Career adaptability and employee well-being over a two-year period: Investigating cross-lagged effects and their boundary conditions

Abstract

The present study investigates the role of career adaptability in employee well-being within a period of two years. In addition, it aims to shed light on the boundary conditions that potentially determine the use of adaptability resources and thereby may moderate the relationship between career adaptability and work and life outcomes. The study was based on a representative sample of a Swiss working population from the French-and Germanspeaking parts of Switzerland. A total of 1,007 employed adults participated in the survey two years apart. Cross-lagged structural equation modeling analyses demonstrated a positive cross-lagged effect from career adaptability to job and life satisfaction. Conversely, a negative effect was observed with regard to perceived stress in life. In addition, our findings suggest that certain conditions (such as perceived limitation in career prospects and recent experience of significant work-related events) may strengthen some of the cross-lagged relationships between career adaptability and its positive outcomes. The present study contributes to the career construction literature in two ways. First, it tests a comprehensive cross-lagged model to inspect the longer-term effects of career adaptability on work-related and general wellbeing, thereby suggesting that career adaptability may have a role in longer-term adaptation due to its contribution to the maintenance of well-being levels. Second, we respond to a call for action regarding the boundary conditions under which career adaptability differentially predicts work and life outcomes (Rudolph, Lavigne, & Zacher, 2017). By identifying recent significant events and perceived career prospects as moderators, we begin to expose some of the complexities of career adaptability and career construction.

Turning Around to Look Ahead: Views of Vocational Psychology in 2001 and 2019

“…A recent literature review of articles published in the JVB from 1994 to 2016 using co-citation mapping of topics investigated in JVB identified distinct clusters of research questions related to career choice (vocational psychology) and worker well-being (industrial/organizational psychology) along with a scale development cluster representing the recent developments in the Career Adaptability Scale (Byington, Felps, & Baruch, 2018). Thus, Savickas’s (2001b) comments about the gulf between vocational psychology and industrial/organizational psychology remain prevalent, although career adaptability as a construct is bridging the two worlds, with many scholars studying career adaptability for young adults (Guan et al, 2018) and others studying aspects of career adaptability in older employees (e.g., Fasbender, Wöhrmann, Wang, & Klehe, 2019; Urbanaviciute, Udayar, & Rossier, 2019). But this is an exception.…”

The Impact of Stress on Life, Working, and Management Styles: How to Make an Organization Healthier?

“…Healthy organizations can be assessed not only from a financial point of view, but also from a humanistic point of view [9]. The organization's competitiveness is proportional to the experience, knowledge, skills, and competences of its employees [10]. A high level of flexibility and the organization's readiness for understanding are necessary for defining work dynamics and employee health.…”

Illustrating Instrumental Variable Regressions Using the Career Adaptability – Job Satisfaction Relationship

“…Aversive affective events may, for example, activate or consume the career resources needed to show adaptive responses and outcomes (Savickas, 2005; Johnston, 2018). Different from our interindividual perspective, future efforts might therefore investigate how situational and environmental characteristics and personal resources interact in shaping intraindividual changes in adaptation (Rossier et al, 2017; Urbanaviciute et al, 2018).…”