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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1442119

Development and Validation of Career Sustainability Scale for Mid-career Employees

Provisionally accepted
Su Yeon Kim Su Yeon Kim Heesu Lee Heesu Lee Sungmi Jin Sungmi Jin *
  • Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    A sustainability perspective on careers builds a resilient career system by simultaneously considering 10 individual’s current career needs and long-term career outcomes. The individual career agent's strategy 11 for achieving a sustainable career is a powerful approach to career development in an environment 12 where an individual's proactive career competencies are emphasized. Mid-career individuals, 13 especially those facing career transitions, need to increase their sustainability by maintaining, renewing, 14 and developing their current careers. To support sustainable career development for mid-career 15 employees, a tool is needed to objectively diagnose the level of career sustainability, taking into 16 account the characteristics of their career transitions. The purpose of this study is to develop and 17 validate a mid-career employee career sustainability scale. The research methodology comprised four 18 systematic scale development processes. First, an integrated literature review was conducted to develop 19 a conceptual model of mid-career career sustainability. Second, an initial pool of career sustainability 20 items was developed and subjected to expert content validation. Third, an exploratory factor analysis 21 (EFA) was conducted on 257 participants to verify the reliability and validity of the preliminary items. 22 Finally, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted on 534 participants to finalize the final 23 items. The participants were all mid-career employees aged 40-55 currently employed in Korean 24 organizations. The new scale reliably and validly measured mid-career career sustainability across four 25 dimensions: meaning perception of career sustainability, skill acquisition for career sustainability, 26 relationship building for career sustainability, environmental awareness for career sustainability.

    Keywords: mid-career, Career sustainability, Career development, scale development, Validation

    Received: 01 Jun 2024; Accepted: 26 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Kim, Lee and Jin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Sungmi Jin, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.