Study On The Effect Mechanism Of Career Capital On Career Success Of Middle-Level Managers In Financial Services Industry

As the financial system reform is becoming a hot topic after The Third Plenary Session of the18th CPC Central Committee, the reform of the financial industry must be centered on the idea that the market plays a decisive role in the allocation of resources and that we should switch to the intensive development pattern. The pattern can inevitably cause frictions and conflicts between many interest groups, among which the middle-level staff will be the group most affected. The middle-level managers, as the mainstay of the organizations, master the first-hand information of production, customers and employees and possess an extensive social network. However they are in the plight of great responsibility with small power, therefore in the concrete work, they must balance the needs of all the interest groups like the leaders, subordinates, and peers. However, the middle-level managers' promotion space will be suppressed in the intensive development process. For example, flattening the organizational structure will lead to the redundancy or the replacement by lower-level managers, especially in the process of shifting from traditional career to the borderless career, the organization is no longer committed to providing a stable and secure employment and the psychological contract of the employer and the employee is changing. Under this circumstance, it is pretty important for middle-level managers to care about their career success. The traditional career success means promotion and pay raise, but in the era of borderless career, for a middle-level manager, to replace a number of employers will become the norm throughout his career. When the employer can't promise a life-long career for the employee, he must train and encourage his employees to make a borderless career self-management, which will result in their attention shifting from workplace safety to the accumulation of career capital.Current research on middle-level managers' career success mostly are based on western cultural background, so the conclusions do not necessarily apply to specific practices under Chinese context, especially in the complex institutional and cultural background, where the role of middle-level managers exist diverse and the scope of work is difficult to define, which makes the intensive study about it obviously important. Therefore, this study focuses on the middle-level managers in the financial service industry, intending to explore how they can get access to greater professional success. The main objective of this dissertation is to do theoretical and empirical research on the relationship between career capital and career success. On this basis we would like to explore the mediating effect of the psychological empowerment and the moderating effect of Procedural Justice in decision-making and manager's value orientation. Based on empirical results, the final comments and suggestions on the human resource management practices are given.This dissertation will be divided into one or more parts in details. Firstly, the research studies the relationship between career capital and career success based on the theory of the borderless career. In the new economic era of globalization, information and networking, the feature of borderless career is becoming increasingly obvious. The "cross-border" behaviors become much more frequent, like moving between careers, industries, organizations and other behavior more easily. The accumulation of Career Capital and the pursuit of career success has become the core context of today's career management. Based on Career Capital put up by Jokinen, et al.(2008), this research explores whether career capital accumulation has a significant impact on the career success and discusses the effect of three dimensions of career capital in depth:Know how, know why and Know whom on career success. Secondly, the psychological empowerment, a form of intrinsic motivation, is introduced as mediating effect based on the theory of psychological motivation. The psychological empowerment enriches and makes up for the intrinsic motivation theory. It emphasizes that the perception of rights and job is not decided by objective characteristics of the task but by the psychological experience of these tasks. This study acknowledges that work accumulation can bring a sense of self-worth that can increase the odd of career success.Thirdly, senior management theory suggests that corporate executives will affect the company's strategy and performance, so this study also investigates the moderating effect of the fair management team decision-making procedures as well as the values of senior managers. In terms of research methodology, literature analysis method, the in-depth interviews and questionnaires are adopted. The literature analysis method mainly identifies deficiencies through a review of related topics; the in-depth interviews are mainly used for interviewing55senior and middle-level managers in financial services sector, based on semi-structured interviews and focus groups. In terms of senior managers, the main context of the interviews is about the background of the financial sector, including the overall characteristics of the financial sector, the development history and trends of the financial services industry and stage of the current problems. In terms of middle-level managers, the main context of the interviews is about the interpretation of accumulation's effect on future success and their perception and advices of career success. And eventually through in-depth interviews, the conception of career capital, career success, psychological empowerment, fair team decision-making procedures, and top manager's value orientation are explored. The questionnaire mainly targeted at middle-level managers in financial services sector and579valid questionnaires were collected. Meanwhile project data analysis, exploratory factor analysis and descriptive statistical analysis were done by SPSS16.0. The AMOS17.0was used to conduct confirmatory factor analysis. The HLM5.0was used to do hierarchical linear model analysis for large sample data. Finally the paper gives out a series of hypotheses.Then the following conclusions were drawn after hypothesis testing:(1) career capital for middle-level managers in financial services industry has a significant effect on career success, among which the career capital has a significant positive effect on subjective career success;"know how","know why", and "know whom" have a significant positive effect on subjective career success; career capital for middle-level managers has a significant positive effect on objective career success;"know how" and "know whom" have a significant positive impact on the success of the objective occupation; the impact of "know why" on objective career success was not significant.(2) Career capital including "know how","know why","know whom" has a significant positive effect on psychological empowerment for middle-level managers (3) Psychological empowerment has a significant impact on the subjective career success and objective career success.(4) psychological empowerment mediates the relationshio between career capital and career success. In the relationship between career Capital and subjective career success, the mediating effect explains19.02%of the total effect, with the respective mediating effect on "know how","know why","know whom" listed as13.82%,40.70%,17.94%; while in the relationship between career capital and objective career success, the mediating effect explains22.82%of the total effect, with the respective mediating effect on "know how","know whom" listed as14.30%?23.79%and "know why" as0%;(5) Top management team decision-making procedural justice moderates the relationship between career capital and psychological empowerment across the layer; Top management team decision-making procedural justice also plays a role in moderating" know how","know why","know whom";(6) Top manager's value orientation moderates the relationship between psychological empowerment and subjective career success; all the three dimensions of senior managers'values moderate the relationship between psychological empowerment and subjective career success. Openness to change has a positive effect on the relationship of psychological empowerment and objective career success, but top managers'value orientation and the other three values had no obvious moderating effect.The main innovation points of this study are as follows:1.By focusing on middle-level managers in the financial services industry, the study expands the scope of "career capital" and examines the applicability of the structural dimensions of career capital in China.In terms of career capital, the study overseas pays more attention to expatriates absorbing international career experience, such as Jokinen, et al. Less (2008), but that has not yet been introduced to China's career research. Based on a hotpot of the financial sector reform since the Third Plenary Session of the18th CPC Central Committee and through literature review and in-depth interviews with middle-level managers in the financial services industry, this dissertation reveals the characteristics of middle-level managers'career development as well as localized testing on the dimensions of career capital, which lays the foundation for the future empirical research on career capital.2. On the basis of the motivation theory, the study constructs the mediating effect of psychological empowerment between career capital and career success, further interpreting the influence path of middle-level managers' career development in the background of the borderless career.Previous studies have provided us with a solid basis for further study on career success, but most of these empirical studies are from the angle of organizational support and professional commitments. This research, however, through in-depth interviews, specifically studies career characteristics of middle-level managers in the financial services industry and builds a new model from career capital to career success, that is, building a mediating effect of motivation theory-based and reveal the internal mechanism of career capital and use empirical methods to test it.3. Based on advanced management theory, this study explores the moderating effect on the relationship between career capital and career success of middle-level managers in financial services industry, providing a new perspective for career development theory. For a long time, organizations exist by way of a multi-level system, but in reality few researchers divided the organization in their research, which hinders the conclusion from being generalized from one level to another or confuses the concept of different levels and thus makes the results sometimes refutable. Rousseau (2002) has pointed out that in management studies, many theoretical models have vague hierarchy problems, and the individual level and higher levels (like team level and organization level) are often intertwined. The same problems also exist in current researches on employee career management; most of the issues have no definite division, which led to a confusing situation of the current research on employee career management. Therefore, this study, in order to clarify the different levels of the organization and individual, has to take different approaches from the traditional management model. Through in-depth interviews and focus group interviews, this study provides a new understanding of the effect of career capital on career success in borderless career era, and on this basis the advanced management theory is introduced by deeper digging the moderating effect of the two variables--top management team decision-making procedural justice and top managers' value orientation, which is helpful for middle-level managers' new thinking on career success.4. This study presents analysis framework of career success based on the interaction between organization and the individual and reveals the mechanism and theory applicability of career capital's impact on career success There exist few studies on career success from the individual level, especially in the integration of objective career success and subjective career success. This dissertation presents an interactive framework analysis combining the organizational and individual level, opening up a new perspective for career success study. It more deeply reveals the complicated mechanism of the organizational behaviors and more effectively depicts the interaction between all the related elements. Meanwhile, a measure of career success from both subjective and objective can effectively avoid homology bias, reflecting the factors of career success more comprehensively. To some extent, it avoids the dilemma of "black box" in research, enriches the research system of borderless career development field, and provides a theoretical basis for career capital under what circumstances affecting career success.By the introduction of "career capital", this study not only enriches the career theory, but has an effective practical significance. For organizations, this study provides them with operable theoretical guidance for human resource management departments in financial services industry; lays the foundation for further clarify the specific content and structure dimensions of career capital in borderless career ground; and provides guidance for effective human resource planning, recruitment, training, performance appraisal and compensation programs; For middle-level managers in the financial services industry, this study helps them to understand the key to career success in borderless career era, change their ideas, and establish a scientific concept of career development, breaking the bottleneck for career development.