No abstract

This study contributes to our understanding of why laid‐off individuals might explore entrepreneurial careers. Findings among 838 laid‐off individuals suggest that financial strain is associated with negative appraisal of the layoff, and openness to change and perceived organizational support are associated with positive appraisal of the layoff. We demonstrate that the indirect effect of financial impact and openness to change via negative and positive appraisals are stronger than the direct effects. Our results are significant because they highlight the mediating role of cognitive factors on entrepreneurial intentions among laid off individuals during periods of high unemployment.

Efforts to identify antecedents of job dedication (i.e., being loyal and cooperative) are likely to offer value to managers. The authors examined the combined effects of organizational politics and emotional stability on the relationship between leader-member exchange and job dedication. Results of analyses conducted on 156 private sector workers revealed that leader-member exchange quality yielded high levels of job dedication among all employees except the emotionally unstable working in highly political climates. These results not only reinforce the need to hire emotionally stable workers and keep organizational politics at low levels but also point to the limitations of leader influences on employee contextual performance.

Mentoring is related to young adults’ career planning. The present study attempts to examine whether the perception of future work selves could be a critical mediating mechanism underlying the relationship between the reception of mentoring functions and job search behaviors. Moreover, we also investigated the moderating role of achievement orientation on this relationship. We tested our hypotheses with a time-lagged research design. Results indicated that psychosocial mentoring was related to future work selves, and future work selves were associated with job search behaviors. Future work selves mediated the relationship between psychosocial mentoring and job search behaviors. Moreover, achievement orientation moderated the direct and indirect effects of psychosocial function on job search behaviors. Specifically, the aforementioned relationships were stronger when achievement orientation was high compared to when achievement orientation was low. Important theoretical and practical implications for mentoring and career research are discussed in the current study.

Training transfer is a ubiquitous but frequently unmet goal of training initiatives amounting to billions of dollars lost annually and masses of under-skilled workers due to the lack of application of training content to their job. Although research supports the impact trainee proactive personality, conscientiousness and motivation have on training transfer processes, their interrelationships remain understudied. To fill this gap, we utilized data from a multinational sample of trainees and examined a conditional, indirect process model, where proactive personality interacts with conscientiousness to influence transfer intentions through their effects on motivation to learn. Our results suggest that trainee proactive personality positively influences transfer intentions partially through its influence on motivation to learn and that higher levels of conscientiousness weakens this relationship. Our findings provide further evidence supporting the importance of proactive personality and conscientiousness as factors that need to be accounted for in the design of talent development solutions.