Variable Career Orientation And Subjective Career Succes

In the changing environment currently,people's career model,attitude and criteria of success had changed greatly.Based on career construction theory,this study explored the relationship between protean career orientation and subjective career success.Firstly,this study described the career construction theory.Then,based on the principle of keywords co-occurrence,two knowledge maps were drawn to help reviewing protean career orientation and subjective career success.According to the theory of career construction,the process of career adaptation is a chain composed of adaptation preparation,adaptability,adapting and adaptation,which led to hypotheses that the protean career orientation helped employees to accumulate their psychological resources such as concern,curiosity,control and confidence for career planning,exploration,learning and network behaviors,and ultimately for employees' career satisfaction and perceived employability.This study constructed two sub studies to test the hypotheses above.In Study 1,a meta-analysis of 37 effective studies showed that protean career orientation had a positive effect on adaptability,adaptive behaviors and career satisfaction.Age has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between protean career orientation and career satisfaction.The correlation between protean career orientation and career satisfaction became stronger with age.The correlation between protean career orientation measured by Briscoe's scales and career satisfaction was weaker than that measured by Baruch's scales.In Study 2,eight variables including protean career orientation,adaptability,planning,exploration,learning,network,career satisfaction and perceived employability were used to construct a structural equation model and mediating effects were tested by bootstraps with 217 Chinese adult employees aged 25-50 as samples.The study found that protean career orientation not only had positive direct but also indirect effects on career satisfaction and perceived employability through adaptability and adaptive behaviors.However different adaptive behaviors had different effects.Network can affect both kinds of subjective success,planning and learning can only affect career satisfaction and perceived employability respectively,while exploration can affect neither career satisfaction nor employability.According to the findings,this study provided some suggestions on human resource practice,such as reacting to employees' protean career attitude rationally,cultivating employees' career adaptability,paying attention to the improvement of employees' vocational network skills and building vocational networking platform in and out of organization.The innovations of this study were as follows: firstly,it was the first time to draw knowledge mapping of protean career orientation and subjective career success.Secondly,it was the first time to use meta-analysis method to analysis relationship between protean career orientation and career adaptability.Moderating role of gender,age and types of scales in the relationship between protean career orientation and these three career adaptative variables was tested for the first time as well.Thirdly,the whole chain of career construction theory was tested in Chinese context,taking healthy adult employees as samples for the first time.Finally,the study integrated four kinds of adaptings into the model,and found out that network played an important role in employees' career satisfaction and perceived employability in China,and that career exploration may be invalid during career building stage.