Callings in Career: A Typological Approach to Essential and Optional Components.

By A. Hirschi. 2011

204 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A sense of calling in career is supposed to have positive implications for individuals and organizations but current theoretical development is plagued with incongruent conceptualizations of what does or does not constitute a calling. The present study used cluster analysis to identify essential and optional components of a presence of calling among 407 German undergraduate students from different majors. Three types of calling merged: “negative career self-centered”, “pro-social religious”, and “positive varied work orientation”. All types could be described as vocational identity achieved (high commitment/high self-exploration), high in career confidence and career engagement. Not defining characteristics were centrality of work or religion, endorsement of specific work values, or positivity of core self-evaluations. The results suggest that callings entail intense self-exploration and might be beneficial because they correspond with identity achievement and promote career confidence and engagement while not necessarily having pro-social orientations. Suggestions for future research, theory and practice are suggested.

Subfields: Demography, Health, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b24a469540e8c07e17a1525cf22536fcb8629ec9

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Citations in the corpus

Work as a Calling in China (2015, methodology): “…corresponds to recommendations for active engagement in career decision making as a pathway for discerning a calling (Dik, Duffy, & Eldridge, 2009; Hirschi, 2011) and may help explain why calling is linked to a host of beneficial career-related criterion variables, although more research is…”
Testing a Calling Model of Psychological Career Success in Australian Young Adults: A Longitudinal Study (2014, background): “Young adults with a career calling also report having more career information (Duffy & Sedlacek, 2007) and greater career involvement (Hirschi, 2011).”
Self-Regulatory Processes Mediating Between Career Calling and Perceived Employability and Life Satisfaction in Emerging Adults (2015, unknown): “Consistent with this, career calling is associated positively with career self-efficacy and outcome expectations (Dik, Sargent, & Steger, 2008; Hirschi, 2011), and perceiving work as important for life is associated with greater certainty about achieving one’s future occupation (Tryon & Radzin,…”
Career Engagement: Investigating Intraindividual Predictors of Weekly Fluctuations in Proactive Career Behaviors (2014, methodology): “Engagement proactive career behaviors was assessed with the Career Engagement Scale (Hirschi, 2011).”
Calling and Career Preparation: Investigating Developmental Patterns and Temporal Precedence. (2013, methodology): “Conversely, possibly because students with a sense of calling already possess high career decidedness (Duffy & Sedlacek, 2007; Hirschi, 2011), the presence of a calling did not substantially further enhance decidedness over time.”
Relational and Identity Perspectives on Healthy Versus Unhealthy Pursuit of Callings (2012, background): “Work is considered to be central and valued and is often viewed as one of the most important aspects of life (Dobrow 2004; Hirschi, 2011).”
Listen to Your Heart? Calling and Receptivity to Career Advice (2012, unknown): “, university students) or who are already in their occupations (i.e., working adults; Bunderson & Thompson, 2009; Dik, Sargent, & Steger, 2008; Duffy & Sedlacek, 2007, 2010; Hirschi, 2011; Steger, Pickering, Shin, & Dik, 2010; Wrzesniewski, McCauley, Rozin, & Schwartz, 1997).”
Research on calling: What have we learned and where are we going? (2013, background): “This debate over which definition is the “right” one is arguably more of a linguistic question than a scientific one, particularly given evidence that research participants also are divided in terms of how they understand the term (e.g., Hirschi, 2011).”
Competitive climate and workaholism: Negative sides of future orientation and calling (2016, background): “The German version (Hirschi, 2011) of the Brief Calling Scale (BCS; Dik, Eldridge, Steger, & Duffy, 2012) assessed the presence of calling.”
The Development and Initial Validation of a Career Calling Scale for Emerging Adults (2015, unknown): “…insight, are more decided and comfortable about their career choice (Dobrow & Tosti-Kharas, 2011; Duffy & Sedlacek, 2007), and have higher career expectations (Dik, Sargent, & Steger, 2008) and more confidence and motivation to pursue their career (Dobrow & Tosti-Kharas, 2011; Hirschi, 2011).”