Catherine E. Schwoerer

Career management strategies: the role of personality

Using instrumentation grounded in the “Big Five” theoretical framework, this paper empirically examines personality as a predictor of career strategy behavior. Results support expectations that some aspects of personality (e.g. being extroverted or sociable) are associated with greater use of strategies involving relationships with others (e.g. seeking mentoring relationships). Other results indicate an association between personality dimensions (e.g. “openness to experience” or “intellectance”) and more self‐directed career strategies (e.g. developing skill/career flexibility). Implications of these results and directions for future study are discussed.

Age and work outcomes: the moderating effects of self-efficacy and tool design effectiveness

Summary This field study addressed the relationship between age and work outcomes by investigating the effects of two potential moderators of age-work outcome relations: self-efficacy and perceptions of tool design effectiveness, while controlling for job tenure, job demands, and gender. Findings revealed that job-focused self-efficacy beliefs moderated the relationship between age and absenteeism, while tool design moderated the relationship between age and performance. Self-efficacy and tool design both had direct positive main effects on job satisfaction. Implications for research on age and constructive work force management are discussed.

Older Dogs and New Tricks: Career Stage and Self-Assessed Need for Training.

Self-assessed training needs, increasingly used in designing, delivering, and targeting training, can be systematically affected by factors other than actual need. Using a sample of public sector employees, this research investigated the influence of career stage on perceptions of managerial support, training self-efficacy, utility and self-reported training needs. Those in later career stages reported lower training self-efficacy, lower training utility, and less need for management training. Implications for organizations and this growing segment of the work force are discussed.

Organizational characteristics and HRM policies on rights: Exploring the patterns of connections

The protection of employee rights in the workplace is one of the fundamental ethical questions facing organizations today. Organizations differ in the extent to which they protect the rights of both employees and themselves as employers, yet little research has examined the types of organizations that have rights protection policies. Instead of the classic normative approach to ethical issues, this study took a contextual approach to the management of rights in the workplace through human resource policies. Associations were found between the organizational characteristics of size, industry, unionization, business condition, and the existence of employee and employer rights policies. Additional analyses revealed underlying dimensions in right policies and the relationship of organizational characteristics to these aspects of rights management were examined. The results are discussed in terms of understanding human resource rights management within an organizational context.

Evaluating quantitative and qualitative types of change: An analysis of the malleability of general and specific self-efficacy constructs and measures.

In this research, the authors present theoretical explanations for quantitative and qualitative types of changes to evaluate the malleability of general self-efficacy (GSE) and specific self-efficacy (SSE) measures due to domain-specific training. First, the authors hypothesize that the change in the GSE measure due to sales training is a quantitative mean-difference (alpha) change. Second, they hypothesize that the change in SSE due to sales training is a qualitative (beta or gamma) change. Results of latent variable cross-lagged analysis on sales trainee data (N = 417) support the authors’ hypothesis that the difference in GSE was quantitative. Findings also provide partial support of the second hypothesis that a change in a SSE measure was qualitative. The qualitative change is attributed to the novelty and complexity of the particular SSE tasks (i.e., direct selling). Additional analysis of rank-order consistency further validates the measures and demonstrates the GSE measure was consistent before and after training whereas the SSE scales were not as consistent. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Exploring the Boundaries of Career Calling The Moderating Roles of Procedural Justice and Psychological Safety

The purpose of this research was to examine how the relation between an individual’s calling and his or her job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and career success is affected by two dimensions of organizational context, procedural justice and psychological safety. Data were obtained from 526 employees of a law enforcement agency in the Midwest United States. Our results indicate that calling is important to both employees and employers since individuals with higher sense of calling are more satisfied with their jobs, less likely to turn over, and are more content with their careers. Moreover, this study provides evidence that under poor contextual conditions, the relation between calling and job satisfaction is stronger than in good contextual conditions (i.e., procedurally just or psychologically safe contexts). Our findings also suggest that a psychologically safe organizational environment is of some importance to experiencing a feeling of career success for those with a higher sense of calling.

Helping Yourself to Help Others: How Cognitive Change Strategies Improve Employee Reconciliation with Service Clients and Positive Work Outcomes

ABSTRACT This qualitative study examined the paradox of difficult, yet meaningful, helping as part of employees’ jobs in a social services organization. Incorporating an emergent design using employee interviews the study identified how employees alter their understanding of workplace challenges, such as emotional distress and unsafe client behaviours, in order to find new meaning in the other-oriented value of their work. The resulting framework of employees’ experiences through challenging, yet meaningful, helping extends the research in customer service by proposing the reconciliation process, achieved through cognitive change strategies (i.e. visualization techniques, cognitive reframing and mindfulness of experience) serves as a conceptual bridge that helps the management of this apparent paradox. We first describe the workplace challenges and then outline the distinct cognitive change strategies that engendered the reconciliation process. Implications for practice and future researchers are then discussed.