تبلور مفهوم خودانگاری حرفه ای به عنوان یک میانجی رابطه بین زندگی خودمدیریتی حرفه ای و اثربخشی تصمیم کار

This article examines the influence of career self-management and vocational self-concept crystallization on job decision effectiveness and how vocational self-concept crystallization mediates the relationship between career self-management and job decision effectiveness. Six hundred and eleven Chinese employees participated in the research. Using hierarchical regression and structural equation modeling, the results showed that: (1) career self-management has a positive direct effect on vocational self-concept crystallization; (2) career self-management has a positive direct effect on job decision effectiveness; (3) vocational self-concept crystallization has a positive direct effect on job decision effectiveness; and (4) vocational self-concept crystallization partly mediates the relationship between career self-management and job decision effectiveness.

Topel and Ward (1992) posit that employees in the United States will experience ten employers over their forty year work lives with two-thirds of these job changes coming within their first ten years in the labor market. In China, young people under the age of 30 average a job change at least once every five years (Zhou, 2006). In other words, it is common for today’s employees to experience multiple careers and multiple job movements during their working lives (Sullivan & Arthur, 2006), whether voluntary or mandatory. The increased fluidity in employees’ careers has led to an increase in research on career mobility and job change (Donohue, 2006 and Sullivan and Arthur, 2006). Rather than working one’s way up the corporate ladder within a single organization, today’s professionals manage their own career paths, creating what is referred to as a boundaryless career, as they seize new and often different job opportunities to obtain training, enhance their human capital, and increase their marketability (Sullivan & Arthur, 2006). Individuals are not equally adept at making such decisions, however, as some find suitable jobs with their initial employer, while others are unable to find appropriate jobs even after multiple job changes. This begs the question of the sources of individual differences in job decision effectiveness. Thompson and Subich (2006) found that social status was related to career choice certainty, but that this relationship was fully mediated by career decision self-efficacy. Using person–job fit as measure of career decision-making effectiveness, Singh and Greenhaus (2004) revealed that individuals who used rational career decision-making made more effective job choices. In recent years, some scholars have investigated high school students’ career decision-making processes (e.g. Germeijs & Verschueren, 2007), but there is still limited research about the mechanisms used in making effective career decisions, especially with respect to job changes. Singh and Greenhaus (2004) noted that it would be valuable to understand the context of job change by examining the motivation behind peoples’ decisions to change jobs. They use career self-management as the process by which individuals collect information about themselves, identify a career goal, and engage in career strategies that increase the probability that their career goals will be achieved (Greenhaus, 1987). Orpen (1994) also found that career self-management influences employees’ career success, but no one has examined the relationship between career self-management and job decision effectiveness. The first aim of this study is to address this gap in the literature. Our second objective is to further develop Super’s (1984) statement about the role of vocational self-concept in the career development progress, and evaluate its influence on job choice decision-making. In line with theoretical works (Super, Starishevsky, Matlin, & Jordaan, 1963), we argue that people who have a diffuse sense of self will have difficulty deciding on a career, likely because it makes the self-appraisal task more difficult. In this paper we define this sense of self, relative to vocations, using the concept of vocational self-concept crystallization. Vocational self-concept crystallization is defined as the “degree of clarity and certainty of self-perception with respect to vocationally relevant attitudes, values, interests, needs and abilities” (Barrett & Tinsley, 1977, p. 302). Thus, our intention is to explore the role of both career self-management and vocational self-concept crystallization in job selection decisions. We do this by examining the role of employees’ career self-management before joining their present organization, and by analyzing the mediating role of vocational self-concept crystallization in the relationship between the career self-management and job decision effectiveness, as shown in Fig. 1. Full-size image (22 K) Fig. 1. Hypothesis model.

In an era of increasing job mobility, career change and unemployment (Zhou, 2006), the effectiveness of one’s decision to change jobs takes on added importance. In our study, person–job fit was used to measure job decision effectiveness, in order to explore the effect of employee career self-management and vocational self-concept crystallization on job decision effectiveness. Our results demonstrated that: (1) both employee career self-management and vocational self-concept crystallization positively affect job decision effectiveness; (2) vocational self-concept crystallization partially mediates the relationship between career self-management and job decision effectiveness; and (3) among the three factors of career self-management, career goal development has the greatest impact on both vocational self-concept crystallization and job decision effectiveness. The current study makes several contributions to the literature. First, we extended research on the attraction and retention of talent to include the issue of job decision effectiveness. Job decision effectiveness is not only a key to attracting and retaining employees but is also the foundation behind career growth. Specifically, our research reveals the important roles played by career self-management and vocational self-concept crystallization in the process of realizing high job decision effectiveness. Our study supports Singh and Greenhaus’s (2004) finding that job decision effectiveness is related to one’s career decision-making strategy, self-awareness and environmental awareness. In other words, when people pay more attention to managing their career and have a clear vocational self-concept, they are more likely to make high quality job decisions when changing jobs. Second, our results add career self-management to our understanding of the formation of vocational self-concept crystallization. Super et al. (1963) noted that self-concept crystallization is a product of the interaction of inherited aptitudes, neural and endocrine make-up, opportunity to play various roles, and evaluations of the extent to which the results of role playing meet with the approval of superiors and peers. Our results show that career self-management plays an important role in the formation of persons’ vocational self-concept crystallization. This is an important contribution, because unlike neurons, endocrine make-up and inherited aptitudes, career self-management is within the control of the employee. By simply developing clear career goals an individual can positively affect their own vocational self-concept. Our results also support Super’s (1984) theory on the importance of vocational self-concept crystallization for making effective job decisions. Super’s (1957, p. 196) central hypothesis is that “in choosing an occupation one is, in effect, choosing a means of implementing a self-concept”. In our study, vocational self-concept crystallization explained the greatest proportion of the variance in job decision effectiveness. Our results also provide some indirect support for Tokar et al.’s (2003) finding of a negative relationship between vocational self-concept crystallization and career indecision. Third, this paper supports Noe’s (1996) contention that career self-management can be measured by three dimensions: career exploration, career goal development and career strategy implementation. Our results with respect to the role of career self-management support the Greenhaus, Hawkins, and Brenner (1983) finding that career exploration is related to the development and satisfaction of a career decision. Our research is also compatible with Singh and Greenhaus’ (2004) research on the roles played by self-awareness and environmental awareness in job search effectiveness. The relationship between career goal development and job decision effectiveness can be interpreted by goal-setting theory (Locke, 1968). Since goals affect effort (Locke & Latham, 1990) clear and specific career objectives increase ones’ effort level with respect to exploring various alternative job possibilities that might be relevant to one’s career goals. Finally, career strategies are activities design to help people meet their career goals. The development and implementation of a career strategy should help individuals attain their career goals. Effective career strategies enable people to discover and take advantage of the right development opportunities in a timely manner. In addition to contributing to the literature, this research has practical implications. Our study confirms Noe’s (1996) belief in the importance of employee career development. In turbulent work environments, career self-management can function as a navigation system that guides individual career development, promotes the enhancement of self- and environmental awareness, and helps individuals realize their career goals, all of which lead to higher quality job choice decisions. Care must be taken, however, to ensure that these career self-management activities result in fostering a clear, specific expectation by the employee as to what their vocational self-concept is. This requires career management programs to be tailor-made to the individual employee. Our findings also have implications for organizational recruitment practices. P-J fit is related to a number of positive work-related behaviors, such as performance, citizenship behaviors and other acts promoting organizational development. Consequently, it is in the best interest of organizations to pay attention to and review applicants’ vocational self-concept, and career self-management activities during the recruitment process, A few limitations of this study should be noted. First and foremost is the fact that the methodology used in this study is a retrospective one. Respondents were asked to recall their thoughts at the time they accepted their current job. A big criticism surrounding this methodology is whether people are able to accurately recall events that happened earlier. Perhaps they cannot remember or their responses are colored by events that have happened since accepting their current job. According to Churchill and Iacobucci (2005) two factors that can influence recall of events is how frequently they happen and their level of importance. In this study, changing jobs is an important career decision, so it does not fall into mundane everyday decisions for which recall of a single event might be clouded by other similar events. As for frequency, this form of measurement error was handled by using mobility frequency as a control variable. Miller, Cardinal, and Glick (1997) note that recall methodology is no substitute for longitudinal research and we agree. However, they note that it is often used when the researcher wants to study an event for which they are unable to anticipate the timing. Such is the case in this study. It would have been impossible to get into all previous organizations employing the respondents and anticipate the timing of their decisions to accept a new job. As noted above, the importance of such decisions, as well as our ability to control for the frequency of such decisions within our sample, should mitigate at least some of the measurement error surrounding the variables in this study. Moreover, as is common in survey research, data are cross-sectional rather than longitudinal and subject to common method error variance. Finally, while some may argue that the use of person–job fit as a measure of job decision effectiveness is not ideal, the standardized scale used in this study is widely used. Moreover, it taps the perceptions of person–job fit and, whether accurate or not, it is perceptions that drive behavior. A more objective measure, however, one based on the fit between employee or peer descriptions and a job analysis, may produce different results. In conclusion, our findings, regarding the effects of career self-management and vocational self-concept crystallization on effective job decisions, suggest two things. First, this is not a uniquely American phenomenon. Our findings using Chinese employees are supportive of previous findings involving U.S. workers. Second, our findings suggest that the making of effective job changes is within the control of individual employees, but that it is something they need to work at. Exploring opportunities, setting career goals, and implementing specific plans to attain those goals enable people to make better job choices, but only if these activities result in clarifying a person’s vocational self-concept.