Search results

A work orientation represents a person’s beliefs about the meaning of work – the function work plays in the person’s life and the constellation of values and assumptions the person holds about the work domain. Research has suggested that adults tend to favor one of three primary work orientations: job, career, or calling. Empirical studies have shown that adults with different primary work orientations tend to experience different work and career outcomes; however, scholars have not analyzed how or why an individual first develops a work orientation. In this study, we take a first step toward investigating the origins of adults’ work orientations.

We propose hypotheses drawing on extant literature on the development of work values and occupational inheritance. We test hypotheses using a retrospective research design and survey methodology, with a sample of working adults.

Work orientations are developed through socialization processes with parents during adolescence. There are different patterns of development across the three work orientation categories: stronger calling orientations are developed when both parents possess strong calling orientations; stronger career orientations develop in accordance with fathers’ career orientations; and job orientations are related more to the nature of the adolescent’s relationship with parents than with parents’ own work orientations.

This research provides the first empirical study of the origin and development of work orientations.

This research offers insight into ways generations are connected through the perceived meaning of their work, even as the nature of work changes. We encourage future scholars to use this as a starting point for research on the development of work orientations, and to continue exploring these questions using additional methods, particularly longitudinal study designs.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effects of subjective career success, organizational learning climate, and the calling work orientation on the protean career.

For this study employees of a Korean financial service company are encouraged to answer a web survey. To examine the hypotheses, structural equation modeling is used.

The results provide evidence of potential predictors of the protean career based on the empirical approach. Also, this study shows an integrative model for predictors of the protean career with the structural equation modeling method. All independent variables – subjective career success, the calling work orientation, and organizational learning climate – have a significant relationship with the protean career. Among the independent variables, the calling orientation has the strongest effect on the protean career.

The generalization of the results may be limited to the research population. Also, as results are based entirely on cross‐sectional self‐report data, the causality of the findings cannot be confirmed.

The importance of the protean career concept has increased in the modern career context, underscoring the individual's self‐direction of career management. This study uses empirical evidence to examine the psychological and environmental predictors of the protean career.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the protean career and other variables, including organizational learning climate, individual calling work orientation, and demographic variables.

The research data were obtained from a sample consisting of 292 employees of two South Korean manufacturing companies in the private sector. To collect the research data, this study employed the web survey method.

The study results showed that two organizational learning climates – embedded system and system connection – and calling orientation had significant positive relationship with the protean career. Demographic variables did not relate significantly to the protean career.

This paper provides an empirical approach to related environmental and psychological variables influencing the protean career based on the literature review.

The results have implications for both researchers and practitioners in that the study examines the protean career as it relates to the organizational learning climate and provides suggestions for establishing strategies that foster employees' self‐directed career management attitudes.

This paper offers new and useful insight into the predictors of self‐directed career management by exploring variables related to the protean career.

This study aims to explore employee-customer identification and its consequences in the banking, financial service and insurance (BFSI) sector. We also look at the mediating role of psychological ownership and work orientation (calling) between employee-customer identification and the adaptability of service offerings.

In this study using a sample of 215 frontline employees from the BFSI sector in five Indian cities, the data was analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) in Smart PLS- 3.2.7 software.

When employees consider customers as individuals similar to them, they tend to be more accommodating of customers' diverse needs resulting in adapting the service. The study empirically establishes that psychological ownership and work orientation (calling) mediate the relationship between employee-customer identification and service offering adaptation.

This kind of identification can remedy the perennial problem of mis-selling in the BFSI context. The new insights gathered from these customer interfaces can be transferred upwards within the organisation to formulate actionable strategies. Hence, when employees feel their work is satisfactory, it leads to improvement in both profit margins as well as asset turnover for high-contact service firms.

The results demonstrate that employees who identify with their customers are more accommodative of customers' diverse needs resulting in adapting the service resulting in improved performance.

Highly-experienced allied health professionals have the opportunity to perform at the expert-level by sharing knowledge and skills with more junior staff, with the aim of upskilling the workforce. The study explored the current motivators, aspirations and the role of work in the life of highly-experienced practitioners, revealing factors that hinder or support them to further develop their own expertise and be inspiring role-models and mentors for less experienced staff.

Taking a grounded theoretical research design, we report on interviews with 45 allied health practitioners with at least seven years of professional experience from different professions and across organisational sectors. Transcripts were coded iteratively in conjunction with reviewing the literature, and cases were categorised to form a conceptual typology of work orientation.

Four work orientations are characterised capturing the diversity of the allied health workforce, particularly in relation to two dimensions of personal fulfilment and future ambition. The relationship between the types and expert-level performance is discussed, leading to recommendations for support that can be implemented to develop and sustain expert-level performance within a community.

A new view of work orientation is introduced that relates expert-level performance with meaningful work. The findings highlight a diversity of work orientation for highly-experienced allied health professionals, that all require managerial awareness. Once recognised, the four types would benefit from different supports that could develop and maintain expert-level performance in those that seek it. Alternatives are also available for those that do not. Implications for workforce policy are discussed.

Drawing on the work as calling theory, the purpose of this study is to explore how and when career calling promotes taking charge by focusing on the mediating effects of work meaningfulness and felt obligation and the moderating role of family-friendly human resource practice (FF-HRP).

The authors collected data from 293 supervisor–employee dyads at three time points in southeastern China. Path analysis and bootstrap method were used for hypothesis testing.

Employees' perceived career calling positively affected taking charge through work meaningfulness and felt obligation. The positive effects of career calling on work meaningfulness and felt obligation as well as the indirect effect of career calling on taking charge are stronger when employees perceive high levels of FF-HRP.

Organizational interventions should be designed to enhance employees' sense of calling, and the organization should inspire employees to take charge by awakening their perception of work meaningfulness and obligation. Moreover, FF-HRP should be implemented as a form of organizational support.

This research identifies work meaningfulness and felt obligation as mediators that link career calling to taking charge and reveals the role of FF-HRP in amplifying the positive impact of career calling.

This research aims to explore the role of values, family, and non‐family influences on career choice in management among a sample of US MBA students.

Data were collected using self‐reported questionnaires from 109 students in a mid‐sized university located on the west coast of the USA. The respondents were in the first semester of their MBA program. Males and females were almost equally represented in the sample.

This study did not find people (family and non‐family) to be a predictor of career decisions. Instead, these decisions reflect the independent‐self among US students in the career choice and exploration process. In particular, the students placed a strong emphasis on self‐development (i.e. education). Most of the respondents aspired to careers, and not jobs or callings, reflecting a desire for career benefits and becoming wealthy. Men and women, with few exceptions, appear to have similar patterns in the factors affecting their career choice. Many of the factors found to have relationships with variables related to career choice in management also have strong cultural influences.

The predictor variables generally accounted for modest variance on most career outcomes, suggesting complexity of the career choice process. There were country differences in several predictor variables associated with a career choice in management. The US sample was different from other countries, suggesting the importance of national cultures and values in career choice and career expectations.

This study builds upon the factors previously reported to influence career choice in management.

Providing employees with meaning in their work has inspired numerous researchers to study the role of personal meaningful work and its related outcomes. Despite this high level of interest, the theoretical views and methodological approaches used to explore this concept still require refinement and development. Without a comprehensive review of these views and approaches, the concept of meaningful work will remain an ill defined notion. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap with a review of the theoretical and empirical research on meaningful work.

The paper includes a discussion on the concepts of “meaning” and “work”, and its importance and the sources for conceptual confusion, and a synthesis of the common features that form the idea of meaningful work in numerous empirical and theoretical studies.

The paper found meaningful work is derived when the employee has a perfect understanding of the nature and expectations of the task environment (i.e. the work has a clear goal, purpose and value that is connected to the employee), the employee feels a sense of fit or congruence between their own core values and the job requirements and organizational mission and goals, and when perfect understanding exists of how employees’ roles contribute to the purpose of the organization.

As part of an effective HRM strategy, organizations should actively encourage and develop managers’ abilities to redesign jobs and the climate to build enhanced feelings of meaning in work. Furthermore, organizations can promote greater experiences of meaningful work among employees by implementing the “job crafting” concept. Also, the role of top management is to focus on job elements that would possibly change personal needs of employees and hence perceive their jobs to be more meaningful.

Given the limited amount of recent literature focused on defining meaningful work, this paper provides valuable resources to help organizations succeed in their understanding of how to engage in creating meaningful work environment. It also examines the underlying features that constitute the meaningful work concept and offers guidance for future research by presenting the current state of knowledge about meaningful work.

The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of the ways workers can actively make their own work experiences more meaningful.

The data consist of 29 interviews with people from three professions. The authors analyzed the interviews by coding the statements into first‐ and second‐order categories, and then aggregating them into theoretical constructs; and by recognizing relations between the constructs.

Workers try to increase the proportion of positive cues extracted from work to make their work more meaningful. The three main tactics for increasing the proportion of positive cues are cognitively emphasizing the positive qualities of work, developing competencies to be better able to produce positive outcomes and positive reactions from others, and influencing the work content.

This model provides a preliminary understanding of meaningfulness‐making, based on cross‐sectional interview data. Future research should use alternative methods, and verify and elaborate the findings.

Managers can promote workers’ sense of meaningfulness by coaching and enabling meaningfulness‐making tactics identified in this paper.

This paper presents alternative ways to achieve work meaningfulness that complement the previously recognized job crafting and sensemaking routes.