CAREER BELIEFS, PERSONALITY AND CAREER SUCCESS: AN INVESTIGATION OF DIRECT AND INDIRECT EFFECTS

Abstract

Career development theories emphasize the importance of individual 's characteristics and cognitive processes for several career outcomes. Under the theoretical framework of Krumboltz's Social Learning Theory of Career Decision Making (1979), the present study aimed to explore career beliefs of the employed individuals and to investigate its direct and indirect relationships with personality and career success. More specifically, the study attempted to find out the predictive relationship between big five personality factors (i.e., agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience and conscientiousness) and two facets of career success (i.e. objective and sUbjective career success). Further, mediating role of career beliefs in relationship of personality factors and career success was also explored. Additionally, role of human capital and demographic variables were also studied. For the very purpose, present study was conducted in two parts comprising multiple phases. Career Beliefs Scale, Urdu version of NEO-Five Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrea, 1985) and Urdu version of Career Satisfaction Scale were utilized for assessing the constructs of the study. Part I dealt with preparation of the instrument for the study. An indigenous Career Beliefs Scale (CBS) was developed. Career Satisfaction Scale (CSS) developed by Greenhaus, Parasuraman, and Wormley (1990) was translated into Urdu language. This part also dealt with establishing construct validity through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EF A) and criterion related validity for CBS and construct validity for CSS through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). EFA of CBS resulted in two factor structure (named as Facilitating Career Beliefs and Career Myths) of the instrument while CF A of CSS confirmed its uni-dimensional structure. The findings also lX provided the evidence of the sound psychometric properties of the two measures. Part II consisted of pilot study and main study. The pilot study aimed to check the trends of data for present sample and main study aimed for testing proposed hypotheses. The two instruments finalized in Part I and Urdu version of NEO-FFI (Chishti & Kamal, 2002) originally developed by Costa and McCrea (1985) was administered on 690 full time employed adults with average age of 32 years, working in banks and telecom sector. The sample comprised of 400 males and 176 females working in government, semi-government and private banks and telecom organizations from Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Lahore. The findings revealed that among personality factors, conscientiousness and extraversion significantly predicted subjective career success, whereas among demographic variables only age significantly predicted subjective career success. Both types of Career Beliefs i.e. Facilitating Career Beliefs and Career Myths proved to be significant predictors of subjective career success. On the other hand, for objective career success, gender and age from demographic variables and education and work experience from human capital variables acted as significant predictors. Among personality factors, agreeableness and neuroticism significantly predicted objective career success. Career myths also significantly negatively predicted objective career success. Overall, human capital and demographic variables resulted to be better predictors of objective career success. The study also found the evidence that Facilitating Career Beliefs and Career Myths partially mediated the relationship between conscientiousness and subjective career success. Career Myths also partially mediated the relationship between agreeableness and objective career success. Gender was found to play moderating role in the relationship between human capital (work experience) and objective career success. x Group wise comparisons showed that male employees experienced higher levels of objective career success as compared to female employees. Employees working in semi-government experienced higher objective career success while employees in government experienced higher subjective career success. Results also showed that employees who are married, who have employed spouse and those working on permanent basis had higher levels of objective and subjective career success as compared to employees those are unmarried, don't have employed spouse and those working on contract basis. Employees working in banks and semi-government tended to have higher objective career success as compared to those working in telecom, government and private sectors. On the other hand, employees working in government sector possessed higher levels of career myths and experienced higher subjective career success as compared to those working in semi-government and private sectors. Implications of the present study are discussed under career development perspectives and career counseling process. Limitations have been acknowledged and future research directions have been suggested accordingly.