Journal of Career Development

Stressors and one’s response to stress play not only a major role in one’s life but also have significant impacts on the career decision-making process. This study, grounded in Cognitive Information Processing Theory, explores the impacts of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), the COVID-19 pandemic, and response to ambiguity on career decision-making difficulty and negative career thoughts. Participants included 231 college students. Findings indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic had a greater impact on both career outcomes than ACEs, and one’s ambiguity response had an even greater impact on both career outcomes than the COVID-19 pandemic. These results indicate that recent stressors and one’s response to those stressors play a larger role than distal stressors in career decision-making. Practical application of CIP theory to address these issues and research implications are discussed.

Most tertiary students now work to support themselves, but some are motivated by improving their employability and career development. However, many work in precarious jobs and the relationship between job quality and career development is poorly understood. We tested how precarious employment related to career capital, whether perceptions of organisational career growth (i.e. goal progress and ability development) explained this, and whether meritocratic beliefs (i.e. in a just society) moderated these relationships in working university students (N = 214; 78% female; M_Age 20 years). Precariousness was related to less career capital, which was explained partially by perceiving fewer organisational career growth opportunities. Meritocratic beliefs buffered the negative precariousness-career growth relationships and boosted the positive career growth-career capital relationships. Overall, 52% of the variance in capital was explained. Results point to how career practitioners might assist precariously employed students to successfully engage in career self-management.

This study introduces the Adversity-Transformation Framework (ATF), a theoretical innovation that reconceptualises how economic constraints function within collectivist cultural contexts. Drawing on structural equation modelling with 507 Vietnamese university students, the investigation reveals that economic constraints positively and significantly predict work volition, career adaptability, and decent work perception, contrasting with traditional assumptions of the Psychology of Working Theory. Mediation analyses demonstrate that psychological resources sequentially transmit the effects of economic constraints to career outcomes. Proactive personality moderates the relationship between economic constraints and career adaptability, with stronger compensatory effects observed among students with lower proactive dispositions. These findings suggest that cultural meaning-making processes, collective support systems, and an achievement-oriented mindset transform economic adversity into motivational catalysts within Vietnamese society. The study advances career development theory by identifying boundary conditions under which contextual constraints activate rather than deplete psychological resources in developing country contexts.

College students’ career aspirations are critical to their professional development. However, limited research has investigated career aspirations within the context of Hispanic Majority Institutions (HMIs). To address this gap, we examined relationships between belongingness, stress, optimism, and career aspirations and offered a mediation framework to clarify their associations using self-reported data from undergraduates (N = 261) attending an HMI in the United States. We found that belongingness (acceptance) was positively associated with career aspirations pertaining to achievement, leadership, and educational attainment; whereas, the trend was reversed for belongingness (rejection). Serial mediation analyses revealed that acceptance was related to lower stress, which was associated with higher optimism, and in turn was related to more ambitious career aspirations. In contrast, rejection was related to higher stress, which was associated with lower optimism, and in turn was related to less ambitious career aspirations. We consider these findings through a theoretical framework that underscores the importance of promoting inclusion and acceptance within HMIs to support students’ career development.

Teachers’ career satisfaction (CS), perceived organizational support (POS), and psychological capital (PC) have a significant impact on their professional growth and overall educational quality. However, the interactive dynamics and temporal mechanisms among these variables remain underexplored. This study addresses this gap by employing cross-lagged panel network analysis. A total of 431 Chinese teachers (71.69% female; M = 37.61, SD = 8.78) participated in surveys conducted at two time points. Three centrality indices, out-expected influence (out-EI), in-expected influence (in-EI), and bridge-expected influence (bridge-EI) were used to identify the most important nodes in the POS-PC-CS network. Results showed that POS-1 exhibits the highest out-EI; all five CS nodes displayed relatively high in-EI. Although not ranking highest, the four PC nodes showed comparatively elevated out-EI, in-EI, and bridge-EI. These results offer valuable insights for developing targeted interventions and educational policies that aim to foster positive professional outcomes among teachers.

This study integrates social learning theory and the Uses and Gratifications framework to examine binge-watching intensity and job-search readiness among graduating students. In a three-wave survey (N = 250), low-to-moderate binge-watching of workplace dramas was associated with lower job-search anxiety and higher job-search self-efficacy, but these benefits attenuated as viewing intensity increased. Learning motivation emerged as a key boundary condition: higher intensity was associated with lower anxiety and higher self-efficacy only when learning motivation was high. Mediated moderation results further indicated an indirect association with job-search quality through self-efficacy, but not anxiety. These findings highlight the conditional value of learning-oriented media use for vocational anticipatory socialization.

Using multisource data from 37 countries encompassing a sample of 9,039 managers and their subordinates, we find that managers who provide more career mentoring receive higher performance ratings. This relationship holds true in all cultures but is more salient in more assertive than less assertive cultures. Conversely, managers who provide psychosocial mentoring receive higher performance ratings only in more assertive cultures. By understanding how the two types of mentoring behaviors affect managers’ performance across cultures with different levels of assertiveness, this study provides insight into how managers (especially expatriates and managers of cross-cultural teams) can adapt their mentoring behaviors across cultures.