The nomological network of self-management strategies and career success

Changes in the labour market require people to show more self-management than before if they want to succeed. The present research was conducted to analyse the nomological network of general self-management strategies (i.e. selection of goals; optimization as implementation of goal-pursuing behaviour), specific self-management strategies (i.e. career planning) and central indicators of career success, i.e. objective career success (pay, position), self-referent subjective success (career satisfaction), and other-referent career success (comparative judgment). In a large sample of professionals (N=1,185), we found in support of our hypotheses that the generalized strategy of optimization was linked to the domain-specific strategy of career planning, and that domain-specific career planning was directly linked to all outcome measures. The generalized strategy of optimization was directly linked to subjective success, but only indirectly to objective success. The link from self-management to subjective success was independent of objective success. Most interestingly, and in accord with our social comparison assumption, objective success was more closely linked to other-referent success than to self-referent success. Implications for career research and career counselling are discussed. Copyright © The British Psychological Society Reproduction in any form (including the internet) is prohibited without prior permission from the Society The nomological network of self-management strategies and career success Andrea E. Abele* and Bettina S. Wiese Institute of Psychology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany Institute of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Changes in the labour market require people to show more self-management than before if they want to succeed. The present research was conducted to analyse the nomological network of general self-management strategies (i.e. selection of goals; optimization as implementation of goal-pursuing behaviour), specific self-management strategies (i.e. career planning) and central indicators of career success, i.e. objective career success (pay, position), self-referent subjective success (career satisfaction), and other-referent career success (comparative judgment). In a large sample of professionals (N 1⁄4 1; 185), we found in support of our hypotheses that the generalized strategy of optimization was linked to the domain-specific strategy of career planning, and that domain-specific career planning was directly linked to all outcome measures. The generalized strategy of optimization was directly linked to subjective success, but only indirectly to objective success. The link from self-management to subjective success was independent of objective success. Most interestingly, and in accord with our social comparison assumption, objective success was more closely linked to otherreferent success than to self-referent success. Implications for career research and career counselling are discussed. The job market is undergoing large-scale changes (e.g. globalization, declining job security) and individual occupational careers are changing as well. In I&O psychology a number of new constructs have been introduced to account for these changes, such as the concepts of boundaryless career (see Arthur, Khapova, &Wilderom, 2005; Arthur & Rousseau, 1996) and protean career (Hall, 2002). A common core in different conceptualizations of contemporary forms of occupational careers is the assumption that there is a high need for individuals to regulate their careers strategically (Allred, Snow, & Miles, 1996; Murphy & Ensher, 2001). Over the past decades, the focus of organizational socialization research, for instance, has shifted from a primary concern with the influence of organizational tactics on newcomers’ adjustment (e.g. Van Maanen & Schein, 1979) to investigating the effects of individual actions, such as self-set career goals (e.g. Maier & Brunstein, 2001). This requirement to proactively manage one’s * Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Andrea E. Abele, Institute of Psychology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen D–91054, Germany (e-mail: [email protected]). The British Psychological Society 733 Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (2008), 81, 733–749 q 2008 The British Psychological Society www.bpsjournals.co.uk DOI:10.1348/096317907X256726 Copyright © The British Psychological Society Reproduction in any form (including the internet) is prohibited without prior permission from the Society career, however, is not restricted to job entry but comprises all career phases. Not surprisingly, therefore, there is a growing interest in conceptualizing individual career management from a self-regulatory perspective (e.g. King, 2004; Kossek, Roberts, Fisher, & Demarr, 1998; Vancouver & Day, 2005). Within such a self-regulatory framework, the present research addresses the relationship between self-management strategies and career success. Self-management strategies of selecting goals and implementing them into behaviour are central components of self-regulation. If the above assumption on self-regulation and career advancement holds true, then self-management strategies should influence career success. The present research tests the influence of self-management strategies on career success. We are especially interested in studying the influence of the level of specificity in assessing self-management strategies: do people need career-specific strategies of self-management in order to pursue their careers successfully or are more generalized and content-independent strategies sufficient? Do general strategies influence more specific ones, which, in-turn, influence career advancement? For studying these questions, however, the complex concept of career success has to be addressed as well. What is career success? Is it money, position, and/or promotions? Is it an individual’s satisfaction with and positive evaluation of his/her career? In the present paper, we analyse three facets of career success (for overviews see Dette, Abele, & Renner, 2004; Hall & Chandler, 2005; Heslin, 2003, 2005; Judge, Cable, Boudreau, & Bretz, 1995; Nicholson & DeWaal-Andrews, 2005; Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005). Objective career success reflects verifiable attainments like pay, position, and promotions whereas subjective career success emphasizes the beholder’s own evaluation of his/her career. Dependent on the comparison standard, i.e. self versus others, it can be conceptualized as self-referent subjective success or other-referent subjective success (Dette et al., 2004; Heslin, 2003). We will study whether strategies of self-management are related to all or only to some of these facets, and we will look at direct and indirect relationships between self-management strategies and the three facets of career success. To summarize, the aim of the present research is an analysis of the nomological network of self-management and career success, with two specificity levels of selfmanagement being related to three facets of career success. The findings should be relevant for, theorizing on the determinants of different aspects of career success, theorizing on the adequate level of specificity in measuring these determinants (e.g. Chen, Gully, & Eden, 2001), the conceptualization of career success, and they should also be important for applied issues of career counselling and training. General and specific strategies of self-management Self-management Theories on self-regulation stress the importance of goal selection (i.e. actively determining the goals an individual wants to or has to pursue; Locke & Latham, 2002) and of using efficient strategies for goal pursuit. Goal selection and pursuit are among the most central components of self-regulation (e.g. Zimmerman, 1998) and both are elements of self-management. Self-management can be analysed on different levels of specificity. General strategies are methods of goal selection and implementing goalrelated behaviour independently of a specific content area and/or of a specific situation. Domain-specific strategies, in contrast, are goal-selection and goal-implementation strategies related to a specific content area and/or to a specific situation. Career-specific 734 Andrea E. Abele and Bettina S. Wiese Copyright © The British Psychological Society Reproduction in any form (including the internet) is prohibited without prior permission from the Society self-management strategies, for instance, would be to thoroughly plan one’s career by selecting respective goals and to persistently pursue them. If it could be shown that general strategies are as strongly related to career success as more specific ones, then self-management training could focus on the generalized level. If, however, specific strategies are more related to career success than generalized ones, then it would be worth devising context-specific self-management training. General self-management strategies A highly influential approach for analysing general self-management has been the selection–optimization–compensation model by Baltes and Baltes (1990). These authors outlined that successful self-management requires both adaptive goal setting and the implementation of goal-pursuit strategies. They used the terms selection and optimization/compensation for characterizing these processes. Selection is necessary because our resources (e.g. time and energy) are limited and only a certain number of goals can be successfully pursued at a time. Successful selection processes require simultaneously taking into account societal expectations, opportunity structures, as well as individual skills and competencies (Baltes & Baltes, 1990). Optimization describes processes of goal implementation which are necessary to achieve higher levels of functioning. More precisely, optimization refers to activities that are implemented to acquire, refine, apply, and coordinate goal-pursuit strategies. Baltes and Baltes (1990) additionally introduced the concept of compensation, which is related to skills in counteracting developmental losses. We do not use this concept here because our present approach is not concerned with loss regulation. Career-specific self-management strategies Regarding the more specific level of career self-management, Gould (1979) has presented a career planning model that comprises setting oneself clear career-related goals (i.e. selection in the above terminology) and developing those action-related strategies that have to be undertaken to achieve them (i.e. optimization in the above terminology). The scale he developed is, however, one-dimensional and measures career planning without distinguishing between the aforementioned sub-constructs. Conceptualizing career success Definitions of career success refer to the accumulated work and psychological outcomes resulting from one’s vocational experiences (Seibert, Kraimer, & Crant, 1997). In other words, career success refers to ‘the real or perceived achievements individuals have accumulated as a result of their work experiences’ (Judge, Higgins, Thorensen, & Barrick, 1999, p. 621). Whereas organizations might be especially interested in objective career success (e.g. an individual’s achievements in terms of pay, position, promotions, and performance), individuals might also be interested in subjective career success (e.g. a positive career-related self-evaluation). Objective career success has been operationalized by pay, promotions, and/or position (see Dette et al., 2004; Ng et al., 2005). Regarding subjective success, Heslin (2003) introduced the distinction between self-referent versus other-referent assessment. One instrument that is often used to measure self-referent career success is the career satisfaction questionnaire developed by Greenhaus, Parasuraman, and Wormley (1990). They ask respondents to evaluate their career development against an, implicit, self-set standard. In other-referent Self-management strategies and career success 735 Copyright © The British Psychological Society Reproduction in any form (including the internet) is prohibited without prior permission from the Society assessment a person is asked to compare him-/herself with a significant other. It is surprising that such an approach has rarely been applied (see Dette et al., 2004; Heslin, 2003), since people do not only evaluate their career success relative to their personal standards and aspirations, but also compare themselves with others. In his social comparison theory, Festinger (1954) stated that especially in areas where the ‘social’ reality has to be evaluated, people compare their actions and outcomes to those of other people. Heslin (2003), for instance, found that more than two-thirds of his respondents used other-referent criteria in determining their subjective success. Although there are positive correlations between objective and subjective careersuccess measures, the size of correlations is moderate at best. As reported in a metaanalysis by Dette et al. (2004), objective career success shows an estimated correlation of .30 with self-referent subjective career success. Ng et al. (2005) reported a correlation of .30 between self-referent career success and salary, and a correlation of .22 between self-referent career success and promotions. Both the meta-analyses suggest that objective career success and self-referent subjective success are positively interrelated but not interchangeable. In fact, Hall and Chandler (2005) outlined a number of examples to demonstrate when objective success does not lead to psychological success. If, for instance, a professional promotion confronts a person with new professional demands, this person might experience that he or she is not yet competent enough to deal with these affordances. In this case, objective success (as indicated by the promotion) might not be reflected in equally positive subjective evaluations. Self-management and career success General self-management strategies General selection strategies are unrelated or only slightly related to self-referent subjective success (Abraham & Hansson, 1995; Freund & Baltes, 1998, 2002; Wiese, Freund, & Baltes, 2000, 2002) whereas general optimization strategies are. As shown in a number of studies with adults from various age groups, general optimization strategies are correlated with life satisfaction, domain-specific well-being, developmental success, job satisfaction, and the recollection of supervisors’ ratings (e.g. Abraham & Hansson, 1995; Bajor & Baltes, 2003; Freund & Baltes, 1998, 2002; Wiese et al., 2000, 2002). There is a lack of studies, however, on the relationship between selection/optimization and objective career success as well as other-referent subjective success. Note that Bajor and Baltes (2003) in their study classified employees’ subjective recollection of supervisors’ ratings as an objective criterion. In our view, it might be more appropriate to classify this criterion as falling in between the subjective and objective success categories. Specific self-management strategy of career planning Regarding objective career success, Gould (1979) showed career planning to be positively related to monthly salary and professional position, and Steffy and Jones (1988) found a positive association between career planning and income level. Wayne, Liden, Kraimer, and Graf (1999), however, failed to show a significant link between career planning and either the supervisor’s assessment of promotability or the employee’s actual salary increase. Regarding subjective success, Aryee and Debrah (1993) as well as Wayne et al. (1999) found that career planning was positively associated with self-referent career success. Following a meta-analysis by Ng 736 Andrea E. Abele and Bettina S. Wiese Copyright © The British Psychological Society Reproduction in any form (including the internet) is prohibited without prior permission from the Society et al. (2005), career planning appeared to be related to both objective career success (as indicated by salary and promotions) and self-referent subjective success (as indicated by career satisfaction), but the correlation coefficients were somewhat stronger for subjective outcomes. There are no findings on career planning and other-referent subjective success. The present research: Overview and predictions The present research was conducted to test the influence of general and specific selfmanagement strategies on the above-mentioned three central indicators of career success. Previous research showed that general self-management, especially optimization of goal-pursuit strategies (Abraham & Hansson, 1995; Freund & Baltes, 1998, 2002; Wiese et al., 2000, 2002), as well as specific career planning (Aryee & Debrah, 1993; Gould, 1979; Steffy & Jones, 1988; Wayne et al., 1999; see also Ng et al., 2005) is related to self-referent subjective career success. Findings on specific career planning and objective success are inconclusive (Gould, 1979; Steffy & Jones, 1988; Wayne et al., 1999). In addition, there is a lack of research on general strategies of self-management and objective success, there are no studies on both general and specific strategies of selfmanagement and other-referent subjective success, there has been no research on links between general and specific strategies of self-management, and there are no studies on the joint relationship between general and specific strategies with objective and subjective career success measures. Research questions and hypotheses The present study was conducted to provide data on the aforementioned research gaps. First, we are concerned with the relationship between general and specific selfmanagement strategies. They should be positively correlated such that people high in general self-management will not be low in specific career planning. However, we assume that the size of the correlations is only medium because the constructs are located on different levels of specificity. (1) The general strategies of selection and optimization are positively correlated with the domain-specific strategy of career planning. Regarding the nomological network of self-management strategies and career success, several assumptions will be tested. Based on previous research, we assume that the general strategy of optimization is positively related to self-referent career success. Extending these findings, we assume that optimization is positively related to otherreferent career success as well. In line with previous findings, however, there should be no correlation between the general strategy of selection and these subjective career success measures. (2) The general strategy of optimization is positively correlated with self-referent and other-referent subjective career success. We further assume that the specific self-management strategy of career planning is positively linked to all three indicators of career success. We will also test whether the influence of career planning on subjective success is mediated by objective success or vice versa. (3) Career planning is positively correlated with objective and subjective career success (both self-referent and other-referent). Self-management strategies and career success 737 Copyright © The British Psychological Society Reproduction in any form (including the internet) is prohibited without prior permission from the Society Finally, we will test the assumption that the general strategy of optimization is indirectly related to objective career success, mediated by the domain-specific strategy of career planning. (4) Mediated by career planning, the general strategy of optimization is indirectly linked to objective career success. We assume that our three measures of career success are positively correlated (see Dette et al., 2004; Heslin, 2003; Ng et al., 2005; see Figure 1). We can only speculate on the size of these correlations. The measures of subjective success should correlate more strongly with each other than each of them with objective success. We also assume that objective career success is more strongly related to other-referent subjective success than to self-referent one because a social – other-referent – comparison might be based more on ‘objective’ criteria like pay or position than a self-referent comparison with subjective standards. The data we used for studying our research questions were part of a larger research project on university graduates’ professional development that is based on a broad assessment of various psychological constructs (Abele, 2003; Cohrs, Abele, & Dette, 2006). Because we also knew participants’ Grade Point Average (GPA) and their study duration (number of semesters studied), we could include these performance measures into our analyses. We expected that the above posited relationships between selfmanagement and career success should be independent of GPA and study duration.