Calling and work-related outcomes: Career commitment as a mediator

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Abstract

The current study tested the hypothesis that experiencing a calling to a particular career would relate positively to work-related outcomes, and that these relations would be mediated by career commitment. Using a sample of 370 employees representing diverse occupations at a Western research university, results supported these hypotheses as calling moderately correlated with career commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment and weakly correlated with withdrawal intentions. Career commitment was found to fully mediate the calling–job satisfaction relation, partially mediate the calling–organizational commitment relation, and act as a suppressor in the relation between calling and withdrawal intentions; calling was associated with somewhat greater withdrawal intentions once a person's level of career commitment was taken into consideration. These results suggest that career commitment may represent a critical link between calling and work-related well-being. Implications for research and practice are explored.

Section snippets

Research on work as a calling

The literature on measuring and assessing perceptions of work as a calling is limited, but growing, with vocational psychologists mainly studying the role of calling among adolescent and young adult populations and I/O psychologists and management researchers studying the role of calling among adult populations and in the workplace. Two early studies by Davidson and Caddell, 1994, Wrzesniewski et al., 1997 surveyed working adults representing diverse occupations and asked them to read three

Broader context and related constructs

We conceptualize a calling as defined in the manner proposed by Dik and Duffy (2009), namely as a sense in which (a) one feels called by some external, beyond-the-self force, to a particular career in a manner that (b) is a source or expression of one's broader sense of meaning and purpose in life, and that (c) views the needs or benefits of others as a motivating force. Clearly, components of this definition overlap with previously established areas of research. At a global level, research on

Calling and commitment: a mediated model

Despite the consistent pattern of results in which calling and related constructs correlate positively with beneficial work-related and mental health criterion variables, little is known about the mechanisms underlying these relations. One possible mediator of the relation between calling and work outcomes is career commitment. Research has demonstrated a strong link between calling and commitment to one's current, or future, career (e.g., Bunderson and Thompson, 2009, Duffy and Sedlacek, 2007,

Participants

The sample consisted of 370 employees recruited from a large Western research university. Participants reported a mean age of 44.6 years (SD = 11.2 years); mostly self-identified as women (69.7%) and White/European-American (90.0%; Hispanic American = 6.5%, Indigenous American = 1.4%, Asian/Pacific Island American = 1.4%, Black/African American = 0.5%, and Other = 3.0%). Participants were highly educated, reporting a mean of 9.4 years of education past 8th grade (SD = 3.1), and were fairly affluent, reporting a

Results

Descriptive statistics for the five variables examined in the current study are displayed in Table 1. All variables were analyzed for skewness and kurtosis, and only job satisfaction showed skewness levels over 1 (− 1.10). Given this relatively low level of negative skew, we decided to examine the interrelations among all of the variables in their original scale form. As seen in Table 1, calling moderately correlated with job satisfaction, career commitment, and organizational commitment, and

Model 1

First, we tested a fully mediated model – Model 1, depicted in Fig. 1 – to identify significant indirect paths. Unique error terms for each endogenous variable are included in the model (e.g., “eCC” refers to measurement error for the career commitment measure). Because organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and withdrawal intentions are significantly correlated, their error terms are allowed to correlate in each model. Consistent with recommendations for using SEM, we specified another

Model 2

Second, we added all three direct paths from calling to organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and withdrawal intentions, allowing us to test whether indirect paths remained significant even when parallel, direct paths were specifically modeled.

Final model

Third, we eliminated any non-significant paths from Model 2 in order to maximize the goodness-of-fit of the model to the data—resulting in Model 3, depicted in Fig. 2. By including the best-fitting combinations of significant direct and indirect paths, it is possible to determine from this final model whether career commitment fully or partially mediates any of the relations of calling with work-related criterion variables.

To evaluate the fit of the models, we used a combination of indices

Model 1

First, we tested the model portrayed in Fig. 1. The fit was acceptable according to the CFI and SRMR indices, but not TLI and RMSEA (Χ2 (df = 3) = 26.00, p < .001; CFI = .97; TLI = .91; SRMR = .05; RMSEA = .15, 90% C.I. = .10–.21). All of the path coefficients portrayed in Fig. 1 are significant at p < .001. Of note, all of the indirect paths were significant at p < .001, as well. Thus, there is initial evidence that career commitment plays some meditational role between calling and all three variables. In

Discussion

The results of the current study provide evidence concerning the linkages between the sense of a calling and workplace outcomes and, perhaps more importantly, one mechanism to explain these links. Several previous studies have found that calling relates favorably to work satisfaction and commitment (Bunderson and Thompson, 2009, Davidson and Caddell, 1994, Peterson et al., 2009, Wrzesniewski et al., 1997), and the correlations from the current study supported this prior research. Individuals

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