Relationships between career motivation, affective commitment and job satisfaction

Abstract

Career motivation theory (London, 1983), applies motivation theory to understanding career plans, behaviors and decisions of employees, such as searching for and accepting a job, deciding to stay with an organization, revising career plans, seeking new job experiences, and setting and trying to accomplish career goals. Career motivation is defined in terms of tree major components: career resilience, career insight and career identity. Each component has multiple elements. Understanding how each element is related to employees' affective commitment to the organization and their job satisfaction may help fostering employee motivation and improve the effectiveness of human resources. To date, there have been several conceptual studies theorizing the content and construct of career motivation. However, there has been limited empirical work to examine the relationship between the elements of career motivation and key employee behavior such as employment and turnover intentions, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and work performance. Accordingly, this study examines the relationships between the components of career motivation, employees' affective commitment and their job satisfaction, while controlling their demographic characteristics such as age, gender, income and organizational tenure. For this aim, we conducted a field research on 250 employees working in various industries. Research results showed that career motivation has a positive correlation with organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Individual characteristics except respondents' gender did not exert any significant association with career motivation. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.