Occupational mobility and sustainable careers: Does occupational mobility relate to happiness, health, and productivity over time?

Igic, Ivana; Hirschi, Andreas; Dlouhy, Katja; Medici, Guri; Grote, Gudela (31 May 2019). Occupational mobility and sustainable careers: Does occupational mobility relate to happiness, health, and productivity over time? In: 19th EAWOP Congress (European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology) - "Working for the greater good: Inspiring people, designing jobs and leading organizations for a more inclusive society". Turin, Italy. 29.05.-01.06.2019.

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Purpose: The sustainability of careers (i.e., staying happy, healthy, and productive overtime) is increasingly important due to demographic change, longer working life and the dynamics caused by digitization. However, the relation between mobility, a key topic in current careers, and sustainability of careers remains uninvestigated. Based on theories of human capital, conservation of resources, and embeddedness we propose that occupational mobility may be harmful to sustainable development, as it may lead to a loss in human capital, depletion of resources, and inhibition in developing strong occupational social ties.
Design/Methodology/Approach/Intervention: The study is based on a ten-year longitudinal data set with 6 waves among young workers (N=1123). Occupational mobility scores over 10 years were calculated and related to trajectories of (non-)sustainable career paths defined by indicators of health, happiness, and productivity based on growth mixture modeling.
Results: We identified three meaningful patterns that describe (non-)sustainable careers over a 10-year timespan: “Sustainable-growth”, “Sustainable-maintenance”, and “Non-Sustainable-decline” which significantly differed in levels of occupational mobility in the expected direction.
Limitations: We focused on a young sample below age 30, which limits variance in occupational mobility and time.
Research/Practical Implications: We show that occupational mobility can have negative effects on developing a sustainable career.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Division/Institute:

07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Work and Organisational Psychology

UniBE Contributor:

Igic, Ivana (A), Hirschi, Andreas

Subjects:

100 Philosophy > 150 Psychology
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology

Language:

English

Submitter:

Ivana Igic

Date Deposited:

07 Aug 2019 15:31

Last Modified:

29 Mar 2023 23:36

Related URLs:

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/132030

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