Journal of Vocational Behavior最新文献

With the broadening scope of research inquiries into work, employment, industrial and organizational processes, and vocational development addressing issues with systemic oppression, there is a pressing need for discussion on using research methodologies as tools for catalyzing liberatory change. This article is underpinned by liberation theories and perspectives, which critically examine the Euro-American systems of thoughts that justify and perpetuate decisions, conditions, and culture that may exclude marginalized knowers, knowledge, and ways of knowing. Building on the work of other liberation scholars, we propose a new framework of community-engaged vocational research methodologies, which expands the existing methodologies: a) from distance to proximity, b) from academic capitalism to community vocational outcomes, c) from researcher authority to community partnership, and d) from theoretical knowledge to actionable knowledge. We discuss guiding Global Majority values to address tensions that may arise from expanding and complicating the traditional boundaries of methodologies. The framework also shows expansion through intersectional, interdisciplinary, anti-oppressive, and action-oriented approaches. With the introduction of this framework, we invite readers to broaden the scope of research methodologies and transform them into processes and tools for people who generate, need, and use the community-based knowledge of work and working.

Owing to the growing emphasis on self-managed career patterns, career competencies as essential personal career resources play a vital role in several work and career outcomes. Despite extensive research on career competencies in the last three decades, it lacks a consistent theorization and often relies on diverse theoretical perspectives. To synthesize our scholarly knowledge of career competencies, we conducted a systematic literature review of 80 peer-reviewed articles from 1985 to November 2022. In doing so, we understand how the construct of career competencies has been conceptualized and measured, review prominent theoretical perspectives adopted, and build a theoretical model based on a self-regulation perspective. This review helped us identify significant research limitations and locate promising research gaps. Building on these insights, we craft a future research agenda highlighting opportunities for conceptual, theoretical, and empirical advancement of career competencies research.

Many studies have assumed that workplace hurdles have uniform effects on innovative behavior and that motivational mechanisms are the key explanation. Guided by the conservation of resources theory, this study argues that different subgroups of workplace hurdles might relate to innovative behavior differently and that the mechanism underlying the relationship between workplace hurdles and innovative behavior can be informed by an organizational attachment perspective. Meta-analytical data from 544 samples (N = 188,572) showed that (a) social hurdles were more strongly and negatively related to innovative behavior than were task and organizational hurdles, (b) the absence of favorable conditions was more strongly and negatively related to innovative behavior than were proximal stressors, and (c) hindrance stressors were more strongly and negatively related to innovative behavior than were challenge stressors. The path analysis results also provide support for the proposed theoretical process: workplace hurdles weaken organizational attachment, which in turn lowers innovative behavior. Crucially, organizational attachment remained a significant mediator even when I controlled for the mediating effects of job and creative motivation. Moderator analyses showed that the study relationships were generally robust.

Social networks are known to be critical for enhancing employees' work outcomes. However, we still know relatively less about how employees take charge of their networks to reap network, work, and career-related benefits and how we can intervene in this process. Based on the self-regulation theory and the networking literature, we developed and evaluated the effectiveness of a network crafting self-training intervention. In a quasi-experimental research design of 88 participants in the experimental group and 59 participants in the control group, our results revealed that, after the intervention, employees reported an increase in three trained network crafting actions (i.e., using existing contacts, establishing new contacts, and maintaining professional contacts). Those participating in the intervention reported higher levels of two career outcomes (i.e., career autonomy and perceived marketability). Moreover, we found that through the three trained network crafting actions, the intervention indirectly enhanced participants' network size and diversity as well as their work performance (e.g., task performance and problem-solving). Our study provides insights into a means to smartly shape one's social networks. Our intervention offers an effective management tool that employees and managers can use to guide individuals' network crafting actions and apply them in their daily work context.

Career transitions are becoming increasingly prevalent across the lifespan, and research on the topic has proliferated in recent years. However, the literature is fragmented across disciplines and has primarily focused on specific one-off transitions (e.g., school-to-work, unemployment-to-work, work-to-work, work-to-retirement). To reconcile these different perspectives, we conducted a review of processual career transition research, analyzing 93 quantitative longitudinal studies in this area. We problematize and synthesize the existing literature focusing on four main challenges: (1) an overemphasis on normative and predictable transitions, (2) a fragmented use of theories, (3) a lack of focus on behavioral antecedents and outcomes, and (4) a lack of attention to boundary conditions. Building on these literature critiques, we formulate a future research agenda across five directions by integrating the existing studies into a self-regulation framework of career transitions. This review thereby contributes to creating a more consistent and integrative understanding of career transitions across the lifespan.

Vocational interest research has seen a resurgence in the applied psychology literature, given evidence showing its predictive validity for key work outcomes. There is a need for integrative, reliable, and valid measures to advance research in this space. While the RIASEC model of vocational interests (Holland, 1997) has been the most widely used and studied typology for the assessment of six broad interest types, more recent work with the SETPOINT model (Su et al., 2019) suggests that eight interest dimensions provide better fit to interest data and demonstrates stronger criterion-related validity evidence. However, to date, no short scales are available for measuring the broad SETPOINT dimensions. We developed three short scales with 8, 24, and 41 items, respectively, that capture the eight dimensions of the SETPOINT model in an integrative manner. Using a sample of 972 full-time working adults assessed across two-time points over five weeks, we validated these three short scales following robust psychometric analyses. These scales are shown to have good psychometric properties. The development and validation of the three short scales help close the operational gap for the SETPOINT model and further facilitate the study of interests and use of interest measures in academic and applied settings.

When employees are living a calling at work, they tend to experience greater well-being and the organization also benefits. Despite the integral role of the organization, research has not sufficiently explored what organizational factors might help employees live a calling. Drawing on a tripartite theoretical framework of living a calling— characterized by destiny, personal significance, and social significance— and Work as a Calling Theory, we hypothesize that needs-supplies fit, empowerment, and servant leadership are positively related to living a calling. Further, we hypothesize that the benefits of living a calling extend to the organization via a negative association with deviant behaviors, a positive association with LMX relationships, and that consistency of interests (a facet of grit) is a boundary condition of the proposed relationships. Through testing our hypotheses in a multi-wave, multi-source field study of employees and supervisors in a park district, we find that needs-supplies fit and empowerment facilitate living a calling in an organization. Further, consistency of interests moderates the relationship between living a calling and deviant behaviors and LMX. Our findings indicate how employers might help employees live their callings, and, in turn, mitigate negative and attain positive outcomes.

Integrating the reciprocity lens and the componential model of creative process, we develop novel theoretical insights regarding how and when empowering leadership promotes employee creativity. In a scenario-based experimental study of 198 participants (Study 1), we found that empowering leadership was positively related to employees' felt obligation for constructive change, especially for employees who had a high level of organizational identification. In a three-wave field survey study of 221 employees and their direct supervisors (Study 2), we found that organizational identification strengthened the positive effects of empowering leadership on employees' felt obligation for constructive change. Furthermore, employees' felt obligation for constructive change was positively associated with job crafting behavior, subsequently employee creativity. Our research generates valuable insights into how and when empowering leadership enhances employee creativity.

Although work is increasingly globalized and mediated by technology, little research has accumulated on the role of culture in shaping individuals' preferences regarding the segmentation or integration of their work and family roles. This study examines the relationships between gender egalitarianism (the extent a culture has a fluid understanding of gender roles and promotes gender equality), gender, and boundary management preferences across 27 countries/territories. Based on a sample of 9362 employees, we found that the pattern of the relationship between gender egalitarianism and boundary management depends on the direction of segmentation preferences. Individuals from more gender egalitarian societies reported lower preferences to segment family-from-work (i.e., protect the work role from the family role); however, gender egalitarianism was not directly associated with preferences to segment work-from-family. Moreover, gender was associated with both boundary management directions such that women preferred to segment family-from-work and work-from-family more so than did men. As theorized, we found gender egalitarianism moderated the relationship between gender and segmentation preferences such that women's desire to protect family from work was stronger in lower (vs. higher) gender egalitarianism cultures. Contrary to expectations, women reported a greater preference to protect work from family than men regardless of gender egalitarianism. Implications for boundary management theory and the cross-national work-family literature are discussed.

Research on vocational interests has played an important role in understanding workforce gender disparities. However, current understanding about gender differences in interests is primarily limited to broad RIASEC interest categories that average together differences in narrower interest scales. This study took a refined approach to examine gender differences in 30 basic vocational interests (e.g., medical science, management, social science) using a very large and diverse U.S. sample (N = 1,283,110). Results revealed that gender differences in basic interests are more complex than what can be captured using broad interests alone. There was meaningful variability in the pattern of mean gender differences across basic interests, even those related to the same RIASEC category. Turning to the labor market, we found that gender differences in basic interests showed high convergence with men and women's employment rates in corresponding occupations (r = 0.66). Despite this convergence, there were also discrepancies such that women's actual employment fell short of interest-based predictions in many high-status occupations and in jobs that involve working with tools and machinery. In contrast, fewer men were employed in prosocial occupations than predicted based on their interests. Finally, we examined how gender differences in basic interests varied across intersecting age, ethnicity, and education subgroups. The most striking finding was that gender differences in interests were considerably larger at lower education levels, pointing to specific educational tracks where applied initiatives might have the greatest impact in improving gender representation in the workforce.