Career Transfer Capability And Its Effects On Career Effectiveness Under The Context Of Organizational Change

Nowadays,organizational change has been a crucial development issues for enterprises in China.The process of organizational change is always accompanied with the renewal of human resource,along with the occurrence of career transfer.Thus,the employees in organization would take a series of coping strategies to adapt to the career transfer,in order to achieve sustainable career development.For the purpose of investigating the individual difference behind these coping strategies,the current research defined the capability of coping with career transfer as career transfer capacity(CTC).In order to understand the theoretical connotation of CTC,discover the process of career transfer and examine the role of the context of organizational change in this process,we have completed four studies:1)we investigated the contextual characteristics of organizational change,described the challenges and strategies in the process of organizational change,and found out career transfer traits;2)we depicted the construct of CTC,developed the measurement of CTC,and testified its reliability and validity;3)we explored the influence of the context of organizational change on individuals’ CTC,especially the influences of career transfer traits and change-related factors;4)we examined the effect mechanism of CTC under the context of organizational change,including the effects on individuals’ career effectiveness and work attitude The details are listed below.Study 1:The context of organizational change and career transfer traits.We adopted two-phase case study to analyze the context of organizational change,described the challenges and strategies in the process of organizational change,and discovered career transfer traits.In phase one,we conducted a three-year longitudinal study on a middle-sized traditional manufacturing firm,with the methods including field study,semi-structural interviews,symposium discussions,telephone interviews,questionnaires and analysis of second-hand data.We described the development history and the process of organizational change of this firm,concluded the challenges and its strategies in this process,and found out two career transfer traits,i.e.job crafting and multiple skills.In phase two,following the replication logic,we analyzed other three firms which were different in industry,size and ownership.Adopting the analysis of second-hand data,field study and interviews on owners or members of top management team,we found out that,even their situations were different,these two career transfer traits were common.Study 2:The development of CTC construct and measurement.We reviewed previous literature to depict the construct of CTC,and followed the protocol proposed by previous scholars to develop the measurement of CTC.First,through reviewing previous measurements and semi-structure interviews,we generated initial items,and then we invited experts to assess these items,forming the preliminary item pool.Second,we administrated the first round of questionnaire(N=338).Using method of distinction test and exploratory factor analysis,we identified the preliminary structure of this measurement.Finally,after collecting the responses from the second round of questionnaire(N=273),we testified the construct validity of this measurement,as well as its reliability,convergent validity and discriminant validity.The measurement of CTC consists of three dimensions,i.e.adaptive trait,competency rebuilding and career initiative.Adaptive trait refers to the psychological readiness for coping with career transfer and related personality,which is an adaption strategy.Competency rebuilding is a selection strategy which is related to the knowledge and skills to cope with career transfer as well as their transfer across contexts.Career initiative represents the planning,consideration and actions for career development,which is a development strategy.Study 3:The influential mechanism of the context of organizational change on CTC.This study was a quantitative study,which was to investigate the influences of career transfer traits(job crafting&multiple skills)and change-related factors(support for change&individual’s readiness for change)on individuals’ CTC.A survey was conducted in 63 teams from 30 firms,and 63 managers and 277 employees completed our questionnaire.We applied multi-level mediation model to the data.The results demonstrated:1)job crafting,multiple skills,support for change and individual’s readiness for change had influences on CTC;2)job crafting and readiness for change mediated the relationship between support for change and career transfer capacity,while multiple skills did not.Study 4:The effect mechanism of CTC under the context of organizational change.We used the same sample of study 3,testified the effects of CTC on career effectiveness(adaptive performance and task performance)and work attitudes(job satisfaction and turnover intention),and explored the roles of individual dynamic factors(self-initiative and job embeddedness)and team dynamic factor(leader-member exchange,LMX).Appling mediation model and multi-level moderation model,the results showed that:1)individuals’ CTC had a positive effect on adaptive performance,task performance and job satisfaction,while it has a negative effect on turnover intention;2)individuals’self-initiative and job embeddedness mediated the relationship between CTC and the outcomes;3)LMX played a moderating role in the relationship between self-initiative and adaptive performance.The current research has several theoretical contributions.First,the multi-level influential mechanism of the context of organizational change.We proposed a three-layer mechanism model,which was organization-team-individual model,to answer how the context of organizational change would influence individuals’ career development.This model not only solved the problem of the lack of contextual specificity in previous research,but also amended the rigid perspective of the relationship between individual and organization on the career issues.Second,CTC as a progressive process.We discovered the theoretical connotation of CTC and developed a reliable,valid measurement.This construct explained the factors to cope with career transfer,as well as the processes.Note that the dimensions corresponded the adaption,selection and development strategy.The last but not the least,the parallel effect mechanism.We discovered the independent and parallel paths of the individual dynamic factors which mediates the relationship between CTC and career effectiveness,as well as the relationship between CTC and work attitudes.This might provide empirical evidence to the literature of parallel thought.It also has practical implications.It could not only help employees cope with the challenges from organizational changes better and promote their career,but also give suggestions to organizations’ human resource management which could help its success in organizational change and development.