The Impact of Psychological Capital on Employees’ Career Success: Mediating Role of Career Commitment

REN Hui; YUN Zhong-Lin; CHEN Qi-Shan

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2013, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (4) : 960-964.

The Impact of Psychological Capital on Employees’ Career Success: Mediating Role of Career Commitment

Ren-hao Ren¹,Zhong-Lin WEN²,

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Abstract

Why are some people more successful in their careers than others? Given that careers were important to individuals, organizations, and society, career success was always an interesting topic for both organizational practitioners and researchers. An examination of the literature on career success revealed human capital, social capital played critical role on fostering one’s success. With an increase in mergers, acquisitions, and layoffs, career environment drastically changed. Recent organizational research had suggested that psychological capital may facilitate employees’ career success. This research aims to explore how psychological capital influence on employees’ career success. A survey was conducted with 265 employees from a large State-owned enterprise in a province from eastern China to explore how psychological capital had influence on employees. Employees’ psychological capital, career commitment and career success were rated by participants self-report. After controlling human capital factors, such as, educational level and organizational tenure, we analyzed the data by using SEM, The results revealed that: (1) Employees’ psychological capital had a salient positive relationship with career commitment and career success; (2) Psychological capital increased employees’ career commitment, and the latter increase employees’ probability of career success; (3) Career commitment played a partial mediator between psychological capital and objective career success, but the effect of psychological capital on subjective career success was totally mediated by career commitment. Our findings provided a new perspective on how to foster employees’ career success. In application, it suggested managers should cultivate their employees’ psychological capital to facilitate employees to achieve their career success. Besides, employees should develop positive attitude towards their career (i.e., career commitment) to flourish their career success.

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psychological capital / career commitment / career success

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Ren-hao Ren Zhong-Lin WEN. The Impact of Psychological Capital on Employees’ Career Success: Mediating Role of Career Commitment[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2013, 36(4): 960-964

References

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