Antecedents and consequences of employability orientation

Abstract

This study investigated the antecedents and the consequences of employability orientation, i.e., employees' attitudes toward developing their employability for the organization. Supporting the hypotheses, the results showed that employability orientation was positively related to openness, initiative, and the career anchors of managerial competence and variety, and negatively related to tenure, continuance commitment, and the career anchors of technical competence and security. Career anchors mediated the relationship between openness, initiative, and employability orientation; continuance commitment mediated the relationship between tenure and employability orientation. No relationships were found between affective commitment, career development support, and employability orientation; an unexpected negative relationship existed between employability orientation and perceptions of organizational support. Employability orientation proved a strong predictor of employability activities. The implications of this study for employability interventions and for future research are discussed.

Acknowledgments

This study took place as part of the research project “Employability and Mobility”, which was financed by the Work and Organizational Research Centre (WORC) at Tilburg University, and the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Parts of this study were presented at the 24th conference of the International Association of Applied Psychology, San Francisco, USA. I wish to thank Joyce Plattel for her assistance in collecting the data for this study.