Proactive career behaviors and subjective career success: The moderating role of national culture

• Author: Silvia Dello Russo,Mila Lazarova,Marijke Verbruggen,Adam Smale, ,Rick Cotton,Astrid Reichel,Michael Dickmann,Paula Rozo,Silvia Bagdadli,Martina Gianecchini,Robert Kaše,Anders Dysvik
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2316
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Date: 01 January 2019

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Proactive career behaviors and subjective career success: The

moderating role of national culture

Adam Smale

1

*|Silvia Bagdadli

2

*|Rick Cotton

3

*|Silvia Dello Russo

4

*|

Michael Dickmann

5

*|Anders Dysvik

6

*|Martina Gianecchini

7

*|Robert Kaše

8

*|

Mila Lazarova

9

*|Astrid Reichel

10

*|Paula Rozo

11

*|Marijke Verbruggen

12

*|On behalf of

the Cross‐Cultural Collaboration on Contemporary Careers (5C) research collaborative

†

1

University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland

2

Bocconi University, Milan, Italy

3

University of Victoria, Victoria, British

Columbia, Canada

4

Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE‐IUL),

Lisbon, Portugal

5

School of Management, Cranfield University,

Cranfield, UK

6

BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway

7

University of Padova, Padova, Italy

8

Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana,

Ljubljana, Slovenia

9

Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser

University, Vancouver, British Columbia,

Canada

10

University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

11

Los Andes University, Bogotá, Columbia

12

KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Correspondence

Adam Smale, University of Vaasa, P.O. Box

700, 65101 Vaasa, Finland.

Email: adam.smale@uva.fi

Summary

Although career proactivity has positive consequences for an individual's career suc-

cess, studies mostly examine objective measures of success within single countries.

This raises important questions about whether proactivity is equally beneficial for

different aspects of subjective career success, and the extent to which these benefits

extend across cultures. Drawing on Social Information Processing theory, we exam-

ined the relationship between proactive career behaviors and two aspects of subjec-

tive career success—financial success and work‐life balance—and the moderating role

of national culture. We tested our hypotheses using multilevel analyses on a large‐

scale sample of 11,892 employees from 22 countries covering nine of GLOBE's 10

cultural clusters. Although we found that proactive career behaviors were positively

related to subjective financial success, this relationship was not significant for work‐

life balance. Furthermore, career proactivity was relatively more important for sub-

jective financial success in cultures with high in‐group collectivism, high power dis-

tance, and low uncertainty avoidance. For work‐life balance, career proactivity was

relatively more important in cultures characterized by high in‐group collectivism and

humane orientation. Our findings underline the need to treat subjective career suc-

cess as a multidimensional construct and highlight the complex role of national culture

in shaping the outcomes of career proactivity.

KEYWORDS

career self‐management, career success,national culture, proactive career behaviors

*

These 12 authors contributed equally to the article.

†

The quantitative part of this research endeavor has taken a number of years from conceptualization through to implementation. During this time, we have tried to

ensure that we gained the maximum possible through this multiauthor approach while maintaining the integrity of our research. Many of the authors were involved in

conceptualizing the research at face‐to‐face meetings held twice a year for this purpose during 2007–2014. All of the authors were involved in data collection in some

capacity in their representative countries. All of the 12 main authors and many of the authors in the 5C collaborative were then involved in the subsequent initial

analysis and interpretation of the data in similar biannual meetings held during 2014–2018. In between each of the whole‐collaborative meetings, the 12 main authors

took the group's inputs away to work on them in meetings held face‐to‐face, via email and Skype. The original text was drafted and revised among the 12 first‐named

authors before inviting critical input and revisions from the other 34 authors. The final text emerged from the input received from the collaborative, and all authors

have signed off on the submission. This submitted version of the paper thus reflects the input and views of all 46 authors, and all are prepared to be accoun table for its

content. This process was repeated during the revision and resubmission stage. The large number of authors has facilitated the collection of an extensive, multi‐

country dataset and has added credibility to both the data and its interpretation that, we believe, could not have been achieved with a smaller group. The 5C

collaborative includes a larger number of scholars than are included here.

Received: 30 November 2016 Revised: 22 May 2018 Accepted: 11 June 2018

DOI: 10.1002/job.2316

J Organ Behav. 2019;40:105–122. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 105

1|INTRODUCTION

In conjunction with employment relationships becoming shorter and

more flexible, the planning and managing of careers has become more

self‐directed (Sullivan & Baruch, 2009). At the same time, traditional

conceptualizations of careers as “a job for life”(Simons, Goddard, &

Patton, 2000) or “upward progression within one or two organiza-

tions”(Eby, Butts, & Lockwood, 2003) have become less salient. In

order to achieve career success, employees in this more dynamic,

boundaryless career context are thus being advised—and expected—

to manage their careers proactively (Direnzo & Greenhaus, 2011;

Verbruggen & Sels, 2010).

Proactive behaviors refer to behaviors that are self‐initiated,

future‐oriented, and change‐inducing (Grant & Ashford, 2008). They

can take a variety of forms such as voice, personal initiative, feedback

seeking, and issue selling (Parker & Collins, 2010). This study focuses

on one set of proactive behaviors—proactive career behaviors—which

refer to self‐directed activities individuals engage in to manage their

careers (Seibert, Kraimer, & Crant, 2001).

Research shows that proactive career behaviors are positively

related to career success (De Vos, Dewettinck, & Buyens, 2009;

Verbruggen, Sels, & Forrier, 2007). However, this research comprises

a small number of studies demonstrating the positive effect of career

initiatives (Seibert, Kraimer, & Crant, 2001), career‐enhancing

strategies (Nabi, 1999), and career self‐management (Abele & Wiese,

2008) on objective career success (e.g., salary and promotions). In

contrast, studies on the effects of proactive career behaviors on

subjective career success (e.g., perceived career success and career

satisfaction) are scarce, inconclusive, and do not acknowledge the

multidimensionality of the subjective career success concept.

Subjective career success, which “capture (s) individuals' subjec-

tive judgments about their career attainments”(Ng, Eby, Sorensen, &

Feldman, 2005, p. 368), has emerged as an important variable in

careers research. Objective career success, such as promotions and

increases in salary, is often not available to everyone in organizations,

especially because organizations have become flatter and careers less

hierarchical and predictable. Therefore, other evaluation criteria—how

personally meaningful careers are and how one experiences one's own

career success—have become more salient (Ng & Feldman, 2014).

Furthermore, satisfaction with one's career has been shown to be

important in understanding people's life satisfaction, more important

than job satisfaction, for example, (Erdogan, Bauer, Truxillo, &

Mansfield, 2012). For both of these reasons, it is beneficial for organi-

zations to understand how employees feel about their subjective

career success and what affects it.

Individuals from different cultures are likely to use different

means and to be led by different values and norms when evaluating

how successful various aspects of their careers have been (Dries,

Pepermans, & Carlier, 2008). It is thus problematic that the vast major-

ity of studies on proactive career behaviors have been conducted in

single countries, predominantly the United States (Seibert, Kraimer,

& Crant, 2001; Shockley, Ureksoy, Rodopman, Poteat, & Dullaghan,

2016) and Western Europe (e.g., De Vos et al., 2009; Verbruggen

et al., 2007). Because these countries mostly reflect the WEIRD

perspective—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic

countries (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010)—where a strong

emphasis on self‐management is more prevalent (Inkson, Gunz,

Ganesh, & Roper, 2012)—the positive consequences of proactive

career behaviors may not be surprising. Although this research has

contributed to our understanding of the effects of career proactivity,

the lack of cross‐country research has meant that we are unable to

draw conclusions about whether these effects are generalizable across

cultures (cf. Shockley et al., 2016; Pan & Zhou, 2015).

Collectively, important questions remain regarding whether

proactive career behaviors are equally beneficial for different aspects

of an individual's subjective career success, and the extent to which

these benefits vary across cultures. We focus on the relationship

between proactive career behaviors and the perceived achievement

of two inherently different meanings of subjective career success that

have been shown to be consistently important yet are sensitive to

cultural differences (Briscoe, Hall, & Mayrhofer, 2012; Chudzikowski

et al., 2012)—subjective financial success and work‐life balance. This

study thus sets out to address the following research questions: Are

proactive career behaviors associated with higher levels of subjective

career success in the form of financial success and work‐life balance,

and to what extent are these relationships influenced by national culture?

Based on a multi‐country dataset, we develop and test hypotheses on

the relationship between proactive career behaviors and subjective

financial success and work‐life balance, as well as the moderating

role of five dimensions of culture (in‐group collectivism, humane

orientation, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and performance

orientation).

The study seeks to contribute to the literature in two main ways.

First, by investigating career proactivity and two different dimensions

of subjective career success, the study contributes to the careers liter-

ature by shedding light on the extent to which the positive outcomes

of proactive career behaviors extend beyond the objective measures

of career success to include different personal meanings of subjective

career success. And second, by examining the moderating role of

culture across a large number of Western and non‐Western countries,

the study contributes to the general proactivity literature by revealing

how the cultural context, within which individuals enact their

proactive behaviors and form assessments about their subjective

career success, influences the relationship between proactivity and

attitudinal outcomes.

2|THEORETICAL MODEL AND

HYPOTHESES

2.1 |Proactive career behaviors and subjective

career success

Proactive career behaviors in the careers literature have included indi-

vidual career management (Sturges, Guest, Conway, & Davey, 2002;

Verbruggen et al., 2007), career self‐management (Abele & Wiese,

2008; De Vos & Soens, 2008), and career‐enhancing strategies (Nabi,

2003), all generally referring to the self‐directed activities employees

display with respect to managing their careers (Seibert, Kraimer, &

Crant, 2001). These behaviors allow individuals to make a realistic

106 SMALE ET AL.