Jobs, careers, and callings: Work orientation and job transitions.

Past research on the meaning of work and reemployment neglects the connection between people's goals for working and reemployment outcomes. This dissertation tests how work orientation (i.e., work as job, career, or calling) influences individual processes and outcomes in a period of unemployment. A goal theory framework is used to develop theory about how the meaning of work influences reemployment outcomes. Previous research on the goal structures people attach to work indicates that each work orientation reflects a different reason for working; for example, those who view work as a job want only to make a living from their work. I used a longitudinal data set from a sample of 1,487 respondents who have recently lost a job to investigate how work orientation and job search efforts predicted reemployment outcomes six months later. Specifically, I hypothesized that job seekers' reemployment goals would relate to work orientation in ways that predicted (1) finding reemployment, (2) time to reemployment, (3) objective and subjective quality of reemployment, and (4) pay level and occupational level at which reemployment was found. I conducted a follow-up interview study with a subset of 18 respondents selected to represent contrasts in work orientation. The data indicate that seeing one's work as a job, career, or calling does predict the self-rated quality of the new job, and career orientation predicts improvements in occupational level between the new job and the job that was lost. However, work orientation fails to predict finding reemployment, amount of time needed to find reemployment or level of pay in the new job. Follow-up interview data from 18 respondents with a job, career, or calling orientation strongly suggested that the goals job seekers pursue in a job search are related to their work orientations. The results extend what is known about how job seekers go about finding reemployment and partially support the main hypothesis that work orientation shapes the reemployment process and its outcomes.Ph.D.Occupational psychologyPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/131818/2/9929980.pd