Anita C. Keller

Do Bad Guys Get Ahead or Fall Behind? Relationships of the Dark Triad of Personality With Objective and Subjective Career Success

This study analyzed incremental effects of single Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) on objective (i.e., salary and leadership position) and subjective (i.e., career satisfaction) career success. We analyzed 793 early career employees representative of age and education from the private industry sector in Germany. Results from multiple and logistic regressions revealed bright and dark sides of the Dark Triad, depending on the specific Dark Triad trait analyzed. After controlling for other relevant variables (i.e., gender, age, job tenure, organization size, education, and work hours), narcissism was positively related to salary, Machiavellianism was positively related to leadership position and career satisfaction, and psychopathy was negatively related to all analyzed outcomes. These results provide evidence that the Dark Triad plays a role in explaining important career outcomes. Implications for personality and career research are derived.

Psychological, Educational and Sociological Perspectives on Success and Well-Being in Career Development

Back Cover Text This collection covers how success and well-being relate to each other in early career development in the domains of employment and education. It gives a conceptual overview of success and well-being as established in the psychological research tradition, complemented by educational and sociological approaches. The volume presents articles on success and well-being in applied contexts, such as well-being as an individual resource during school-to-work transition, or well-being and success at the workplace. Work psychologists, social psychologists, educational researchers, and sociologists will find this book valuable, as it provides unique insights into social and psychological processes afforded by the combination of disciplines, concepts, and a diversity of approaches. Table of Contents Acknowledgements 1. Introduction Robin Samuel, Manfred Max Bergman, Anita C. Keller and Norbert K. Semmer 2. The Influence of Career Success on Subjective Well-Being Andrea E. Abele-Brehm 3. Upper-Secondary Educational Trajectories and Young Men’s and Women’s Self-Esteem Development in Switzerland Sybille Bayard, Monika Staffelbach, Phillip Fischer and Marlies Buchmann. 4. Young People’s Progress after Dropout from Vocational Edu-cation and Training: Transitions and Occupational Integration at Stake. Longitudinal Qualitative Perspective Barbara Duc and Nadia Lamamra 5. Success, Well-Being and Social Recognition: An Interactional Perspective on Vocational Training Practices Stefano A. Losa, Barbara Duc and Laurent Filliettaz. 6. Agentic Pathways toward Fulfillment in Work Jeylan T. Mortimer, Mike Vuolo and Jeremy Staff 7. The How and Why of the Relationship between Job Insecuri-ty, Subjective Career Success, and Turnover Intention Cecile Tschopp and Gudela Grote 8. Work Experiences and Well-Being in the First Years of Professional Work in Switzerland: A Ten-Year Follow-up Study Wolfgang Kalin, Anita C. Keller, Franziska Tschan, Achim Elfering and Norbert K. Semmer 9. The Meaning and Measurement of Well-Being as an Indicator of Success Anita C. Keller, Norbert K. Semmer, Robin Samuel and Manfred Max Bergman

Gender differences in the association of a high quality job and self-esteem over time: A multiwave study

High self-esteem often predicts job-related outcomes, such as high job satisfaction or high status. Theoretically, high quality jobs (HQJs) should be important for self-esteem, as they enable people to use a variety of skills and attribute accomplishments to themselves, but research findings are mixed. We expected reciprocal relationships between self-esteem and HQJ. However, as work often is more important for the status of men, we expected HQJ to have a stronger influence on self-esteem for men as compared to women. Conversely, task-related achievements violate gender stereotypes for women, who may need high self-esteem to obtain HQJs. In a 4-year cross-lagged panel analysis with 325 young workers, self-esteem predicted HQJ; the lagged effect from HQJ on self-esteem was marginally significant. In line with the hypotheses, the multigroup model showed a significant path only from self-esteem to HQJ for women, and from HQJ to self-esteem for men. The reverse effect was not found for women, and only marginally significant for men. Overall, although there were some indications for reciprocal effects, our findings suggest that women need high self-esteem to obtain HQJs to a greater degree than men, and that men base their self-esteem on HQJs to a greater extent than women.

Work Experiences and Well-Being in the First Years of Professional Work in Switzerland: A Ten-Year Follow-Up Study

The AEQUAS (a German acronym for “Work Experiences and Quality of Life in Switzerland”) study followed young workers in five occupations over their first ten years in the labor market. Participants of the study reported on working conditions and well-being at five occasions. Overall, resources at work as well as well-being, health and personal resources remained stable or increased. Concurrently, task-related stressors increased as well. This result may reflect career progress (e.g., gaining more responsibilities may be accompanied by increasing time pressure) but development in task-related stressors as well as resources may also be related to specific occupations. Several trajectories had their turning point after the first or second year of being in the labor market, which may reflect a successful professional socialization. Even though a substantial number of participants did change their occupation over these ten years (with benefits for their well-being), development over the first ten years after vocational training implies a successful transition into labor market.

Fluktuationsabsichten junger Erwachsener aus psychologischer Sicht:Die Rolle von Commitment und Laufbahnzufriedenheit

Die Absicht von Arbeitnehmenden, ihren Arbeitgeber zu verlassen, und der tatsachliche Stellenwechsel, die so genannte Fluktuation, sind von groser Relevanz fur Erwerbstatige wie auch fur deren Arbeitgeberinnen und Arbeitgeber. Wahrend die Fluktuation von erwachsenen Erwerbstatigen in der Literatur bereits diskutiert ist (vgl. Griffeth et al. 2000; Mitchell et al. 2001), gibt es nur wenige Studien, die spezifischer auf die Fluktuationsabsicht von jungen Arbeitnehmenden fokussieren.

Gesellschaftliche Bedeutung und Kosten von Stress

Hohe Anforderungen, Hindernisse bei der Zielerreichung sowie mangelnde Gestaltungsmoglichkeiten sind heute kennzeichnend fur den Arbeitsalltag vieler Erwerbstatiger. Dieses Kapitel gibt hierzu einen Uberblick und zeigt den Zusammenhang solcher Arbeitsbedingungen mit wichtigen Gesundheitsindikatoren und daraus resultierenden Produktivitatsverlusten auf. Den Kosten des Stresses wird eine Nutzenkalkulation von stressreduzierenden Interventionen gegenubergestellt. Das Kapitel gibt einen Einblick in erfolgreiche Interventionsmoglichkeiten und schliest mit einem Ausblick auf stressrelevante Herausforderungen einer sich schnell wandelnden Arbeitswelt.

Übergänge im Spannungsfeld zwischen sozialer Herkunft, Leistung und Strukturen des Bildungssystems

Die so genannte 1. Schwelle ist auch in der Schweiz – wenn auch nicht im gleichen Ausmas wie in Deutschland – in den letzten Jahrzehnten zu einem strukturellen Engpass geworden (BBT 2008; Granato 2006; Granato und Schittenhelm 2004; Ulrich et al. 2009). Die Nachfrage nach Ausbildungsplatzen der Sekundarstufe II2 ubersteigt das Angebot betrachtlich und dauerhaft.

The Meaning and Measurement of Well-Being as an Indicator of Success

This chapter discusses the conceptualization and measurement of well-being and success, and the relationships between the two. Many scholars in well-being research agree that well-being consists of three components (satisfaction, positive and negative affect). There are less well established definitions in the area of success. Frequently, success is conceptualized in terms of career success, distinguishing between objective and subjective indicators. These indicators most often include salary, status, and career satisfaction; they are sometimes criticized for being inappropriate in current labor markets and as to their individual meaning. In this chapter, we propose to widen the understanding of career success by incorporating the broader concept of work success in terms of success episodes, referring to task performance, pro-social success, appreciation and feedback as indicators of short-term and long-term successes.

Testing Job Typologies and Identifying At-Risk Subpopulations Using Factor Mixture Models.

Research in occupational health psychology has tended to focus on the effects of single job characteristics or various job characteristics combined into 1 factor. However, such a variable-centered approach does not account for the clustering of job attributes among groups of employees. We addressed this issue by using a person-centered approach to (a) investigate the occurrence of different empirical constellations of perceived job stressors and resources and (b) validate the meaningfulness of profiles by analyzing their association with employee well-being and performance. We applied factor mixture modeling to identify profiles in 4 large samples consisting of employees in Switzerland (Studies 1 and 2) and the United States (Studies 3 and 4). We identified 2 profiles that spanned the 4 samples, with 1 reflecting a combination of relatively low stressors and high resources (P1) and the other relatively high stressors and low resources (P3). The profiles differed mainly in terms of their organizational and social aspects. Employees in P1 reported significantly higher mean levels of job satisfaction, performance, and general health, and lower means in exhaustion compared with P3. Additional analyses showed differential relationships between job attributes and outcomes depending on profile membership. These findings may benefit organizational interventions as they show that perceived work stressors and resources more strongly influence satisfaction and well-being in particular profiles.

Ten-year trajectories of stressors and resources at work: Cumulative and chronic effects on health and well-being

Employing 5 waves of measurement over a period of 10 years, we explored the effects of exposure to constellations of conditions at work on physical and psychological strain, estimating the history of exposure over time. Specifically, we first tested if the 4 constellations postulated by the job demand–control (JDC) model, extended to include social stressors, could be identified empirically over time through a person-centered analysis. Second, we tested 2 specific effects of the history of exposure on physical and psychological strain: cumulative effects (i.e., history of exposure predicting strain) and chronic effects (i.e., history of exposure being associated with reduced reversibility in strain). Data were collected from 483 respondents who were at the end of their vocational training. The results supported the hypotheses, in that not all JDC constellations could be empirically identified, the majority of participants was in rather favorable constellations, and the differences between constellations, in terms of levels of demands and control, were more subtle than suggested by theoretically predefined constellations. Because the linear and quadratic solutions were largely comparable, we decided to adopt the linear ones. The expected cumulative and chronic effects were mostly confirmed: Unfavorable JDC constellations were associated with poorer health and well-being than favorable ones, when controlling for the initial level of the respective outcome variable, demographic variables, and for cumulative private stressors (cumulative effects). These differences largely remained after further adjustments for current conditions at work (chronic effects).