Development of a new scale to measure subjective career success: A mixed-methods study

Abstract

Summary Career success is a main focus of career scholars as well as organizational stakeholders. Historically, career success has been conceptualized and measured in an objective manner, mainly as salary, rank, or number of promotions. However, the changing nature of work has also necessitated a change in the way many employees view success, adding a more subjective component. Although there has been theoretical discussion and calls to develop a comprehensive measure of subjective career success, no contemporary comprehensive quantitative measure exists. The goal of this study was to create and validate a measure of subjective career success, titled the Subjective Career Success Inventory (SCSI). The SCSI includes 24 items that address subjective career success via eight dimensions. The scale was developed and validated through four phases of data collection, beginning with interviews and focus groups, followed by item sorting tasks, then item refinement through confirmatory factor analysis, and finally convergent and discriminant validity quantitative analysis. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

All in the name of work? Nonwork orientations as predictors of salary, career satisfaction, and life satisfaction

“…However, the moderate positive relationship between family orientation and career satisfaction is important from a work-home perspective on careers (Greenhaus & Kossek, 2014) because the result implies that employees who consider family issues when managing their career report higher career satisfaction. This finding is in line with the result from Shockley et al (2015) that having a satisfying personal life is a key dimension of subjective career success for many people. Moreover, other research suggests that subjective career success is higher for people who adopt a whole-life perspective on career development, possibly because they can better satisfy their various needs across life roles which leads to a more positive evaluation of their career (DiRenzo et al, 2015).…”

“…This view is supported by meta-analytic research that has shown that occupational commitment (Lee et al, 2000), job involvement (Brown, 1996), and organizational commitment (Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002) are all positively related to overall job satisfaction and to an aggregate of different indicators of subjective career success (Ng & Feldman, 2014b). This result may occur because stronger work commitment leads to more invested resources in the working role that, in turn, favors the attainment of subjectively valued career outcomes (e.g., recognition, challenging work, influence) (Shockley, Ureksoy, Rodopman, Poteat, & Dullaghan, 2015). Accordingly, to the extent that NWO leads to a depletion of resources that could alternatively be invested in the work role, NWOs might be negatively related to career satisfaction.…”

“…Moreover, because we can presume that high NWO indicate a high investment of resources in nonwork roles, we can expect that people with high NWO would be more likely to achieve their nonwork goals. Based on the assumption that people increasingly take a whole-life perspective when evaluating their career (DiRenzo, Greenhaus, & Weer, 2015;Greenhaus & Kossek, 2014), the extent to which individuals' work fits into their whole life and to extent to which one has been able to achieve important goals outside the work domain constitute also a core component when people evaluate their career satisfaction (Shockley et al, 2015). Based on the enrichment perspective, we propose the following hypothesis:…”

Outcomes of Meaningful Work: A Meta‐Analysis

“…In this case, meaningful work may relate directly to these outcomes but only as one of many factors in people’s lives that predict wellbeing, making relations between meaningful work and general wellbeing relatively smaller. This is consistent with meaningful work’s correlations to life satisfaction (0.33–0.49; Arnoux‐Nicolas et al, , Shockley et al, ), negative affect (−0.04 to −0.32; Allan et al, ; Steger et al, ), and general health (0.24–0.50; Arnold and Walsh, , Soane et al, ), which have been small to large in effect size.…”

Effects of Perceived Organizational Support on Objective and Subjective Career Success via Need Satisfaction: A Study Among French Psychologists

“…Several authors consider success to be multidimensional (Hennequin, ; Shockley, Ureksoy, Rodopman, Poteat, & Dullaghan, ). Expectations are not uniform across employees in terms of their professional success (Hennequin, ).…”