Vocational Identity Achievement as a Mediator of Presence of Calling and Life Satisfaction

By A. Hirschi, Anne Herrmann. 2012

128 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The present study explores what mechanism might be responsible for the reported link between presence of a calling in one’s career and life satisfaction. It is proposed that vocational identity achievement acts as one important mediator of this relation and that the effects can be observed even when controlling for core self-evaluations (CSEs). The study used a short-term longitudinal design based on a sample of 269 German college students from different majors. The results confirmed the mediation model, with calling predicting vocational identity achievement 6 months later and identity serving as a stronger predictor of life satisfaction, all controlling for CSEs. However, contrary to previous research, presence of calling was not directly related to life satisfaction and even showed a negative relation when vocational identity achievement was controlled. The results are interpreted to suggest a multifaceted relation between calling and life satisfaction.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c0eb3a46c3832f3775908cc2e2c4b45fcf37ab91

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Citations in the corpus

Research on calling: What have we learned and where are we going? (2013, methodology): “…by Steger, Pickering, Shin, and Dik (2010) and Hirschi and Hermann (2013), each using the BCS. Analogously, using the BCS and studying a sample of 269 German college students, Hirschi and Hermann (2012) found perceiving a calling to be positively correlated with a stronger vocational identity.”
Career identity and the complex mediating relationships between career preparatory actions and career progress markers (2015, background): “Young adults with a calling report having a more well-developed career identity (Duffy & Sedlacek, 2007; Hirschi & Herrmann, 2012), being more motivated and active in their career preparation (Fugate et al., 2004), using more career strategies and effort (Praskova et al., 2014a), and having higher…”
Not Feeling Good in STEM: Effects of Stereotype Activation and Anticipated Affect on Women’s Career Aspirations (2017, background): “In addition, most people search for meaning in their lives, and work, in the sense of a calling, is an important source of meaning and identity (Hirschi and Herrmann 2012; Steger and Dik 2009).”
Why Do Adaptable People Feel Less Insecure? Indirect Effects of Career Adaptability on Job and Career Insecurity via Two Types of Perceived Marketability (2016, result): “Comparing T1 and T2, we had 49.3% dropout, which is comparable to previous longitudinal studies applying a similar research strategy (e.g., Bott & Duffy, 2014; Hirschi & Herrmann, 2012).”
Career adaptivity, adaptability, and adapting: A conceptual and empirical investigation (2015, methodology): “The German-language version of the scale was significantly correlated with other measures of career decidedness, career planning, and career exploration among adolescents and college students (Hirschi & Herrmann, 2012; Hirschi & Herrmann, 2013).”