Conceptualizing career insecurity: Toward a better understanding and measurement of a multidimensional construct

Abstract

Applying qualitative and quantitative analyses across four studies and seven samples, we clarified the meaning and developed a new measure of career insecurity. Career insecurity is defined as "an individual's thoughts and worries that central content aspects of one's future career might possibly develop in an undesired manner." The new Multidimensional Career Insecurity Scale (MU-CI-S) measures eight career insecurity (CI) dimensions: (1) CI-Career opportunities; (2) CI-Decreased prestige and qualification requirements of the employment; (3) CI-Contractual employment conditions; (4) CI-Unemployment; (5) CI-Change of workplace; (6) CI-Retirement; (7) CI-Work-nonwork interactions; and (8) CI-Discrepancy between individual resources and work demands. Across all studies, the MU-CI-S showed excellent psychometric properties (e.g., factor loadings of all items and internal consistencies of all dimensions) and high levels of construct validity (e.g., theoretically assumed factorial structure and discriminant and convergent validity).The analyses showed concurrent, predictive, and incremental validity beyond neuroticism and other job and career insecurity measures for predicting health and well-being,This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

The role of leader favoritism, unfairness, and employability in employee psychological withdrawal behavior

“…Secondly, collecting data from two sources (employees and direct supervisor) usually limits the ability to obtain a bigger sample size. While our sample was relatively small, our findings corroborate other studies (e.g., Bani‐Melhem, Shamsudin, et al, 2023; Spurk et al, 2021, 2022). Despite this, we recommend that more studies be replicated with a larger sample to validate our exploratory results.…”

Industry 4.0 deployment for circular economy performance—Understanding the role of green procurement and remanufacturing activities

“…Significantly, the degree to which, an organization implements I4.0 does have a positive impact on circular economy performance (β = .318), SmartPLS 4.0 software package was used to conduct bootstrapping mediation to assess the indirect impact of the relationship between a firm's degree of I4.0 deployment and circular performance through its functional effectiveness of green procurement and remanufacturing activities (Hair et al, 2014). The analysis estimated the indirect effects, using a bias-corrected bootstrapping method, yielding 5000 resamples (Ghadge et al, 2022;Spurk et al, 2022). Because it is based on stronger assumptions of predictive significance and normalcy, this kind of mediation analysis may test several hypotheses concerning mediation using a single model.…”

Profiles of early career insecurity and its outcomes in adolescence: A four‐wave longitudinal study

“…Career/employment insecurity can be defined as an individual's overall concern regarding the attainment, continuity, and stability of one's career or employment manifesting, for example, as worries about career decision‐making, entrance to the workforce, and job loss or unemployment (see De Witte et al, 2016; Hayden et al, 2021; Karamessini et al, 2019; Sampson et al, 1998; Shoss, 2017; Spurk et al, 2016, 2022). Career/employment insecurity can be a notable stressor for individuals in today's turbulent labor market (De Witte et al, 2016; Shoss, 2017; Sverke et al, 2002, 2019), particularly for young people because they often lack work experience, making them more susceptible to feelings of insecurity (Karamessini et al, 2019; Klug, 2020).…”

“…Earlier research on career/employment insecurity has mainly focused on working adults (Griep et al, 2021; Kim & Kim, 2018; Kinnunen et al, 2014; Klug, 2020; Klug, Bernhard‐Oettel, et al, 2019; Klug, Drobnič, & Brockmann, 2019) but here we propose that this stressor may cause worries even before individuals enter the workforce. A core feature in such perceptions of insecurity is an individual's uncertainty about the future in relation to their employment and career prospects over the life course (De Witte et al, 2016; Spurk et al, 2022). This, in turn, signifies that individuals may experience such uncertainty and insecurity also at earlier age, for example, during career planning‐ and decision‐making in adolescence (Gati & Kulscár, 2021; Hirschi & Koen, 2021; Kiuru et al, 2021; Sampson et al, 1998).…”

“…Exploring this association means that, in addition to age‐normative experience (see Havighurst, 1972; Nurmi, 1993; Seiffge‐Krenke & Gelhaar, 2008), we also regard ECI as a potential stressor for adolescents. There is already convincing evidence showing that career/employment insecurity is a notable stressor with various negative outcomes among working adults (e.g., Cheng & Chan, 2008; De Witte et al, 2016; Hayden et al, 2021; Spurk et al, 2016, 2022; Sverke et al, 2002, 2019). We assume that this same stressfulness also concerns ECI experienced in adolescence.…”