Abstract The changing labour market and unpredictability of careers necessitateemployees to adopt non-traditional norms of career success and assess their careerin terms of employability. We propose that employees could promote their employability specifically through engagement in challenging work experiences. Highquality jobs provide employees with these experiences, which stimulate learningand adaptability, affect employees’ interests, work attitudes, and competency perceptions, and increase their organisational power and promotability. Whetheremployees encounter challenge in their job may depend on their own initiatives.Research has shown that intrinsically motivated individuals who are masteryoriented, and who are self-efficacious and proactive are more likely to involve inchallenging tasks than their extrinsically motivated, performance-oriented, low efficacious, and passive counterparts. However, the challenging nature of jobs alsodepends on factors in the work environment such as the task allocating behavioursof colleagues and supervisors. We conclude that supervisors in particular could promote the challenging experiences, employability, and career success of employeesby inducing a learning orientation in employees, delegating tasks, and monitoringthe division of challenging tasks among team members. In addition, organisationscould foster the making of developmental i-deals with employees and design jobsthat are both challenging and attainable.Keywords Career success · Employability · Job challenge · Skill development ·Adaptability
In this light, Preenen et al. (2014a) examined the impact of individuals goal orientations on their positive and negative activating mood while working on a high or low-challenging assignment. Participants in this study were randomly assigned to perform either a challenging or a non-challenging task and were randomly given instructions that elicit a mastery-approach or a performance-approach orientation. Although goal orientations have often been conceptualized as a relatively stable individual difference variable, they can be (temporarily) influenced (e.g., Barron and Harackiewicz 2001). It was found that conducting a challenging assignment with an induced focus on learning elicited a higher positive activating mood than performing a challenging assignment with an induced focus on outperforming others, or no induced goal orientation. No effects were found for negative activating mood. These findings suggest that high-challenging assignments are best introduced with an instruction th
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A learning orientation enhances positive feelings during task performance, which promote employees self-efficacy and future engagement in challenging tasks.
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Proactive Personality Unlike role breadth self-efficacy, which changes over time due to among others the changing job experiences people engage in (Parker 1998), proactive personality is conceptualized as a relatively stable personal disposition to take personal initiative in a broad range of activities and situations (Seibert et al. 2001, p. 847). A proactive individual can be described as one who is relatively unconstrained by situational forces, and who effects environmental change (Bateman and Crant 1993, p. 105) through engagement in proactive behaviours. As opposed to their less proactive counterparts, who are more likely to adapt to and endure current circumstances (Fuller and Marler 2009, p. 330), proactive individuals tend to take initiative to improve their current situation or to create new situations that are beneficial to them (Crant 2000).
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At work, proactive individuals feel responsible for initiating constructive change (Fuller et al. 2006) and tend to make changes to their work situation in order to improve their opportunities for personal success (Li et al. 2010). Empirical research has underlined the importance of proactive personality in the work domain and meta-analytic studies have shown that it positively relates to favourable job attitudes, work behaviours, and career success (Fuller and Marler 2009; Ng et al. 2005; Spitzmuller et al. 2015; Thomas et al. 2010; Tornau and Frese 2013). It is likely that proactive employees, who select, create, and influence situations in which they work (Seibert et al. 1999, p. 417) choose to engage in more 253 challenging tasks and activities than their less proactive colleagues, because engagement in challenging tasks will improve their chances on promotion and success.
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