Striving for success: Towards a refined understanding and measurement of ambition

Hirschi, Andreas; Spurk, Daniel (2021). Striving for success: Towards a refined understanding and measurement of ambition. Journal of vocational behavior, 127, p. 103577. Elsevier 10.1016/j.jvb.2021.103577

[img]
Preview
Text
1-s2.0-S000187912100049X-main.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC-BY-NC-ND).

Download (581kB) | Preview

Despite broad interest in the nature of ambition and its effects on career outcomes, scientific research on this issue is limited due to an inconsistent conceptualization and measurement of ambition. Consistent with theoretical views, but in contrast to most existing measurements, we conceptualize ambition as a general personal disposition and developed and evaluated a 5-item measure of ambition consistent with this conceptualization. We report a six-phase process including (1) item generation, (2) item content review by subject matter experts, (3) item reduction and selection based on a university student (N = 1074) and employee (N = 469) sample, (4) examining convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity in relation to existing ambition scales with an employee sample (N = 301), (5) establishing discriminant validity to other personal dispositions in terms of achievement striving, trait competitiveness, and future time perspective with an employee sample (N = 544), and (6) establishing re-test reliability, longitudinal measurement-invariance, and incremental criterion validity regarding objective (i.e., salary, promotions) and subjective career success (i.e., career satisfaction) with a six-month time-lagged study (N = 394). In sum, the newly developed scale should be useful for future research to improve the theoretical and empirical understanding of the nature and effects of ambition.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

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

UniBE Contributor:

Hirschi, Andreas, Spurk, Daniel

Subjects:

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

ISSN:

0001-8791

Publisher:

Elsevier

Language:

English

Submitter:

Christine Soltermann

Date Deposited:

27 Apr 2021 17:19

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:51

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.jvb.2021.103577

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Ambition; Personality; Career success; Measurement development

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/156086

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/156086

Actions (login required)

Edit item Edit item
Provide Feedback