Striving to contribute to the greater good: Changes in self-transcendent versus self-enhancement career strivings during a global pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, as a major crisis event, could have changed people's career goals. We examined change trajectories in self-transcendent versus self-enhancement career strivings during the COVID-19 pandemic among 662 employees from Germany with eight measurement waves across 7 months. Building on event systems theory and the literature on prosocial motivation and altruism, we examined whether affective and cognitive self-focused and other-focused reactions to the pandemic (i.e., personal distress, empathic concern, and perceived responsibility) predicted differences in changes in career strivings. Analyses with growth curve mixture modelling suggest three distinct groups in terms of stable (N = 537), declining (N = 12), and increasing (N = 113) self-transcendent versus self-enhancement career strivings. Controlling various individual and contextual factors, membership in the increasing group was predicted by more empathic concern for people negatively affected by the COVID crisis. In addition, less dispositional self-concern, more other-concern, less job insecurity, experiencing job loss and less career impact of the pandemic predicted an increasing self-transcendent versus self-enhancement career strivings trajectory compared to other trajectories. The results imply that career strivings can change during major crisis events, predicted by empathic reactions to the effects of the crisis and personal dispositions and contextual factors.