Journal articles
Year
2015
Abstract
The flexible work environment of today has lead to the assumption that being hopeful is critical for sustainable career development and facilitates successful adaptation in the workplace. However, the construct of hope has been fairly recently introduced into the organizational literature and there is a lack of empirical research investigating the mechanisms that link hope and its assumed positive outcomes. We propose that hope, the perception of being capable to achieve desired goals and to generate possible ways of attaining them, influences positive work outcomes through an increase of work motivation. We conceptualized work motivation as a system containing autonomous goals (reason to motivation), positive affect at work (energized to motivation), and occupational self-efficacy beliefs (can do motivation). We suggest that hope, mediated by work motivation, has a positive effect on two important work outcomes: job performance and turnover intentions. We tested the hypotheses among 590 Swiss adolescents in vocational education and training. Performance ratings were obtained for a subsample of 136 individuals from their apprenticeship supervisors. Results showed that hope was positively related to all three motivational states and job performance and negatively related to turnover intentions. Positive affect mediated the effects of hope on both performance and turnover intentions. Autonomous goals mediated the effect from hope on turnover intentions. Our hypotheses are thus partially supported and emphasize the importance of hope already at early career stages. The results indicate the potential of the hope construct for employee selection and development.
VALERO, D., HIRSCHI, A. et STRAUSS, K. (2015). Hope in Adolescent Careers: Mediating Effects of Work Motivation on Career Outcomes in Swiss Apprentices. Journal of Career Development, 42(5), pp. 381-395.