Keeping an Insecure Career under Control: The Longitudinal Interplay of Career Insecurity, Self-Management, and Self-Efficacy

Abstract

Career insecurity is a central topic in career research because many career paths are characterized by high levels of uncertainty. In academia, individuals face not only high levels of insecurity in the early career phase but also the responsibility of managing their careers by themselves. Building on the motivational theory of life-span development and the social cognitive theory of self-regulation, this longitudinal study investigates the relationship between perceived career insecurity, work-related self-management, and occupational self-efficacy beliefs based on a sample of 3,118 PhD students and PhD holders. We employed the random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to separate between-person effects from within-person effects across eight measurement points (6-month time intervals). At the between-person level, career insecurity was negatively correlated with self-management and self-efficacy. At the within-person level, (a) increases in self-management and self-efficacy predicted decreases in subsequent career insecurity, and (b) increases in career insecurity predicted decreases in subsequent self-management and self-efficacy. Mediation analyses showed self-management to reduce career insecurity via increases in self-efficacy.

Family support and posttraumatic growth among tourism workers during the COVID-19 shutdown: The role of positive stress mindset

“…Last, the supplementary results offer further theoretical implications. Though the negative interaction effect of career insecurity and family support on positive stress mindset in the face of a crisis such as the COVID-19 has not been established in the literature, our supplementary finding on such an effect partly resonates with the prior finding on the negative association between career insecurity and self-management ( Alisic & Wiese, 2020 ). The result of the supplementary analysis on the interaction between event-exposure stress and support from the family is in line with the finding of a prior work on the negative interaction effect of traumatic stress and social support on PTG ( Măirean, 2016 ).…”

Career agility and career embeddedness as psychological needs of the value-oriented psychological contract

“…Being a psychological adaptation mechanism, career agility reduces career insecurity in uncertain employment contexts, increases individuals’ self-efficacy in career identity management, and raises new standards for career PE needs-supply fit (Alisic & Wiese, 2020; Coetzee et al, 2021; Guan et al, 2021). Employees expect new career value-matching organisational support conditions that fulfil their psychological need for new, exciting job and career opportunities that allow for creative self-expression of shifting interests and values, and learning new skills that will improve their career and job success in digital markets (Coetzee et al, 2021; Guan et al, 2021; Konstant, 2020).…”