Linking protean career
orientation to well-being: the role
of psychological capital
Yongzhan Li
Teacher Education College, Pingdingshan University, Pingdingshan, China
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of protean career orientation (PCO) and
psychological capital (PsyCap) on well-being among knowledge workers.
Design/methodology/approach –The author adopted a two-wave cross-lagged design. In total, 518
knowledge workers at three enterprises in China were sampled to complete the Direnzo et al.’s (2015) Protean
Career Orientation Questionnaire, Luthans et al.’s (2007) Psychological Capacity Questionnaire, and Ryff and
Keyes’(1995) Psychological Well-Being Scale. The main statistical methods involved descriptive statistics,
structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping analysis.
Findings –The findings of the study were as follows: PCO positively predicted PsyCap among knowledge
workers; both PCO and PsyCap positively contributed to knowledge workers’well-being; and knowledge
workers’PsyCap partially mediated the relationship between their PCO and well-being.
Originality/value –Rare empirical studies were conducted on the relationship between PCO and
psychological well-being. The previous findings are inconsistent on whether PCO is an antecedent of PsyCap,
or PsyCap is an antecedent of PCO. The author conducted a cross-lagged survey to examine the above
relationships; to certain extent, the present study addresses the research gap and contributes to the
burgeoning literature.
Keywords Well-being, Psychological capital, Knowledge workers, Protean career orientation
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In this era of knowledge-driven economies, as the global economy becomes increasingly
volatile, society is changing rapidly. As a Chinese folk adage says, “I am puzzled just due to the
world updating so frequently.”These rapid changes in the world are not only embodied in
clothing, food, shelter, and transportation but are also reflected in our work. The present study
focused on the changes in employment relationships between employees and organizations.
With fierce competition in the world market, enterprise reorganization is common, and
downsizing has resulted in long-term employment contracts falling away (Feldman, 2000).
Today’s turbulent business environment has led to highly ambiguous and even contradictory
career signals. Correspondingly, individuals, perhaps in self–defense, are becoming flexible in
personal career development. It is known that to an employee entering a firm, the traditional
psychological contract is usually based on some common or shared ideas, such as working
hard, performing well, being loyal and committed, and thus gaining rewards and security.
However, in the rapidly changing world economy, the traditional psychological contract is
being replaced by a new psychological contract based on continuous learning and identity
change. In short, traditional organizational careers and career orientation are dying, while
emerging careers and career orientation, namely, protean careers and career orientation, are
coming into life due to their dynamic, flexible, and boundaryless characteristics (Lips–Wiersma
and Hall, 2007). In the twenty-first century, protean careers as an emerging career landscape
have been an issue that organizations and individuals must face seriously; widespread
uncertainty has forced workers to exert more control in their personal career management to
adapt to the labor market (Direnzo and Greenhaus, 2011; Sverke et al.,2006).
It is worth noting that, in Chinese high-tech enterprises, compared to other occupational
groups, knowledge workers experience more uncertainty due to rapid knowledge updates
Career Development International
Vol. 23 No. 2, 2018
pp. 178-196
©EmeraldPublishingLimited
1362-0436
DOI 10.1108/CDI-07-2017-0132
Received 25 July 2017
Revised 3 October 2017
7December2017
Accepted 17 January 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1362-0436.htm
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and strong requests for innovation. Thus, more and more knowledge workers pursue a
protean career. The protean career orientation (PCO) concept originates from Hall’s (1996)
seminal work on the protean career. As a promising construct in understanding
contemporary workers’career behavior, PCO has been of great interest to researchers in
organizational behavior and management psychology. It reflects individuals’proclivity to
manage their careers autonomously according to their own values and goals, that is,
pursuing a form of career development over which they exert control instead of an
organization (Direnzo et al., 2015; Rowe, 2013). Obviously, PCO depicts a landscape in
which the individual, rather than the organization, is in charge of career development
(Hirschi et al., 2017). Given that PCO is characterized by a self-directed and value-driven
career orientation, workers with strong PCO tend to be proactive in planning and exploring
careers that embody and match their personally meaningful values (Briscoe et al., 2012).
Career planning and exploration require significant resources, such as sufficient
experiences, skills, information, knowledge, and social relationships.
Further, some psychological resources, such as self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and
resilience (i.e. the dimensions of psychological capital (PsyCap)) are essential for the
aforementioned career behaviors (Barto et al., 2015; Hirschi et al., 2015; Lent et al., 2017;
Patton et al., 2004). However, he current literature has shown contradictory findings in the
relationship between PCO and PsyCap (Direnzo et al., 2015; Rowe, 2013). Therefore, more
studies, particularly longitudinal studies need to be conducted to address the issue of
temporal precedence linking PCO and PsyCap.
Since its inception, PCO has attracted attention across the fields of management,
psychology, and organizational behavior. Previous research has linked PCO to many
interesting outcomes, such as career authenticity (Briscoe et al., 2006), career exploration
(Rahim and Zainal, 2015), perceived employability, work-life balance (Direnzo et al., 2015),
career success (De Vos and Soens, 2008), organizational commitment (Khan et al., 2016),
loyalty (Rowe, 2013), and well-being (Rahim and Zainal, 2015).
Although well-being has been found to be associated with PCO, the evidence is
somewhat limited, particularly since, to our knowledge, few related longitudinal studies
have been conducted. Moreover, the current literature provides little information on the
mechanism by which PCO affects well-being. Because protean-oriented workers are driven
to pursue a self-directed career that matches their personally meaningful values regarding
personal, family, work, life purpose, and more (Hall, 2004), they tend to develop their careers
from a whole-life perspective (Rahim and Zainal, 2015). Therefore, although job satisfaction
has been considered the core component of subjective well-being, we want to examine a
more extensive concept “psychological well-being”which arises from satisfaction with
various roles, involving all life domains rather than only the workplace (ten Brummelhuis
and Bakker, 2012).
Despite increasing interest in PCO, our knowledge about the effect mechanism of PCO is
rather limited (Gubler et al., 2014). In view of PsyCap as an emerging positive psychological
concept linked to important individual and organizational outcomes, particularly closely
associated with PCO and well-being (Adil and Kamal, 2016; Direnzo et al., 2015;
Luthans et al., 2013; Rowe, 2013; Youssef-Morgan and Luthans, 2015), the present study
adopted a two-wave cross-lagged design, introducing the promising psychological resource
PsyCap into our research to examine the relationship between PCO, PsyCap, and well-being.
Given its favorable psychological nature, we explored PsyCap from the perspective of the
job demands-resources ( JD-R) model.
The present study adds several contributions to the literature. First, from a whole-life
perspective, with a cross-lagged design, we explore the influence of PCO on psychological
well-being instead of on job satisfaction; doing so helps clarify whether the incremental
utility of PCO stretches beyond work to other life domains. Second, to our knowledge, this is
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the first attempt to examine the relationship between PCO and psychological well-being in a
cross-lagged study. Third, we offer new insights into the function of PsyCap relative to PCO
and psychological well-being, deepening our understanding of why PCO positively predicts
some pivotal career outcomes, thereby, integrating research streams from career attitudes
and well-being.
Theory frame and hypotheses
PCO and well-being
Researchers have conceptualized PCO in various descriptions (see Gubler et al., 2014).
According to Hall (2002), PCO reflects a self-directed approach to career development
adjusted according to the personally meaningful values. Briscoe et al. (2006) defined PCO as
a career orientation involving greater mobility, a more whole life perspective, and a
developmental progression. Despite divergence in its conceptualization, PCO has generally
been accepted as a construct with two dimensions: self-directed, which reflects the
individual’s autonomous career management, that is, proactively exploring career options
and making career decisions on one’s own in order to have control over one’s personal career
development, and values-driven, which reflects the individual’s pursuit of personally
meaningful values and goals that provide impetus for personal career navigation (Direnzo
et al., 2015; Rowe, 2013; Youssef-Morgan and Luthans, 2015). Given the values-driven nature
of PCO, for workers with strong PCO, career success is no longer evaluated by traditional
external standards such as income and promotion, but rather by purely subjective criteria,
such as a sense of accomplishment and meaningfulness in life (Hall, 2004). Thus, the
external standards no longer direct vocational behaviors. To date, accumulating evidence
has supported the idea that PCO acts as an essential factor in successful career development
in today’s unstable economy and drastically competitive labor market (De Vos and Soens,
2008; Hall, 2004). Besides predicting career success, as noted earlier, PCO has been linked to
some valuable career variables, including PsyCap and well-being, the two variables on
which we focus.
Well-being is a general topic in our daily lives, as well as in philosophy, management,
organizational behavior, and psychology. In 1948, the World Health Organization defined
health as a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being. This has led to a
growing body of related studies which can be categorized into at least four approaches. Up
to now, the hedonic approach and eudaimonic approach have attained relatively more
attention. The hedonic approach focuses on happiness, satisfaction, and pleasure, and the
most typical measuring model is about subjective well-being including three constructs: life
satisfaction, negative affect, and positive affect (Diener et al., 1985). However, most research
of this approach assessed well-being only through measuring life satisfaction. In contrast,
the eudaimonic approach emphasizes fulfillment of human potential and a meaningful life.
This approach includes various life domains. The most prominent eudaimonic measuring
model is about psychological well-being, which comprises six components: positive relations
with others, environmental mastery, self-acceptance, purpose in life, autonomy, and
personal growth (Ryff and Keyes, 1995). Although there is an ongoing debate regarding the
conceptual distinction between these two types of well-being, research has shown that they
are two related yet distinct concepts (Avey et al., 2010; Samman, 2007). Considering some
researchers’suggestions that, compared to life satisfaction, psychological well-being has a
better predictive ability to performance (Edgar et al., 2015).
Well-being is a core pursuit of life for almost everyone, considerably influencing both
individual life and organizational development (Diener et al., 1999). Besides performance,
well-being has been linked to other important outcomes such as productivity (Miller, 2016),
work engagement, and organizational commitment (Field and Buitendach, 2011).
Conversely, well-being also negatively predicts the costs of absenteeism, turnover,
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compensation claims, and illness (Grant et al., 2007). Given extensive and prominent effects
of well-being on various outcomes, it is valuable to explore the internal mechanism of
well-being to ensure effective interventions.
Regarding the antecedents of well-being, besidesvariousobjectivefactorsinphysiologyand
the environment, researchers have also linked various psychological factors to well-being: the
Big Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and
neuroticism) (Tanksale, 2015) along with coping style (Gustems-Carnicer and Calderón, 2013),
self-efficacy (Costa et al.,2013),optimism(Kleimanet al.,2017),resilience(AblettandJones,2007),
hope (Parker et al.,2015),self–esteem(Duet al.,2015),self–concept(Lindebladet al.,2016),self–
identity (Sharma and Sharma, 2010),emotionalintelligence(Costaet al.,2013),andsenseof
humor (Cann and Collette, 2014). Additionally,somecareerfactorsrelatedtoorganizational
behavior, such as perceived organizational justice, perceived organizational support
(Babic et al.,2015),andPCO(RahimandZainal,2015),havealsobeendemonstratedto
predict well-being.
We can understand the relationship between PCO and well-being from the perspective of
the JD-R model (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; Demerouti et al., 2001). Intergrating a wide range
of working conditions into the analyses of organizational settings, this famous model was
considered an alternative to other models (e.g. Karasek’s, 1979 Demand-Control model and
Siegrist’s (1996) Effort-Reward Imbalance model) of individual well-being due to its great
explanatory power. According to this theoretical model, a working situation involves two
aspects: job demands and job resources. Job demands require individuals to make efforts to
cope with the work, to expend energy, emotion, and other resources. Job resources include all
factors that help meet job demands, such as individual intelligence, experience, emotion, will,
and social support. In the work process, job resources usually act as a buffer against job
demand; therefore, people strive to acquire and maintain valuable resources. However, since
job resources are limited, when job demands become too high and continuously drain
individuals’mental and physical resources, job resources will be insufficient to meet job
demands. Then the balance will break and lead to negative consequences, usually in the form
of job burnout (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; Hakanen et al., 2006). However, it is noteworthy
that the relationship between job demands and job resources is dialectic and interactional,
rather than rigid and unidirectional. Specifically, this means job demands, on the one hand,
expend resources; on the other hand, can also motivate individuals to get more resources
either through self-improvement or external sources. In this case, if individuals have enough
resources, they can accomplish their duties successfully, thus experiencing a sense of
achievement, satisfaction, and well-being (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007).
Individuals with high PCO tend to pursue a protean career. Given that a protean career
acts as a kind of job demand that requires individuals to make efforts and expend resources,
PCO also requires individuals to make efforts to develop both internal and external resources
to achieve personally valuable goals. In this sense, PCO plays a role consistent with a protean
career as a job demand. Individuals with high PCO are proactive in exploring career options.
Furthermore, they follow their own internal compass to navigate their career development
(Hall, 2004). That is, they are driven by internal values such as ideals, a meaningful life, or a
sense of work-life balance, rather than by extrinsic incentives such as income or promotion. To
realize their values, they always undertake extensive career planning, a process that helps
develop their human resources, such as experience, skills, and knowledge (Weng and Mcelroy,
2010). Career planning also develops their social resources, such as interpersonal networks or
professional relationships that provide them guidance and information to acquire job
opportunities (Forret and Sullivan, 2002; Inkpen and Tsang, 2005). Additionally, career
planning helps develop their psychological resources, such as self-efficacy, optimism, and so
on, to meet demands in various domains and facilitate a work-life balance, an essential
foundation of well-being (Direnzo et al., 2015). Individuals with high PCO assess career success
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by their own values rather than extrinsic criteria such as climbing the organizational ladder
(Hall, 1996). Thus, workers with high PCO are more likely to proactively abandon an
unsatisfying job, rather than passively accept it; they are more likely to proactively search
jobs and chose jobs which seem to embody their internal values well and are likely to have a
good person-job fit. Therefore, PCO helps workers experience a greater sense of career success
and job satisfaction (Hirschi et al., 2017), both of which are closely associated with well-being
(De Vos and Soens, 2008).
Accordingly, it is reasonable to infer a positive association between PCO and well-being.
However, very few studies have examined the theoretical relationship between PCO and
well-being. For example, Rahim and Zainal (2015) investigated 387 professional engineers in
Malaysia and found that only the self-directed dimension of PCO positively influenced
psychological well-being, while the values-driven dimension did not. Moreover, it is worth
noting that the cross-sectional design adopted by Rahim and Zainal (2015) is not suited to
testing causality between variables. More longitudinal studies need to be carried out
to determine the temporal precedence linking PCO and well-being. Thus, we posit:
H1. PCO positively predicts well-being among knowledge workers.
PsyCap
PsyCap is a relatively new construct emerging from positive psychology and positive
organizational behavior. More people now realize that besides of traditional types of capital
(e.g. economic, social, and human), the state of mind is essential for individual and
organizational development. Thus, PsyCap is coming into view as an important psychological
resource. Researchers have argued that PsyCap goes beyond traditional capitals. As a
concept, PsyCap was first put forward by Seligman in the 1990s; however, its more generally
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