This paper examines how employees’ career aspirations benefit organizations, i.e., contribute to strengthening organizational capabilities and connections, by means of two aspects of contemporary work: proactive and relational. Data were collected from alumni of a public university in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in two waves with a 1-year time lag. The results showed that employees with career aspirations strengthen: (a) organizational capabilities; and (b) organizational connections through their instrumental and psychosocial relationships. Interestingly, although employees’ career aspirations were positively associated with taking charge, we did not find that taking charge mediates the relationship between career aspirations and employees’ individual contributions to organizational capabilities. This study is the first to examine how individual career aspirations benefit organizations, and it discusses the results in light of their novel contributions to theory and practice.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role of pay in the relationship between employee ambition and taking charge behavior, and its subsequent effects on employee career satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach A two-wave quantitative investigation was conducted among alumni of a large public university in the Netherlands. Findings The results show that taking charge behavior mediates the positive relationship between employee ambition and career satisfaction. They also show that pay positively moderates this mediation, such that the relationship between employee ambition and taking charge behavior is stronger when ambitious employees receive an increase in pay, leading to increased career satisfaction. Conversely, a decrease in pay does not moderate ambitious employees’ taking charge behavior and the impact on their career satisfaction. Research limitations/implications The study draws on self-report data collected in one country: the Netherlands. Practical implications The study highlights the importance of pay for higher job involvement, demonstrating its impact on taking charge behavior among employees with higher levels of ambition. Originality/value This is the first empirical study to examine the impact of pay on employees’ taking charge behavior and the subsequent implications for career satisfaction.

Why does becoming more aware of yourself and your wider work environment enable you to experience greater meaningful work? Drawing upon mindfulness-to-meaning and interpersonal sensemaking theories, we argue that in a state of awareness individuals are cognitively flexible and are able to interpret relevant interpersonal cues in ways that enable them to experience their work as meaningful. Study 1 is a quantitative diary study over a period of six weeks that tests the state-level relationships between awareness, cognitive flexibility, and meaningful work. We find that awareness is, directly and indirectly, related to three of four dimensions of meaningful work via cognitive flexibility. Study 2 qualitatively explores what individuals cognitively attend to in the social context when they reflect upon the most meaningful work events that occurred each week, over four weeks. Findings reveal that ambivalent work events are experienced as meaningful when individuals attend to interpersonal cues in their work context that convey a sense of worth, care, and/or safety. Overall, our paper advances knowledge about meaningful work as a state-level experience that is facilitated by awareness, cognitive flexibility, and cues from the social context. It shows the importance of integrating meaningful work, mindfulness, and interpersonal sensemaking literatures.

This study seeks to examine how and when job crafting trickles down from leaders to followers in a team context. Drawing on social learning theory, we hypothesize that team leaders’ job resources mediate the relationship between team leaders’ job crafting and team members’ job crafting. Empowering leadership is proposed to strengthen the mediation effect, such that under a stronger (higher) empowering leadership style the relationship between team leaders’ job resources and team members’ job crafting is further strengthened, thereby positively influencing the overall mediated relationship. We tested our multilevel moderated mediation model with leader-subordinate paired data from 64 work teams in seven Chinese enterprises over two time periods. The results support our hypothesized mediated relationship; however, contrary to our prediction, we find that empowering leadership negatively moderates the relationship between team leaders’ job resources and team members’ job crafting, and weakens the mediation effect of team leaders’ job resources. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Although the globalization of the academic labor market offers many advantages to academic institutions and their students, less is known about its (dis)advantages for academic expatriates’ careers. This paper seeks explanations of how academic expatriates aspire to invest in their careers in emerging economies by engaging both with the evidence of intelligent career theory, and with the literature on academic expatriation to emerging economies and on higher education. On the basis of these different streams of the literature, this paper identifies and outlines the institutional practices that could influence academic expatriates’ careers. This paper suggests that future research on academic expatriation to emerging economies can develop in at least three directions, namely, (a) the institutional practices at academic institutions in emerging economies, (b) the careers of academic expatriates, and (c) a reciprocal relationship between institutional practices and the individual careers of academic expatriates.

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Purpose – This article presents a summary of the interview with Rino Schreuder, managing director of the European Management Development (EMD) Centre, founder and chairman of the European Executive Development Network, Editor of the Dutch Management Development Journal, and Editorial Board member of the UK journals Development & Learning in Organizations and Leadership & Organization Development Journal. Schreuder has over 20 years of experience working for Fortune 500 and other firms in the area of management development and training. Design/methodology/approach – The interview is conducted by three independent interviewers. Findings – In this interview, Rino Schreuder shares his perspective on the present situation and the future of the Dutch learning and development market. Drawing on a parallel between the properties of the Dutch culture and problems in the learning market, Schreuder highlights the importance of more integrated ways of working between learning providers. He also calls for rethinking the role of learning professionals and chief learning officers (CLOs) in organizations and the organizational practices that measure learning outcomes through return on investments (ROI). Originality/value – The paper presents valuable insights of a leading professional in the field of management development and training into the future of learning and development in The Netherlands.

With the growing interest in the joint effects of individual and contextual factors in predicting team member proactivity, this paper examines why and when pursuing one's career calling can lead to team member proactivity. Drawing on the Work as a Calling Theory, we propose that “living out a calling” explains why employees' perceived career calling positively relates to team member proactivity and especially when the employee receives high levels of mentoring support. Our hypotheses are tested using a multisource and time‐lagged study design with a sample of 296 dyads of Chinese employees and their direct supervisors. We found support for the mediating role of living out a calling (Time 2) in the positive relationship between perceiving a calling (Time 1) and team member proactivity (Time 3). Mentoring (Time 2) moderated the perceiving a calling and living out a calling link such that when employees received more mentoring, the relationship was positive, whereas under lower levels of mentoring, the relationship was negative. Similarly, the indirect relationship between perceiving a calling and team member proactivity through living out a calling was positive at higher levels of mentoring, but the relationship was negative at lower levels of mentoring.