The Formation Process And Effect Of Career Calling

COVID-19 has brought great uncertainty to the global economy,leading to a fiercer competition in the external environment.Only through continuous innovation can enterprises gain advantages in such intense competition.However,due to the continuous growth of China’s economy,people’s pursuit of material is not as enthusiastic as before,which means that traditional economic rewards are difficult to stimulate the enthusiasm of organizational members currently.Hence,increasing numbers of people hope to find the meaning from their work,rather than regarding the work as a means of livelihood only.As the industry and academia pay more attention to career calling,career calling is likely to become the motivation for people to “enjoy” their current jobs.Therefore,relevant research on career calling is urgently needed.Career calling has attracted the attention of many scholars,and prior studies offer considerable discussions on the definition and measurement of career calling.However,the existing literature almost neglects the formation process and effect of career calling,as well as contextual research in China.Career calling changes with time and environment,and its formation process is also dynamic.In the Chinese context,will the connotation or manifestation of career calling change? What is the process of formation? What kind of impact will it have on the company and employees? The answers to these questions need not only a case study for theoretical exploration,but also an empirical study for verification and in-depth research.Therefore,this study designed three sub-studies to explore the formation process and effect mechanism of career calling comprehensively: First,through a systematic review of existing literature and an analysis of enterprise practices,we find that some enterprises will choose the path of “civilian enterprises entering into military” even if they are faced with some entry barriers such as huge initial investment,high threshold and high uncertainty of income.Its internal motivation and process of “civilian enterprises entering into military” deserve the attention and exploration.With the help of sense-making analysis framework,this paper takes Sany Heavy Industry CO.,LTD.as the research object to deeply analyze the formation process and effect of entrepreneurs’ career calling.The findings are as follows:(1)The formation of entrepreneurs’ career calling will gradually go through the process of “survival”,“development”and “serving the country”,and will evolve from micro level to macro level with the development of enterprises by sense-making;The formation of employees’ career calling is influenced by entrepreneurs and goes through the process of “concept implantation”,“assimilation” and “internalization”.(2)The entrepreneur’s calling promotes the upgrading of the enterprise’s ambidextrous innovation mode,that is,from “exploration-oriented” to“exploitation-oriented” then to “exploration-utilization dynamic equilibrium”.(3)The “serving country” calling of entrepreneurs promotes the sublimation of technological breakthrough effect and economic effect,and finally achieves the “civilian enterprises entering into military”.Meanwhile,the formation process of employees’ career calling will drive their cognition of work and improve their innovation performance to varying degrees.Second,study 1 finds that the career calling of entrepreneurs and start-up teams could change the way of enterprise innovation in the process of forming,and thereby impacts the innovation results.In order to further verify the conclusions of Study 1,Study 2 takes top management teams(TMT)with founder as the research object and uses questionnaire survey to explore the influence mechanism of TMT career calling on enterprise innovation performance.The results show that TMT career calling positively affects its ambidextrous innovation and enterprise innovation performance,and ambidextrous innovation mediates the relationship between TMT career calling and enterprise innovation performance.Moreover,cost leadership strategy negatively moderates the relationship between TMT career calling and ambidextrous innovation,while differentiation strategy and focus strategy positively moderates the relationship between TMT career calling and ambidextrous innovation.In other words,under the low level of cost leadership strategy,TMT career calling has a stronger effect on ambidextrous innovation;Under the high level of differentiation strategy or focus strategy,TMT career calling has a stronger effect on ambidextrous innovation.Finally,study 1 finds that the formation process of employees’ career calling would drive their cognition of work and influence their innovation performance.Likewise,to verify the conclusion of Study 1,Study 3 investigates R&D staff in science and technology enterprises and constructed a cognitive-affective dual path between employees’ career calling and innovation performance based on the cognitive-affective personality system theory and self-consistency theory.The results show that career calling has a significant positive impact on innovation performance.Moreover,intrinsic motivation and emotional exhaustion mediate the relationship between career calling and innovation performance respectively.Empowering leadership can strengthen the inhibition effect of career calling on employees’ emotional exhaustion,and also effectively strengthen the promotion effect of career calling on employees’ intrinsic motivation.This research contributes the literature in the field of career calling from several dimensions.First,this study identifies the formation process of career calling,broadens the application context of career calling,and embodies the process of sense-making.Second,this study explores the dynamic change law of enterprise innovation mode in the process of the formation of career calling,filling the theoretical gap between the dynamic application of organizational ambidextrous theory and the mechanism of ambidextrous innovation change process.Third,this study elucidates the dynamic change process of the effect caused by the coperformance of career calling and innovation mode in the process of manufacturing enterprises’ transformation to “civilian enterprises entering into military” enterprises,helping to provide theoretical basis for analyzing the effect in the process of enterprise transformation from the perspective of dynamic tracking.Fourth,this study reveals the positive effect of TMT career calling on enterprise innovation performance,which provides theoretical reference for subsequent research on career calling.Fifth,this paper demonstrates that ambidextrous innovation activities can realize the transmission process of TMT career calling to enterprise innovation performance,which provides a new perspective and direction for the application of motivation theory.Sixth,the empirical study on the relationship between career calling and innovation performance extends to individual level,which extends the scope of application of the impact of career calling on innovation performance.Moreover,Study 3 comprehensively reveals the influence mechanism of career calling on innovation performance from the perspectives of motivation and emotion.This not only broadens the application scope of cognitive-affective personality system theory in the field of human resource management,but also enriches the mediating mechanism between career calling and innovation performance.Based on the research findings,this study suggests that entrepreneurs should actively change the focus of career calling in different stages of enterprise development and pay attention to the cultivation of other organization members’ career calling.Meanwhile,the organization needs to adjust explorative and exploitative innovation activities according to different development stages of enterprises and make them combine in an orderly manner.Besides,it is also necessary to stimulate employees’ internal motivation and care about their emotions,and give them certain authorization,so as to improve the innovation performance of the organization and employees.