Research On The Significance And Causes Of Organizational Career Growth In The New Career Era

With a series of changes in social-economic environment(e.g.gig economy,technological development and workforce diversity),significant transitions have happened to individuals' perceptions and ways of career management.Individuals and organizations have stepped into the new career era where the major responsibility of career management has shifted from organizations to individuals.During the process,practitioners and scholars have raised a series of questions about the role of organization in career management,such as whether organizational investment in employee's career can be paid off,to what extent do people care about career development within organizations,and how to make the effect of organizational career management as expected.They also hold distinct opinions on organizational career management.Some propose that organizational career management is no longer necessary in the new career era,and organizations can invest in other management practices instead of career management to get the return.Others argue that organizational career management is still effective but should pay more attention to the impact of context.Organizational career growth,as the reflection of individuals' career states in an organization is the basis to analyze the conflict.Although previous studies have explored the antecedents and outcomes of organizational career growth,limited ones have considered the impact of contexts,especially the new career era and cultural context.Therefore,current findings are insufficient to evaluate the extent of value that organizational career growth brings to organization,let alone exploring why it has unique value or how to make it obtain such value.Targeting at these issues,this paper focuses on organizational career growth in the new career era and takes three studies to explore how organizational career growth contributes to the decline of turnover intentions,how it works on ideal self-discrepancy,and how protean career orientation influences organizational career growth.Combining with Chinese culture features,Study 1 explores the value of organizational career growth to organizational management.Drawing on the social identity theory,it compares the contribution of organizational career growth,perceived external prestige of organization and intra-organizational network resources to turnover intentions and organizational identification,and considers perceived alternative job opportunities as a moderator.Findings from 644 questionnaires show that the three antecedents can all affect turnover intentions via organizational identification,but the former one contributes most to turnover intentions and identification.Besides,perceived alternative job opportunities only weaken the relationship where perceived external prestige negatively affects turnover intentions via organizational identification.Study 2 is about the value of organizational career growth to individuals.Drawing on social identity theory,it explores how career growth affects ideal self-discrepancy via occupational identification,and emphasizes the moderating role of protean career orientation and individual career management.Findings from 331 questionnaires support the mediating effect,and show that protean career orientation strengthens this relationship.Besides,the three-way interaction of occupational identification,protean career orientation and individual career management is significantly related to ideal self-discrepancy.For individuals high in protean career orientation,the negative relationship between occupational identification and ideal self-discrepancy is stronger when individual career management is higher;for individuals low in the orientation,the relationship is weaker when individual career management is higher.Study 3 focuses on the impact of protean career orientation on organizational career growth in Chinese culture.Based on the upward mobility system,it highlights the mediating roles of supervisor-rated P-O fit and proactive behavior of employees,and the moderating effect of job autonomy.The leader-member dyad data from 417 questionnaires supports the two mediating effects.It also finds that job autonomy weakens the relationship where protean career orientation raises organizational career growth via increased supervisor-rated proactive behavior of employees.This paper contributes to the following aspects.First,it is the first study to evaluate and reveal the unique role of organizational career growth in raising organizational identification and reducing turnover intention,which also responds to the question of whether organization can get paid off from the investment in employees' careers.Second,this study is the first to explore the underlying mechanism of organizational career growth on personal development,which introduces the psychological concepts into the research on career growth and thus enriches the existed studies on both career growth and self-discrepancy.It also prepares for future studies to explore the potential mechanism of organizational management on narrowing self-discrepancy.Third,it combines organizational career growth and Chinese culture together to empirically examine the upward mobility system,revealing that both sponsored-and contest-mobility system can exist in Chinese organizations,but the preference of organization to certain upward mobility system is deeply influenced by cultural context.Fourth,it highlights the Chinese cultural features in the relationship between protean career orientation and organizational career growth by using leader-member dyad data,which enlightens the future research to consider cultural features in research design phase.The findings provide suggestions for both organizations and individuals.First,organizations still need to manage and support individuals' careers,but should pay more attention to individual differences.They can set targeted projects for employees different in protean career orientation,and should also grasp the situated environment and preference of managers while making policies and strategies.Second,protean career orientation is important to individuals.People low in the orientation should follow organizational management to narrow ideal self-discrepancy.People high in the orientation should grasp the upward mobility system in the organization.Inevitably,this research also has certain limitations.First,the use of questionnaire and self-reported data may cause subjective conclusions and common method bias.Future studies could test our model with both subjective and objective data.Second,the samples are Chinese and mainly from state-owned enterprises.Other business type and cross-cultural data can be used to get more comprehensive conclusions.Third,the consideration and measurement of culture-related variables are limited,which should be extended in the future.Finally,following the upward mobility system,more possible variables should be considered in the future to explore the mechanism behind the impact of protean career orientation on organizational career growth.