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In the current war for talent employers are concerned about the idea that the best employees are more likely to leave the organization for another employer (i.e. the management paradox). This study tests this management paradox. The purpose of this paper is to advance our understandings of how employees’ occupational expertise is associated with job search intensity, through its assumed relationships with perceived internal and external employability in the internal and the external labor market. The authors thereby tested the research model across three different age groups (young, middle-aged, and senior employees).

The authors conducted a survey among 2,137 professional workers and applied multi-group structural equation modeling.

Perceived internal employability negatively mediated the relationship between occupational expertise and job search intensity, whilst there was a positive mediational effect of perceived external employability. Age had a moderating effect on the association between perceived internal employability and job search intensity.

The findings contribute to the scholarly literature on the management paradox, and the empirical work on employability and age.

Organizations can recoup their investments in expert workers’ employability and enhance their retention by providing opportunities for internal career development.

This study is original by including both internal and external employability. By doing so, the authors thereby shedding new light on how occupational expertise might explain job search and how this relationship differs depending on employee age, thereby using a large sample of respondents.

The purpose of this paper is to answer two questions: How do temporary workers achieve well‐being and optimal functioning? and how is it possible to promote commitment and productive behaviours among temporary workers?

The paper takes the form of a literature review and synthesis.

Temporary employment can no longer be seen as exclusively bad or as a signal of labour market segmentation. Instead, mechanisms to promote commitment and productive behaviour that are beneficial for all parties involved can be identified. Temporary employment is a reality that is here to stay and that searches for mechanisms to reconcile the sometimes conflicting perspectives of employees and employers. This new approach is promising but researchers should also account for and create awareness about potential and sometimes less visible drawbacks associated with temporary employment (e.g. social isolation or negative implications for career success).

The paper shows a new approach to temporary work from both the employer and employee perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to advance two seemingly conflicting paths from perceived employability to employee performance. Both paths start from the idea that feeling employable makes employees more independent from their employer. Framed positively, independence implies the perception of being in control, and perceived control may promote employee performance. Framed negatively, independence implies reduced attachment to the organization, while such ties drive employee performance. Innovative features in this study are threefold. First, the authors introduce perceived justice as a moderator. Second, the authors distinguish between perceived quantitative and qualitative employability: this relates to seeing “other” vs “better” job opportunities. Third, the authors include a range of performance indicators: task performance, organizational citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior.

Survey data were collected within one Belgian public-sector organization (n=1,500 employees) and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Perceived control mediated the relationship between perceived employability and employee performance, yet only upon high perceived justice. Affective organizational commitment mediated the relationship between perceived employability and employee performance, regardless of perceived justice. Those relationships were positive for quantitative perceived employability and negative for qualitative perceived employability.

Perceived employability relates positively to employee performance, especially upon high perceived justice. Yet this relationship is bounded to which job alternatives are perceived, just “other” or instead “better.”

The purpose of this paper is to examine career engagement and perceived employability during the school-to-work transition. We studied within-person changes in career engagement and perceived employability in the transition from higher education to the labor market. We investigated their dynamic reciprocal relationship to unravel whether career engagement or perceived employability is the leading indicator in the relationship in view of providing adequate support for students during the school-to-work transition.

We conducted latent change score (LCS) analyses on a three-wave sample of 701 graduates in Flanders (Belgium). We collected data in July (right before graduation), November and May. LCS is a novel method allowing to simultaneously test change and reciprocal relationships.

Our findings demonstrated how both career engagement and perceived employability changed (within-person) non-linearly during the school-to-work transition. As for their relationship, we found that perceived employability is the driving force in the relationship. Perceived employability fueled subsequent positive changes in career engagement, whereas career engagement did not lead to subsequent changes in perceived employability.

Our study connects the career development and the graduate employability literature, and examines the school-to-work transition from preparation for the labor market to ten months after graduation. We also make an important methodological contribution, demonstrating the added value of LCS for studying employability in higher education. Our findings provide insights in how higher education institutions may support students in the school-to-work transition.

The purpose of the present study is to examine how perceived employability relates to job exhaustion, psychological symptoms and self‐rated job performance in involuntary and voluntary temporary employees compared to permanent employees.

The study is based on a cross‐sectional design using a sample of university teachers and researchers (n=1,014) from two Finnish universities. Of the sample, 40 percent (n=408) are permanent employees, 49 percent (n=495) involuntary and 11 percent (n=111) voluntary temporary employees. Most respondents (54 percent) have education above a Master's degree, the average age is 43 years, and 58 percent are women.

The results of general linear model analyses show that perceived employability promotes favorable outcomes among all respondents. However, the negative relationship between perceived employability and job exhaustion and psychological symptoms is stronger among voluntary than among involuntary temporary employees.

The study indicates that although perceived employability seems to be important to all employees, involuntary temporary employees benefit least from high perceived employability in terms of individual well‐being.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship perceived employability (the employee's perception about available job opportunities in the external labour market) and performance, accounting for felt job insecurity. Performance is conceptualized broadly in terms of optimal functioning (i.e. in-role performance and helping behaviour) and malfunctioning (i.e. organizational and interpersonal counterproductive work behaviour).

Survey data were collected among 433 Romanian workers.

The authors hypothesize and demonstrate that perceived employability relates positively to optimal functioning, but less so when workers feel insecure: highly employable workers may be high achievers, but withdraw from the organization when they feel insecure. Furthermore, the authors hypothesize that perceived employability relates positively to malfunctioning, the more so when workers feel insecure. Highly employable workers may care less about organizational norms, particularly when they see reasons to violate these norms: felt job insecurity may be such a reason. However, the interaction between perceived employability and felt job insecurity was not significantly related to malfunctioning. Instead, the authors established a main effect of perceived employability on both organizational and interpersonal counterproductive work behaviour.

The paper concludes that perceived employability contributes to optimal functioning when workers feel secure, but it may also bring along some costs in the form of malfunctioning.

The purpose of this paper is to define employability within the psychological literature with a focus upon perceived employability.

To achieve the aim, the paper defines five objectives as follows. First, the paper discusses how employability is interpreted in the psychological literature. Second, the paper defines perceived employability within this literature. Third, the paper goes one step further by comparing the perceived employability approach to other approaches in the psychological field, namely, approaches based on competences and dispositions. The paper concludes with an integration of the three approaches into a process model to demonstrate their interrelationships, which the authors see as the fourth objective. With approach, the paper refers to a specific view on employability, including both definitions and measures, which share significant common ground. Finally, the paper highlights some implications.

The paper concludes that each approach comes with specific advantages and disadvantages. Researchers and practitioners should use an approach according to the general research question one aims to address.

The authors believe to contribute to the employability literature in the following ways. First, the paper raises awareness that not all psychological notions of employability are equal, though they are often treated as such in the literature. Second, the paper highlights how perceived employability is tied to competences and dispositions. That is, though all notions are clearly different, they are also related.

The purpose of this paper is to explore an expanded temporal context of non‐permanent work through an examination of the influence of previous experience of temporary working, contract duration and time remaining on contract and expectations of continued employment on reports of job insecurity, job satisfaction, in‐role performance and organisational commitment.

Hypotheses were tested using responses of 1,169 temporary workers from a multi‐national, cross‐sectional questionnaire study.

Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that having previous experience of temporary work was associated with higher in‐role performance. No significant effects were found for contract duration, but shorter time remaining on present contract was associated with greater job insecurity and also greater in‐role performance. However the strongest effects were found for expectations of continued employment, with stronger expectations being linked to more positive reports of each outcome. A number of moderation effects were found that indicated interactions between temporal variables and revealed a moderating role of preference for temporary work.

The paper is one of the first to formally consider the influence of a broader temporal context on attitudes and behaviours of temporary workers. Significant associations were found between elements relating to each of the past, present and future and important individual and organisational variables in the present. These effects were sustained above and beyond the influence of variables such as country, sector, preferences, skill level, contract type, and demographics that are known to affect temporary workers' attitudes and behaviours.

The purpose of this paper is to test the gain and loss cycle ideas from the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory with regard to perceived employability and psychological functioning among employed workers and unemployed job seekers, respectively.

More specifically, the authors argue that perceived employability may trigger a gain cycle toward well-being among employed workers (H1), while ill-being may trigger a loss cycle toward reduced (perceived) employability among unemployed job seekers (H2). The authors test these ideas with cross-lagged analysis.

Results confirm the hypotheses: perceived employability at Time 1 positively affects well-being at Time 2 among employed workers and ill-being at Time 1 negatively impacts perceived employability at Time 2 among unemployed job seekers.

Future research should study the gain and loss cycles with more than two waves of data as this allows for a more adequate test of these ideas.

As for practitioners, the results suggest that investing in the worker’s perceived employability by offering training, career counseling, and networking opportunities, pays off as it promotes the employee’s psychological functioning. With regard to unemployed job seekers the authors advise investing in psychological counseling: the unemployed job seeker will be more able to invest in a job search, and hence perceive employability if helped in coping with job loss.

This study offers a new perspective on the relationship between perceived employability and psychological functioning by involving the principles of COR theory, in particular the gain and loss cycles.