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The purpose of this paper is to develop and investigate the idea that self-profiling and career control by temporary agency workers (TAWs) in low-skill jobs are positively related to informal learning and that this relationship is mediated by job challenge.

An online survey study was conducted among 722 TAWs in low-skill jobs in the Netherlands. Bootstrap mediation analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

Self-profiling and career control are positively related to informal learning of TAWs and these relationships are mediated by job challenge.

This is the first study to develop and empirically test the proposition that self-profiling and career control are important factors for enhancing employees’ learning experiences in low-skill jobs.

Hiring companies and temporary work agencies could stimulate and train TAWs’ self-profiling and career control competencies to enhance their job challenge and informal learning. Organizations should consider assigning challenging tasks to TAWs, which may be a good alternative for expensive formal training programs.

Many TAWs in low-skill jobs do not possess the skills and capacities to obtain a better or more secure job. In general, temporary workers face a higher risk of unemployment and greater income volatility (Segal and Sullivan, 1997). Gaining knowledge about how to develop this group is important for society as a whole.

Research on the determinants of informal learning mainly concerned higher-educated employees and managers with long-term contracts (e.g. Dong et al., 2014), whereas very little is known about factors that stimulate informal learning among TAWs in general, and among TAWs in low-skill jobs in particular.

The purpose of this paper is to examine three-way interactions among career control, career dialogue and managerial position in predicting perceived employability. The authors expected that participation in career dialogue strengthens the positive relationship between career control and employability. Furthermore, the authors expected that managers benefit more from career dialogue than employees. Hence, the relationship between career control and employability was expected to be strongest when employees engage in career dialogue and hold a managerial position.

Data were collected in 2014 conducting a cross-sectional survey among managers (n=206) and employees (n=254) at a Dutch location of a large science-based multinational. Moderated regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

Career control was positively related to perceived employability. This relationship was significantly stronger for the managerial group that did participate in a career dialogue than for the managerial group that did not engage in a career dialogue. For the non-managerial group of employees participation in a career dialogue did not strengthen the relationship between career control and perceived employability.

Career control is beneficial for enhancing perceived employability among employees regardless of their position in the organization. Hence, training employees to master this competency may be a fruitful starting point for enhancing employability.

This is the first study to investigate whether the relation between career control, career dialogue and employability differs for employees with a managerial and a non-managerial role.

Based on action regulation theory (ART), this study aims to test the impact of individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) training on small business owner career success (financial attainment, satisfaction and achievement). Moreover, this relationship was unpacked through a dual mediation model of IEO behaviour and career resilience.

A four-wave, longitudinal randomized controlled field experiment was conducted in which 527 small business owners participated from Lahore, Pakistan (training group = 256, control group = 271). The data analysis was done via ANCOVAs (group comparison) and PROCESS Model 6 (for serial mediation).

The results demonstrated that after getting IEO training, the small business owners had increased IEO behaviour, career resilience and career success as compared to their counterparts in the control group. In addition, the effect of IEO training on career success was attributed to the underlying role of IEO behaviour and career resilience development.

This is one of the few studies that have demonstrated the impact of IEO training on the career-related outcomes based on the action regulation perspective.

This study aims to investigate the specific role of the components of ability-based emotional intelligence (their relative importance) in building different aspects of career adaptabilities and job-search success of university students.

This study employed survey data from 729 full-time students enrolled in an Indian university. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses, and the size of indirect effect was tested using SPSS PROCESS macro.

The ability-based emotional intelligence, along with the use and regulation of emotion in job-search success, plays a significant role in shaping career adaptabilities and job-search success. The ability to use and regulate emotions does have its impact on job-search success through a self-regulatory psychological resource of control and confidence over one's career. Self-emotional appraisal is necessary for an individual to be concerned for a career which forms the initiation of any job-search.

Ability-based approach of enhancing emotional intelligence allows the university students to take a developmental approach in employment. This approach benefits the more “targeted approach to training interventions” provided by various stakeholders in the university, associated with career and employment.

Further, the study focuses on the psychological difficulties (over operational) faced by students in their employment endeavour. Both emotions and psychological resources are believed to play an important role in the career intervention. For instance, past researches have studied trait-based emotional intelligence as a personality construct. However, this study considers emotional intelligence as an ability-based aspect of intelligence, which “readily lends itself to interventions that can be enhanced through targeted training, coaching or counselling”.

Economic stressors such as job insecurity, job loss, unemployment, and underemployment cause severe difficulties for the workers affected, their families, organizations, and societies overall. Consequently, most past research has taken a thoroughly negative perspective on economic stress, addressing its diverse negative consequences and the ways that people try to cope with them. And even when following the advice provided by the scientific literature, people affected by economic stress will usually end up being off worse than they were before the onset of the stressor.

The current chapter pays credit to this perspective yet also tries to counterbalance it with an alternative one. While acknowledging the vast amount of literature outlining the negative consequences of economic stress on peoples’ well-being and careers, some literature also points at opportunities for a more positive perspective. More specifically, we argue that affected people can use a wide repertoire of behaviors for handling their current situation. Of particular promise in this regard is the concept of career adaptability, generally defined as the ability to change to fit into new career-related circumstances. Indeed, studies show that under certain conditions, career adaptability can facilitate people's search for not just any job but for a qualitatively better job, thus breaking through the spiral of losses usually associated with economic stress.

For the purpose of this argument, we link career adaptability to the concept of proactive coping, analyzing how and under which conditions career adaptability may present a contextualized form of proactive coping. We then address known personal and situational antecedents of career adaptability and show how career adaptability may be fostered and trained among different types of job seekers. We end this chapter with a discussion of open questions as well as directions for future research.

To gather insight into how graduating business students are preparing for the workplace and their future careers and how this has been impacted by COVID-19.

In total, 144 business students at an Australian university who had recently completed an internship and were nearing graduation took part in the study. Group A was surveyed before COVID-19 had emerged and Group B undertook their internships during a COVID-19 lockdown when the related economic downturn had become apparent. The responses were analysed using career construction theory (CCT).

This study concludes that graduating students do not generally place greater emphasis on career planning in times of economic downturn. However, they do devote more effort to job search and networking activities. They also display more career decisiveness and are less willing to seek out information about potential careers or their suitability for them. Their confidence in embarking on a career was not impacted.

This enables us to form a more complete picture of how graduating students perceive their work-readiness and the action they feel is important in order to improve their employability.

This has implications for career practitioners and employers of graduates as it adds to the knowledge of employability and the decision-making process in times of economic crisis and is particularly important for the tertiary education sector as it seeks to better target initiatives to aid employability in graduates.

The results increase the understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on early career development and argue that early-career decision-making is a specific area requiring investigation.

This chapter examines the implications of career achievement for divorce, and whether they differ for men and women. Consistent with theory suggesting that women’s workplace achievement violates traditional expectations of gender and marriage, therefore creating domestic strain, the authors predict that career achievement is associated with a greater risk of divorce for women, but not for men. Using data from the Academy Awards, the authors find that for women, a sudden shift in achievement from winning an Oscar increases their risk of divorce compared to Best Actress nominees. There was no difference in the risk of divorce between Best Actor winners and nominees. The authors additionally examine two potential mitigating factors: whether the actor was already successful at the time of their marriage, and whether their spouse was comparably successful. For Best Actress winners, but not for Best Actor winners, the authors find evidence for the latter, indicating that women’s marriages are more stable when spouses are equally successful, or when relative achievement within the couple aligns with broadly-held norms of traditional marriage.

Using data from 37 interviews carried out with female architects in Britain, this paper examines how they have constructed their careers in a male‐dominated profession. The findings indicate that there is a significant rejection of the “traditional” career within an organisation; instead there is diversity in the forms of work organisation adopted especially with regard to the desire for control over career and working life.

This study aims to investigate the relationship of mentoring provided with career success and organizational commitment in the general managerial population.

Participants were 194 native British who were employed in a variety of jobs, professions and industries in the United Kingdom.

Mentoring provided was positively associated with objective and subjective career success and with mentoring received. Furthermore, mentoring provided mediated the relationship between mentoring received and both aspects of career success. However, although career‐related mentoring provided was positively associated with mentors' career success and affective organizational commitment, socio‐emotional mentoring provided was unrelated to mentors' career success and was negatively related to their affective commitment.

The study adds to the literature by indicating that, at least in the Anglo‐Saxon organizational environment, mentoring provided, and especially its career‐related dimension, is associated with positive outcomes across occupational, professional and organizational boundaries, and that mentoring receipt increases the likelihood of mentoring provision later in the career.

Encouraging organizational members to provide mentoring for junior colleagues establishes and perpetuates a mentoring cycle, which entails benefits for mentors, protégés and the organization.

This is the first study to investigate the relationship of mentoring provision with career success and organizational commitment in the general working population; hence, to yield generalizable conclusions. In addition it informs on the relative contribution of career‐related and socio‐emotional mentoring provided to mentor's career outcomes.

The present study has two purposes. One is to investigate the relationship between an Inter‐Organizational Career Orientation (IOCO) of employees and their career strategies. The second is to investigate the effects of the career attitudes that an IOCO has on employee career strategies.

The facts and conclusions presented in this paper were obtained from a study of 365 employees from 16 companies. A multiple regression analysis was adopted for testing hypotheses.

With regard to the first objective, it was determined that IOCO has a positive effect on inter‐organizational career strategies (career exploration) and a negative one on organizational career strategies (self‐nomination). With regard to the second objective, the moderating effects of career attitudes toward the relationships described as follows became clear: job involvement of employees with regard to the relationship between IOCO and creating career opportunities; job involvement of employees with regard to the relationship between IOCO and self‐nomination; job involvement of employees with regard to the relationship between IOCO and career insight; and career goal commitment of employees with regard to the relationship between IOCO and challenging work behavior.

An analysis according to demographic factors and the implementation of longitudinal research are suggested as future research subjects.

This paper showed that IOCO contributed not only to the rejection of organizational career strategies but also to that of organizational and inter‐organizational career strategies. “Domain fit hypothesis” was verified in new organizational behavioral concepts between career orientation and a career strategy.