Proactive engagement in career management behaviors is becoming increasingly important in today's career environment (Stickland, 1996). Given the increased self-directedness of contemporary careers, taking charge of one's own career development is pivotal for employees as well as university students in preparation for career transitions and for enhancing employability (Hall, 2002).
Empirical research supports the relation of proactive career behaviors, such as networking or career initiative, with objective and subjective career successes (Fuller & Marler, 2009), which makes it imperative to better understand why and when people are more or less likely to be actively engaged in career management. Existing research showed that a number of different aspects ranging from more distal variables, such as parental influences (Kracke, 1997) or basic personality traits (Reed, Bruch, & Haase, 2004) to more proximal constructs such as self-efficacy beliefs (Creed, Patton, & Prideaux, 2007) or possible future work selves (Strauss, Griffin, & Parker, 2012) predict proactive career behaviors. Recently, Parker, Bindl, and Strauss (2010) proposed that proactivity directly depends on different proactive motivation states. There is little empirical research, however, that addresses how proactive motivation affects career management behaviors when simultaneously considering a system of motivation, to what extent motivation mediates the effects of more distal variables, or under what conditions such effects occur.
Based on the model forwarded by Parker et al. (2010), we conducted two independent short-term longitudinal studies to investigate (1) how “can do”, “reason to”, and “energized to” components of proactive motivation, viewed in conjunction as a motivational system, predict proactive career behaviors; (2) whether the effects of proactive personality on proactive career behaviors are mediated by “can do” motivation; and (3) to what extent the effects of “can do” motivation on proactive career behaviors are contingent upon the degree of career choice decidedness.
1.1. Proactive motivation as predictor of career behaviors
In line with Parker et al. (2010), we propose that inter-individual differences in the degree of engagement in proactive career behaviors can meaningfully be explained by a person's career-related motivation and that proactive motivation acts as the primary proximal predictor of proactive behaviors in terms of goal generation and goal striving. While individual differences in skills, biological functions, and contextual affordances have received a good deal of attention in the career development literature, individual differences in motivation have been relatively neglected. One of the key advantages of focusing on motivation is that it rejects generalized, trait-like conceptions of competence and effective functioning in favor of taking into account “particular contexts and value systems that specify what goals are ‘relevant,’ what means are ‘appropriate,’ and what developmental outcomes are ‘positive’” (Ford, 1992). Based on a qualitative review of the proactivity literature, Parker et al. proposed three distinct motivation states that are pivotal in explaining individual differences in proactive behavior: (1) “can do” motivation refers to expectancy such as self-efficacy perceptions, control perceptions, or perceived costs of action; (2) “reason to” motivation is concerned with the question of why individuals select or persist with particular proactive goals and is based on valence; and (3) “energized to” motivation refers to the role of affect in setting and striving for proactive goals.
While research investigated distinct motivational predictors, such as self-efficacy beliefs (Creed et al., 2007), perceived career barriers (Gushue, Clarke, Pantzer, & Scanlan, 2006), or degree of goal clarity (Rogers, Creed, & Ian Glendon, 2008) in relation to specific proactive career behaviors (e.g., career exploration), no available study investigated how a more comprehensive set of motivational components predicts proactive career behaviors in terms of their unique and combined effects. Moreover, while some aspects of motivation (e.g., self-efficacy beliefs) received a fair amount of attention, other important motivational components, such as context beliefs, affect, or nature of goals, have often been neglected in the empirical literature. In the following paragraphs, we review the literature regarding the three motivational components proposed by Parker et al. in relation to proactive career behaviors. We separated our presentation of “can do” motivation into self-efficacy and context beliefs (Ford, 1992) because they represent distinct components of “can do” motivation. While Ford (1992) refers them as capability beliefs and context beliefs, confusion will be avoided by employing the more commonly employed ‘self-efficacy’ beliefs instead of ‘capability beliefs’ in the remainder of this paper.
1.1.1. “Can do” motivation: Self-efficacy beliefs
Being proactive involves two kinds of prediction — one involves predicting events before they unfold and the second involves predicting how a course of proactive action will influence unfolding events. Changing a situation that may not yet exist toward a more favorable anticipated outcome involves a high degree of psychological risk due to the relative uncertainty of the unfolding events and how to change them before they occur. High confidence in one's predictions and capacities to effect change are, therefore, especially important (Parker et al., 2010). Research on the role of self-efficacy beliefs in career development is relatively well-documented, especially within the context of the social cognitive career theory (SCCT; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 2002). Career self-efficacy beliefs are regarded as a pivotal aspect of SCCT, which is theoretically presumed to indirectly impact one's career choice and performance via career interests. Research suggests that higher self-efficacy is associated with greater involvement in environmental and self-exploratory activities (Blustein, 1989) and more personal initiative (Frese, Garst, & Fay, 2007). A meta-analytic study by Kanfer, Wanberg, and Kantrowitz (2001) showed that job-search self-efficacy is positively related to proactive job search. In a study with young adults, Nurmi, Salmela-Aro, and Koivist (2002) found that those with greater self-efficacy toward achieving personal goals were more likely to succeed in dealing with the transition from school to work. In sum, theoretical reasoning and empirical findings suggest that greater self-efficacy concerning goal achievement enhances ones' engagement in behaviors that facilitate goal achievement.
Hypothesis 1. Career self-efficacy beliefs are related to increased engagement in proactive career behaviors.
1.1.2. “Can do” motivation: Context beliefs
People not only make appraisals regarding their own abilities but also regarding the circumstances that could possibly help or hinder their goal pursuit. For personal initiative it is important that people not only feel competent regarding their capabilities but also believe that their behavior will lead to the desired outcome and that one has some degree of control in the situation (Fay and Frese, 2001 and Parker et al., 2010). Researchers used different labels to describe these kinds of beliefs about the context such as barriers (i.e., negative context beliefs; e.g., Swanson, Daniels, & Tokar, 1996) or contextual supports (i.e., positive context beliefs; e.g., Kenny et al., 2007), but they consistently suggested that the context plays an important role in career development above and beyond self-efficacy beliefs. Initial empirical findings support the theoretical arguments and showed that perceived career barriers among adolescents are related to less career exploration (Gushue et al., 2006).
Hypothesis 2. Negative context beliefs (inferred from perceived career barriers) are related to decreased engagement in proactive career behaviors.
1.1.3. “Reason to” motivation: Autonomous goals
Apart from “can do” motivation, it is important to consider why individuals formulate or persist with a particular goal. People are more likely to set and strive for goals if they perceive themselves as autonomous and find the goal intrinsically motivating (i.e., enjoyable, interesting) or have internalized or integrated the importance of the goal into their self-concept (i.e., feel that the goal is an integral part of who they are) (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Conversely, people would be less motivated to pursue goals that are extrinsically motivated and externally regulated (i.e., external demands and rewards) or representing introjected goals (i.e., motivated by contingent self-esteem) (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Similarly, selecting a self-concordant goal (i.e., a goal that corresponds to personal core interests and values) increases the probability of goal attainment (Porfeli and Vondracek, 2007 and Sheldon and Elliot, 1999). Koestner, Lekes, Powers, and Chicoine (2002) conducted a meta-analysis and concluded that goals established in harmony with one's intrinsic values and interests, as opposed to disharmonious goals set by other people, greatly affected individuals' goal progression.
Hypothesis 3. Autonomous career goals are related to increased engagement in proactive career behaviors.
1.1.4. “Energized to” motivation: Positive affect
Despite their importance, considerations of emotions are fairly rare in the pertinent career development literatures (Kidd, 1998) and our study contributes to this body of knowledge by investigating emotions as part of proactive motivation. Theoretically, emotions work as approach or avoidance “energizers” in motivational systems and activated positive emotions specifically promote the setting and striving for proactive goals (Ford, 1992 and Parker et al., 2010). Anticipated positive emotions attached to goals are conceived as an energizing aspect of motivation promoting goal achievement (Pekrun, 1992). Bagozzi and Pieters (1998) found that stronger anticipatory emotions were associated with more planning and decisions to spend energy on goal pursuit, which in turn contributed to goal-directed behaviors. Similarly, studies showed that positive affectivity is positively related to proactive behaviors aimed at increasing person–environment fit such as networking, information seeking, or job-change negotiations (Ashforth, Sluss, & Saks, 2007) and that positive activated mood predicted career-related proactive goal regulation among medical students (Bindl, Parker, Totterdell, & Hagger-Johnson, 2011).
Hypothesis 4. Expected positive emotions at work are related to increased engagement in proactive career behaviors.
1.2. Investigating antecedents and conditional effects of “can do” motivation
Apart from investigating the direct effects of motivation on proactive career behaviors, it is also important to consider the more distal antecedents of proactive motivation and the conditions under which motivation exerts a positive effect on proactive career behaviors (i.e., mediators and moderators). In Study 2, we focused on “can do” motivation (i.e., self-efficacy and context beliefs) as mediators because self-efficacy beliefs have received a large amount of attention in theoretical and empirical career research (Betz, 2007). We aim to contribute to this literature by investigating how self-efficacy mediates the effects of more distal variables on career behaviors and under what conditions such effects occur. Moreover, we also pay attention to “can do” motivation in terms of context beliefs in order to understand their effects above and beyond those of self-efficacy beliefs.
The relatively stable disposition to effect environmental change by taking personal initiative in a broad range of activities and situations (i.e., proactive personality, proactivity) is considered a pivotal antecedent of more context-specific proactive behaviors (Crant, 2000 and Fuller and Marler, 2009). Meta-analyses showed that proactive personality is positively related to networking behaviors, career initiative, as well as to subjective and objective indicators of career success (Fuller and Marler, 2009 and Thomas et al., 2010). However, while direct effects of proactivity on career behaviors have been established, the reason for and mediating mechanism of this association have not been closely investigated. Contributing to this literature and drawing on the theoretical framework of Parker et al. (2010), we argue that more distal personal variables, such as proactivity, exert their effects on proactive career behaviors partially because they affect more proximal proactive motivation. In support, empirical studies showed positive relations of proactive personality to “can do” motivation in terms of self-efficacy beliefs (Fuller & Marler, 2009).
Hypothesis 5. The effects of proactivity on proactive career behaviors are partially mediated by (a) higher career self-efficacy beliefs; and (b) more favorable context beliefs.
Examining conditional effects, we argue that the degree to which “can do” motivation affects career behaviors is dependent upon the degree of career decidedness. Merely possessing favorable motivation and believing one has capabilities and a supportive context might not be enough to prompt proactive career behavior if one is lacking a clear career goal. Career decidedness is pivotal within the vocational identity literature (Porfeli, Lee, Vondracek, & Weigold, 2011) and indicates clarity and certainty about future career goals that could channel and focus proactive motivation toward specific career behaviors. Supporting those arguments, empirical research showed that people put more effort in goal striving behaviors if goals are specific and if they are committed to their goal (Locke & Latham, 2002) and that career decidedness is positively related to career planning and exploration (Hirschi, Niles, & Akos, 2011).
Hypothesis 6. The effects of (a) self-efficacy beliefs and (b) context beliefs on proactive career behavior are moderated by career decidedness, such that stronger effects are associated with higher career decidedness.
The current career context stresses the importance of proactively managing one's career, a task already relevant for university students in terms of career preparation as they face the transition to work or specialized graduate degrees. The present studies examined how students' motivation in terms of “can do”, “reason to” and “energized to” motivation affects the degree to which they are engaged in proactive career behaviors (i.e., career engagement), to what extent the effects of proactive personality on career engagement are mediated by “can do” motivation, and whether those effects are conditional upon the degree of career decidedness. By focusing on proactive motivation our studies address an understudied topic in the career literature and also make a more general contribution to the literatures on proactivity and proactive behavior. More specifically, the results of Study 1 confirmed that self-efficacy beliefs, perceived career barriers, autonomous career goals, and positive expected emotions at work form a system of related but distinct motivational states that have a significant effect on career engagement above and beyond the environmental effect of a developmental deadline (Heckhausen & Tomasik, 2002). While motivation in terms of self-efficacy beliefs received a fair amount of attention in career research, our study contributes to this literature by showing that the less investigated motivational aspects of emotions and goals exert an effect on proactive career behaviors that goes above and beyond self-efficacy beliefs. As such, our study supports the results of other studies that demonstrated the importance of goals and emotions for human functioning and performance (Ashforth et al., 2007 and Deci and Ryan, 2000). The small but growing body of promising research in this area supports continued study to achieve a more complete understanding of motivational variables in relation to career development. Our results also confirm previous research showing the importance of self-efficacy beliefs for career development (Kanfer et al., 2001 and Lent et al., 2002) and advance this literature by showing that self-efficacy is a strong predictor for career engagement even after controlling for other motivational variables.
Perhaps the most intriguing finding of Study 1, confirmed by Study 2, was the positive effects of perceived career barriers on career engagement, contradicting theoretical accounts and empirical research, which showed that barriers are a negative factor in career development that might diminish career engagement (Gushue et al., 2006). However, our studies suggest that when considered alongside other motivation variables, particularly self-efficacy beliefs as in Study 2, the opposite might be true. This finding might be explained by motivation intensity theory (Brehm & Self, 1989) which states that perceived task difficulty increases effort up to a maximum where too much difficulty leads to task disengagement. Supporting empirical studies showed, for example, that people exert more task related effort when faced with a more challenging compared to an easy goal (Silvia, McCord, & Gendolla, 2010), suggesting that perceived barriers may not necessarily keep one from goal pursuit unless one encounters a clear sign of failure. In this light, we can assume that students who perceive career barriers experience career management as a challenging task and hence muster and expend more effort in career engagement if they simultaneously possess high self-efficacy beliefs.
Presumably, these findings may be a reflection of varying identity statuses of the participants. A recent study on vocational identity (Porfeli et al., 2011) found that a small fraction of university students reported a greater level of reconsideration of their careers despite their strong commitment to a specific career, while another subgroup also reported moderately high level of reconsideration of their careers without a specific career goal in mind. Reconsideration, in that study, was conceptualized as reflecting self-doubt and flexibility. These findings suggest that people can still be doubtful with their goals regardless of their goal certainty. Thus, it could be that some individuals are in the status where they just “go for it” by asserting a career goal despite believing that barriers await them along the way, whereas others may be in a status where they have not made a decision “because of” those negative context beliefs. In fact, this can be seen as a natural process in goal pursuit because many people tend to think in terms of probabilities. That is, if one sees the probability of succeeding exceeds that of failing, one could keep striving for the goal. Future studies should try to address the complex interactions between motivational components and how different patterns of motivation affect people's career behaviors. It would also be interesting to investigate what the optimal level of perceived difficulty is that motivates people for career management. On a more general level, this result points to the important implication that a “negative” career development construct (i.e., perceived barriers) might exert positive effects under certain circumstances. It may be true, in fact, that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Future research could include constructs like heartiness to further test this proposition.
Study 2 investigated the mediating and moderating conditions of “can do” motivation. Previous research established direct effects of proactive personality on proactive behaviors (Fuller and Marler, 2009 and Thomas et al., 2010) and the current study adds to this literature by showing that the effects on career engagement are partially mediated by higher self-efficacy beliefs. As such, our study also contributes to the career self-efficacy literature by showing that self-efficacy beliefs partially depend on a proactive disposition. Moreover, Study 2 showed that the effects of self-efficacy on career engagement are conditional upon the degree of career decidedness and suggest that self-efficacy beliefs have to be “goal-oriented” to function as a motivator. Contrary to expectation, perceived barriers did not mediate the effects of proactivity and its effects were not conditional upon career decidedness. Our results indicate that, in contrast to self-efficacy beliefs, perceived barriers are not significantly affected by proactivity and possibly depend more on other personality characteristics such as core self-evaluations (Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2011). Future studies should investigate this possibility. Our results also support the herein applied notion that “can do” motivation needs to be conceptualized as consisting of two distinct components, namely self-efficacy beliefs (capability beliefs according to Ford, 1992) and context beliefs (e.g., perceived barriers) as they represent motivational factors with distinct antecedents and consequences. We encourage future career research to consider context beliefs alongside self-efficacy beliefs in order to reflect a more comprehensive understanding of human agency than is obtained by solely focusing on efficacy beliefs.
5.1. Limitations
Limitations of our study include that only self-report measures were applied and that we did not measure actual career engagement behaviors. Moreover, this approach induces a shared method bias that might inflate the observed relation among the constructs. Although we used a longitudinal design, we did not measure all variables at each point in time. Hence, we cannot establish causality between the different measures and it is possible that successful self-directed career management also promotes the emergence of a more positive motivation. Future studies might investigate more dynamic developmental interaction patterns of motivation and proactive career behaviors. Finally, our sample was restricted to university students and different results might be obtained among working professionals. Particularly, we may find different associations between negative context beliefs and career engagement behaviors among older adults. Because the participants in our study were rather early in their career lives, they could likely be bolder in career pursuits than older adults, meaning that even if the probability of success taking everything into account is 51% (versus 49% failure) they go for their dreams. People with substantial work experience who likely have a better understanding of how barriers function in their goal achievement may be more hesitant than younger adults in engaging in career-related behaviors.
5.2. Conclusion and practice implications
To summarize, our results suggest that students' motivation may play an important role in the emergence of self-directed career management. Specifically, we show that four motivational states have significant effects on career management, that self-efficacy beliefs partially mediate the effects of a more distal personality variable (i.e., proactivity) on career engagement, and that the effects of self-efficacy beliefs on engagement emerge only among students with an at least moderate level of career decidedness.
Given the importance of proactive career behaviors for positive career development, our studies have implications for career counseling practice. First, our results imply that practitioners could focus on enhancing students' career motivation. For example, Vondracek, Ferreira, and Santos (2010) proposed that Ford's Motivational System Theory (MST; Ford, 1992) is well-suited to be applied by career counselors in the current dynamic world of career and work. MST focuses on the same motivation states as the herein used model of proactive motivation by Parker et al. (2010) and hence seems particularly useful in light of our results. Second, we encourage career interventions that aim at increasing career choice clarity and decidedness among students (Brown, Lent, & Miller, 2005) in addition to focusing on motivation in order to ensure that proactive motivation is in fact stimulating proactive career behaviors.
