New Article on Career Success and Career Crafting

Together with Elias Janssen, Beatrice Van der Heijden, and Mieke Audenaert, I published a new article in the Journal of Vocational Behavior titled "Unraveling the complex relationship between career success and career crafting: Exploring nonlinearity and the moderating role of learning value of the job." This study shows that the relationship between feeling successful in one's career (i.e., subjective career succes) and proactive career behaviors (i.e., career crafting) is complex. Specifically, we found that this relationship is not linear, as often assumed: people at low and high levels of career success engage in more proactive career reflection. Yet, only those high in career success also engaged in more proactive career construction. We also found that when people have a job that has a high learning value, the career success - career crafting relationships became stronger.

The full article can be found HERE and is freely available for anyone. For the full reference and abstract, please see below.

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Janssen, E., van der Heijden, B. I., Akkermans, J., & Audenaert, M. (2021). Unraveling the complex relationship between career success and career crafting: Exploring nonlinearity and the moderating role of learning value of the job. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 130, 103620. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2021.103620

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Abstract

While scholars have devoted considerable attention to proactive career behaviors, little is known about the drivers behind these behaviors. In this study, we build on conservation of resources theory to study nonlinearity in the relationship between (objective and subjective) career success and career crafting behaviors (i.e., proactive career reflection and proactive career construction) using a sample of 702 teaching staff. Both low and high levels of subjective career success related to higher levels of proactive career reflection (i.e., U-shaped relationship), whereas only high levels of subjective career success related to higher levels of proactive career construction (i.e., strengthening quadratic relationship). Moreover, learning value of the job moderated the relationship between subjective career success and both dimensions of career crafting. Our findings indicate that educational institutions should monitor and act on the perceived career success and learning value of their teaching staff to foster their career proactivity.