An Empirical Study Of The Relationships Of Knowledge Workers’ Calling, Career Commitment And Job Attitudes

With the advent of the era of the knowledge economy of the 21st century, the knowledge-based work which is creative, varied and unpredictable, will be the main form of work of the new economic era, just as the father of modern management Peter Drucker said:the coming society will be knowledge society, and the future enterprise will be full of knowledge workers. Just like nomads live where there is water and grass, Knowledge workers love work but may not love organization, and they will heading to where there are knowledge to chase and achievability to enjoy. It is easier for knowledge workers to be loyal to their jobs rather than loyal to their organization. How to effectively manage and motivate knowledge workers have become the focus of human resource management, and also have become a core proposition of the modern enterprise for sustainable development.In recent years, the "Calling", which is only for the Christian clergy, begin to be used by Western scholars to explore the meaning of life to work for the staff. "Calling" was used to describe the work as something for psychological perception, and scholars study that "Calling" has a positive impact for staff attitude and behavior, such as professional commitment, organizational commitment, job satisfaction and so on. I believe that knowledge workers pay more attention to work its meaning and its higher vocational identity, and therefore with a higher level calls for their career. This paper studies the influence on calling of knowledge employee on working attitude such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover intention, to explore the management and incentive method to knowledge employee of the organization deeply.This paper systematically investigate the relationship among the calling, occupational commitment and work attitudes (organizational commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intention), based on the social exchange theory and self-determination theory, and it also investigate perceived the adjustment effect of Perceived Organizational Support (POS) on above relationships. The key research subjects involved Calling, occupational commitment, the establishment of theoretical model of the relationship between Perceived Organizational Support and work attitude; Examine the occupational commitment in calling for work attitude(organization commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intention) as the media; and also examine the Regulating Effect of perceived organization support to calling as well as occupational commitment to work attitude(organization commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intention).First, on the base of the previous relevant study on calling and correlation theory of employee-organization relationship, social exchange, cognitive psychology and other fields from inside and outside country, this dissertation builds a relational model among calling, occupational commitment, Perceived Organizational Support and work attitude, and also made a number of theoretical assumptions; second, it makes operationalization definition for those conception or variable involved in the hypothesis, choosing mature metrical scale of various variable, and validate the reliability and validity of the scale according to the test results; third, I have collected 981 copies of questionnaire survey filled by knowledge employees all over the country, and analyzed the data by statistical software such as SPSS15.0 and Lisrel 8.70, and demonstrated and tested hypotheses by the information provided by the sample; finally, the dissertation have done further explanation and analysis on the conclusion from data analysis, and also discussed the directive significance of the conclusion above in the management practice.Conclusions found that the occupational commitment plays an intermediary role between calling and work attitude, the occupational commitment was fully mediated the relationship between the calling and turnover intention, and partially mediated the relationship among the calling and job satisfaction, organizational commitment. Meanwhile, the study found that Perceived Organizational Support only have the adjustment Effect on the influence of turnover intention made by calling and occupational commitment, but has no adjustment Effect on the influence of work attitude and organizational commitment made by calling and occupational commitment. To be specific:1. these results above demonstrate that some conclusions of the foreign study about the relationship between calling, occupational commitment and work attitude in the background broad, have some differences in the background of china; 2, the improvement of Perceived Organizational Support can only markedly enhance the negative relationship of the calling and occupational commitment for turnover intention of knowledge employee, but can not markedly enhance the positive relationship of the calling and occupational commitment for job satisfaction and organization commitment.In conclusion, this paper was to explore the relationship among calling, occupational commitment, Perceived Organizational Support and work attitude of the knowledge employee in Chinese enterprise. The conclusion of this paper showed that we can enhance occupational commitment, organization commitment and job satisfaction, and lower turnover intention to improve organizational support by increasing the level of calling of knowledge workers. Meanwhile, improving Perceived Organizational Support of knowledge employee has an impact on the negative relationship of calling and turnover intention, but could not enhance the positive relationship of calling and organization commitment, job satisfaction. In other words, Perceived Organizational Support may weaken the dissatisfaction brought by low calling, namely "health effects "; but can not enhance the satisfaction brought by high calling, namely " incentives ". The above has important implications for the management practices to knowledge employee of enterprises and for the practice of social education of knowledge employee as well.