Occupational future time perspective: A meta‐analysis of antecedents and outcomes

• Published date: 01 February 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2264
• Date: 01 February 2018

THE JOB ANNUAL REVIEW

Occupational future time perspective: A meta‐analysis of

antecedents and outcomes

Cort W. Rudolph

1

|Dorien T. A. M. Kooij

2

|Rachel S. Rauvola

1

|Hannes Zacher

3

1

Department of Psychology, Saint Louis

University, Saint Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.

2

Department of Human Resource Studies,

Tilburg University, the Netherlands

3

Institute of Psychology, Leipzig University,

Germany

Correspondence

Cort W. Rudolph, Department of Psychology,

Saint Louis University, Morrissey Hall 2827, St.

Louis, MO 63103, U.S.A.

Email: cort.rudolph@health.slu.edu

Summary

Occupational future time perspective (OFTP) refers to employees' perceptions of their future in

the employment context. Based on lifespan and organizational psychology theories, we review

research on OFTP and offer a meta‐analysis of antecedents and outcomes of OFTP (K= 40 inde-

pendent samples, N= 19,112 workers). Results show that OFTP is associated with individual

characteristics and personal resources, including age (ρ=−0.55), job tenure (ρ=−0.23), organiza-

tional tenure (ρ=−0.25), educational level (ρ= 0.16), and self‐rated physical health (ρ= 0.16), as

well as job characteristics, such as job autonomy (ρ= 0.22). Moreover, OFTP is related to impor-

tant work outcomes, including job satisfaction (ρ= 0.28), organizational commitment (ρ= 0.41),

work engagement (ρ= 0.22), retirement intentions (ρ=−0.37), and work continuance intentions

(ρ= 0.16). OFTP is also related to task (ρ= 0.11) and contextual performance (ρ= 0.20). Additional

analyses show that OFTP predicts job attitudes and work performance above and beyond the

effects of another developmental regulation construct, selection, optimization, and compensation

strategies. Overall, the findings of our meta‐analysis suggest that OFTP is an important construct

in the context of an aging workforce.

KEYWORDS

aging, focus on opportunities, future time perspective, meta‐analysis,remaining time

1|INTRODUCTION

Due to demographic, economic, and societal changes, many employees

expect, want, or have to work longer—sometimes even well beyond

the traditional retirement age (Bal, Kooij, & Rousseau, 2015; Truxillo,

Cadiz, & Hammer, 2015). Additionally, individuals are increasingly

expected to take long‐term responsibility for managing their own

careers (Gubler, Arnold, & Coombs, 2014). Research suggests that

proactivity and adaptability are important for career success (e.g.,

Rudolph, Lavigne, Katz, & Zacher, 2017; Rudolph, Lavigne, & Zacher,

2017; Tornau & Frese, 2013). Proactive and adaptive behaviors require

that employees adopt a long‐term perspective to anticipate and plan

for their occupational future (Savickas, 1997; Strauss, Griffin, & Parker,

2012). One concept that captures this focus toward the future is occu-

pational future time perspective (OFTP). Based upon research in the

lifespan developmental literature (Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles,

1999; Cate & John, 2007), Zacher and Frese (2009) defined OFTP as

individuals' perceptions of their future in the employment context.

They distinguished between two dimensions of OFTP (i.e., perceived

remaining time and focus on opportunities) and showed that both

were negatively related to employee age. The negative association

between OFTP and age was replicated in several subsequent studies

(e.g., Froehlich, Beausaert, & Segers, 2016). Moreover, empirical stud-

ies conducted over the past decade have demonstrated positive asso-

ciations between OFTP and important work outcomes, including job

satisfaction, work engagement, and work performance (Schmitt,

Zacher, & de Lange, 2013; Weikamp & Göritz, 2016; Zacher, Heusner,

Schmitz, Zwierzanska, & Frese, 2010).

Although a recent qualitative review of studies on OFTP points to

the general importance of OFTP in the work context (Henry, Zacher, &

Desmette, 2017), a quantitative synthesis and integration of research

on antecedents and outcomes of OFTP is currently lacking. To address

this gap, we present results of a meta‐analysis of the OFTP literature

to guide future research and organizational practice. Compared to

the qualitative literature review of Henry et al. (2017), our quantitative

meta‐analysis has at least three notable differences. First, our meta‐

analysis quantitatively combines findings from multiple studies into

precise estimates of the true population relationships between OFTP

and commonly investigated antecedents and outcomes. Researchers

Portions of this work were presented at the 4th Age in the Workplace Small

Group Meeting in Lüneburg, Germany.

Received: 21 November 2016 Revised: 17 November 2017 Accepted: 19 December 2017

DOI: 10.1002/job.2264

J Organ Behav. 2018;39:229–248. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 229

have argued that meta‐analyses yield more accurate and credible con-

clusions than qualitative reviews, which may be consciously or uncon-

sciously biased (Rosenthal & DiMatteo, 2001). Second, whereas Henry

et al. (2017) discussed only published research in their qualitative

review, we include both published and unpublished data in our meta‐

analysis to address the “file drawer problem”(i.e., a bias in the pub-

lished literature toward statistically significant effects; Rosenthal,

1979). Finally, using meta‐analytic regression and path analyses, we

offer evidence to differentiate OFTP from both chronological age

and selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) strategies as a

predictor of important work outcomes. SOC strategy use is another

prominent construct from the lifespan developmental literature that

is increasingly investigated in the work context (Moghimi, Zacher,

Scheibe, & Van Yperen, 2017). SOC strategies constitute proactive

behaviors that involve the selection of one's most important goals,

optimization of goal pursuit, and compensation for the loss of goal‐

relevant means (Baltes & Baltes, 1990; Freund & Baltes, 2000, 2002).

Given its conceptual and empirical links with chronological age and

SOC strategy use (Zacher & Frese, 2011), distinguishing OFTP as a

unique predictor is important for establishing its distinctiveness

from other constructs within the lifespan development nomological

network.

We aim to contribute to the organizational behavior literature in

several meaningful ways. First, we quantitatively summarize relation-

ships between OFTP and various antecedents and outcomes. With

longer working lives becoming the norm, OFTP represents an impor-

tant temporal construct for understanding the complexities of the

age variable within contemporary work contexts. Second, to build sup-

port for our meta‐analytic investigation, we outline the development

of OFTP and its dimensions across various studies. This discussion

serves to bookend a review of research concerning relationships

between OFTP and a variety of personal and work‐related constructs.

To organize our review, we offer an integrative model of the existing

nomological network of OFTP and associated constructs. This model

summarizes general relationships between individual and job charac-

teristics, as well as various work outcomes that have been studied

along with OFTP.Moreover, we examine the unique predictive validity

of OFTP beyond chronological age and SOC strategy use (Baltes,

Wynne, Sirabian, Krenn, & de Lange, 2014; Zacher & Frese, 2009),

both of which have also been linked to important work outcomes

(see Brewer & Shapard, 2004; Moghimi et al., 2017; Ng & Feldman,

2008, 2010). Finally, because age is associated with both OFTP and

SOC, and because recent theoretical developments concerning suc-

cessful aging at work have called for the testing of process models that

include age‐related mediators (Zacher, 2015), we also examine the

indirect effects of age on work outcomes through these competing

developmental mechanisms. This analysis also responds to a recent call

by Rudolph (2016) to conduct integrative tests of the various develop-

mental regulation mechanisms proposed by different lifespan develop-

mental theories. Our process model addresses this call by exploring

how OFTP and SOC as two developmental mechanisms operate in

tandem with one another and link age to work outcomes.

More practically speaking, our findings contribute to the organiza-

tional behavior and human resources management knowledge base.

The results of our meta‐analysis provide OB/HR professionals with

theoretically grounded and empirically supported ideas on how to

enhance employees' OFTP through job redesign efforts that indirectly

influence important work outcomes. With these goals in mind, next we

elaborate on the theoretical models that ground this work and then

outline the methods and results of our meta‐analysis. We conclude

by discussing limitations and implications of the present work, along

with recommendations for future research based upon our findings.

2|OCCUPATIONAL FUTURE TIME

PERSPECTIVE

The OFTP construct originates from research in the lifespan develop-

mental literature on the general or context‐free notion of future time

perspective (FTP). FTP is a core construct in socioemotional selectivity

theory (Carstensen, 1991, 2006; Carstensen et al., 1999), which sug-

gests that FTP decreases with age and predicts changes in the priority

of individuals' social goals. Specifically, younger people, who tend to

have an expansive FTP, prioritize instrumental and knowledge‐related

goals (e.g., meeting a broad variety of new people) that help them max-

imize gains in the future. In contrast, older people typically have a more

constrained FTP and are therefore thought to prioritize meaningful and

positive goals in the present (e.g., meeting close social partners,

mentoring). In the lifespan developmental literature, general FTP is

typically assessed with a 10‐item self‐report scale developed by

Carstensen and Lang (1996, Lang & Carstensen, 2002). FTP differs

from other temporal constructs such as time orientation (Zimbardo &

Boyd, 1999) and temporal focus (Shipp, Edwards, & Lambert, 2009),

which refer to individual difference characteristics that are relatively

stable across the lifespan.

Zacher and Frese (2009) adapted the FTP concept to the

employment context; OFTP concerns people's perceptions of their

occupational future time. They conceptually distinguished two related

dimensions of OFTP and assessed them with an adapted version of

Carstensen and Lang's (1996) FTP scale. Perceived remaining time

describes individuals' perceptions of the amount of future time they

expect to spend in employment. Zacher and Frese (2009) showed that

perceived remaining time was strongly negatively associated with age,

suggesting that older employees perceive their remaining time at work

as more limited than younger employees. The second dimension of

OFTP, focus on opportunities, captures individuals' perceptions of new

work‐related goals, possibilities, and opportunities that are foreseen

in the future. Zacher and Frese (2009) showed that focus on opportu-

nities was moderately negatively related to age, and that high levels in

two motivational job characteristics (job autonomy and complexity)

buffered this relationship.

Most studies have operationalized either only one of the two

OFTP dimensions (e.g., perceived remaining time, Kooij & Zacher,

2016; e.g., focus on opportunities, Zacher et al., 2010) or have com-

bined all 10 items into an overall OFTP score (e.g., Ho & Yeung,

2016; see Henry et al., 2017, for a review). The combination of these

two dimensions into an overall OFTP score can be justified by a rela-

tively strong positive relationship noted in primary studies (e.g.,

r= 0.60 reported by Zacher & Frese, 2009). Despite this, evidence

suggests that perceived remaining time and focus on opportunities

230 RUDOLPH ET AL.