2016 .

[6]  J. Rossier.  Career adaptability and life designing , 2015 .

[7]  Ryan D. Duffy.  Sense of Control and Career Adaptability Among Undergraduate Students , 2010 .

[8]  Jérôme Rossier,et al.  The role of career adaptability and work conditions on general and professional well-being , 2013 .

[9]  Denise M. Rousseau,et al.  The Boundaryless Career: A New Employment Principle for a New Organizational Era , 2001 .

[10]  M. L. Fox,et al.  Dispositional affect and work-related stress. , 1992, The Journal of applied psychology.

[11]  M. Savickas,et al.  Career Adapt-Abilities Scale: Construction, reliability, and measurement equivalence across 13 countries , 2012 .

[12]  Kristopher J Preacher,et al.  Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models , 2008, Behavior research methods.

[13]  K. Vohs,et al.  Case Western Reserve University , 1990 .

[14]  Ian M. Langella,et al.  Personality and career decisiveness: An international empirical comparison of business students' career planning , 2010 .

[15]  Richard Heyward,et al.  The High School , 1908 .

[16]  H. Zacher.  Career adaptability predicts subjective career success above and beyond personality traits and core self-evaluations , 2014 .

[17]  J. Rossier,et al.  Global life satisfaction in adolescence: The role of personality traits, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. , 2016 .

[18]  Willibald Ruch,et al.  Validation of the German version of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale and its relation to orientations to happiness and work stress , 2013 .

[19]  R. Lazarus.  Emotion and Adaptation , 1991 .

[20]  Sonja Lyubomirsky,et al.  Hedonic Adaptation to Positive and Negative Experiences , 2010 .

[21]  T. Judge,et al.  Affect and job satisfaction: a study of their relationship at work and at home. , 2004, The Journal of applied psychology.

[22]  D. Mroczek,et al.  The effect of age on positive and negative affect: a developmental perspective on happiness. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[23]  J. Rossier,et al.  Career Adapt-Abilities Scale in a French-Speaking Swiss Sample: Psychometric Properties and Relationships to Personality and Work Engagement. , 2012 .

[24]  D. Weiss,et al.  Manual for the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire. , 1967 .

[25]  H. Weiss,et al.  Affective Events Theory: A theoretical discussion of the structure, causes and consequences of affective experiences at work. , 1996 .

[26]  Ute-Christine Klehe,et al.  Career adaptability, turnover and loyalty during organizational downsizing , 2011 .

[27]  Lawrence R. Burns,et al.  The relationship between positive and negative affect in the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule , 2002 .

[28]  Daniel J. Beal,et al.  Reflections on Affective Events Theory , 2005 .

[29]  A. Satorra,et al.  A scaled difference chi-square test statistic for moment structure analysis , 1999 .

[30]  A. V. Vianen,et al.  Job-search strategies and reemployment quality: the impact of career adaptability , 2010 .

[31]  A. Brief,et al.  Organizational behavior: affect in the workplace. , 2002, Annual review of psychology.

[32]  Ute-Christine Klehe,et al.  Job Loss as a Blessing in Disguise: The Role of Career Exploration and Career Planning in Predicting Reemployment Quality. , 2006 .

[33]  M. Savickas,et al.  Career Adaptability: An Integrative Construct for Life‐Span, Life‐Space Theory , 1997 .

[34]  P. Shrout,et al.  Mediation in experimental and nonexperimental studies: new procedures and recommendations. , 2002, Psychological methods.

[35]  Jack K. Ito,et al.  Does supporting employees' career adaptability lead to commitment, turnover, or both? , 2005 .

[36]  Chockalingam Viswesvaran,et al.  The role of affectivity in job satisfaction: a meta-analysis , 2000 .

[37]  Seth A. Kaplan,et al.  The affective underpinnings of job perceptions and attitudes: a meta-analytic review and integration. , 2003, Psychological bulletin.

[38]  M. Savickas.  The Theory and Practice of Career Construction. , 2005 .

[39]  Barry M. Staw,et al.  The dispositional approach to job satisfaction: more than a mirage, but not yet an oasis , 2005 .

[40]  K. Scherer.  Appraisal considered as a process of multilevel sequential checking. , 2001 .

[41]  Karine Verschueren,et al.  High school students' career decision-making process: Consequences for choice implementation in higher education , 2007 .

[42]  N. Taylor,et al.  Development of the Sources of Work Stress Inventory , 2005 .

[43]  Thomas W. H. Ng,et al.  Dispositional Affectivity and Work‐Related Outcomes: A Meta‐Analysis , 2009 .

[44]  David P Mackinnon,et al.  Confidence Limits for the Indirect Effect: Distribution of the Product and Resampling Methods , 2004, Multivariate behavioral research.

[45]  Maria Eduarda Duarte,et al.  Life designing: A paradigm for career construction in the 21st century , 2009 .

[46]  G. D. Bruin,et al.  The dimensionality of the General Work Stress Scale : a hierarchical exploratory factor analysis , 2006 .

[47]  Alan Brown,et al.  The Role of Career Adaptabilities for Mid-Career Changers. , 2012 .