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Career
Career commitment and career commitment and
success: moderating role of career success
self-efficacy
655
Hassan I. Ballout
The Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon Received 16 December 2008
Revised 31 July 2009,
31 August 2009
Accepted 3 September 2009
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to expand the literature on career success by examining the
moderating role of self-efficacy on the relationship between career commitment and career success.
Design/methodology/approach – Managers and non-manager employees and surveyed in
Lebanon regarding their career commitment, self-efficacy and career success. Regression analyses
are used to test the hypotheses.
Findings – The results showed that career commitment predicted both objective (i.e. salary level) and
subjective (i.e. career satisfaction) career success only for employees with average to high self-efficacy
but not for those with low self-efficacy.
Research limitations/implications – The specific nature of the cross-sectional sample consisting
of employees working in private banking organisations may limit the generalisability of results.
Practical implications – Employees and employers may benefit from a close examination of the
motivational and cognitive dimensions that are important in career-decision making process.
Highly-committed and efficacious employees would seek challenging tasks to master their own
performance accomplishments when engaging in career goals with which they see more opportunities
for personal development or career growth. Organisations too will benefit from highly committed and
efficacious employees if they prepare them for long-term engagement in activities and career
opportunities that contribute to career success.
Originality/value – This paper makes a valuable contribution to both career commitment and
career success literatures by being one of the first to examine the moderating effect of self-efficacy on
the relationships between these important career concepts.
Keywords Career satisfaction, Career development, Self development, Lebanon
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
The question of why some people are more successful than others is of interest to both
employers and employees. Today’s volatile environmental conditions, resulting from
trends of globalisation and technological sophistication, have pressured employers to
attract and select employees with portable metaskills that foster their adaptability to
successful performance in any environment. Employees have begun to rely on new
career strategies and behaviours that help them promote their own career success in
order to adapt to a new reality of shorter employment relationships.
Career Development International
The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support by The Lebanese Council for Scientific Vol. 14 No. 7, 2009
Research. The author also deeply appreciates the constructive comments and suggestions made pp. 655-670
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
by the Editor Jim Jawahar and the insightful feedback provided by Cherlyn Granrose on an 1362-0436
earlier draft of this manuscript. DOI 10.1108/13620430911005708
CDI Scholars have documented this shift from the traditional career – with its vertical
14,7 success and employment stability – into the transactional one that is horizontal,
mobile, and short-term (McDonald et al., 2005; Hall, 2004). They described a new
employment contract in which individuals are ultimately responsible for pursuing and
managing their self-interested careers (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996; Maguire, 2002).
The emergence of borderless or protean careers asserts that careers are independent of
656 organisational boundaries or are under the control of individuals (Arthur et al., 2005).
Protean careers are characterised by relationships that are driven by the person, not
the organisation, and will be recreated by the individual from time to time as the
person and the environment change (Hall, 1996; Hall and Moss, 1998). Effective
management of the relational aspects of the psychological contract between employees
and employers based on the protean careers require individuals to acquire and develop
a set of personal skills and competencies such as continuous learning, tolerance for
ambiguity and uncertainty, autonomy, self-awareness and self-efficacy.
The research literature on careers has tended to explain career success in terms of
several individual difference factors that have significant impact on how individuals
enact and perceive their careers. Individual-level determinants identified as being
related to career success include employees’ demographics (Greenhaus and
Parasuraman, 1993), human capital (Judge et al., 1995), political influence behaviour
(Judge and Bretz, 1994), and dispositional traits (Day and Allen, 2004).
Motivational and social capital attributes such as work centrality (Ng et al., 2005;
Seibert et al., 2001), mentoring (Allen et al., 2004) and networking (Nabi, 2003) have
been also demonstrated to predict career success. Recently, organisational scholars
have suggested that another important motivational and social cognitive predictor of
career success is self-efficacy. Studies examining self-efficacy have found it to be a
major construct that may help explain and predict motivation and performance and to
influence career success (Stajkovic and Luthans, 1998; Day and Allen, 2004).
Self-efficacy is defined as a personal judgement of “how well one can execute
courses of actions required to deal with prospective situations” (Bandura, 1982, p. 122).
It has been used as a motivating tool to create and sustain self-learning and
development and has been shown to be related to a variety of organisational outcomes
including job performance and career development (Stajkovic and Luthans, 1998;
Hackett and Bretz, 1981). There is considerable research on the effect of self-efficacy
beliefs (Bandura, 1997) and of personal goals (Locke and Latham, 2002) on task and job
performance (Stajkovic and Luthans, 1998). There are also findings on self-efficacy and
career commitment influencing directly career success (Day and Allen, 2004; Kidd and
Green, 2006). Day and Allen (2004) found career self-efficacy to be related to indicators
of career success and performance effectiveness. They also examined both career
self-efficacy and career motivation as mediators of the relationship between mentoring
and career success. Building on their work, this study extends the scope of self-efficacy
application in career research and examines its indirect effects on career outcomes.
Unfortunately, no research to date has examined the indirect influence this social
cognitive construct has on career success (conceptualised as the objective and
subjective outcomes an individual receives in his/her career) in a national and/or
cross-national context. The effects of self-efficacy on career success need not to be
direct. Self-efficacy, for example, could boost the impact of other determinants of career
success by way of moderation. To close this research gap, the objective of the present
study is to investigate how self-efficacy predicts career success indirectly through Career
moderation. Examining the moderating role of self-efficacy in non-western setting is commitment and
relevant to both national and cross-cultural research. In particular, there is a need to
capture the implications of motivational and social cognitive western theories for career success
career success in Lebanese and in similar Middle Eastern work settings. This may
provide substantial benefits to local and international organisations working closely
with their employees in managing the dynamics of career success process. The paper 657
makes a valuable contribution to both career commitment and career success
literatures by being one of the first to present findings of the moderating effects of
self-efficacy on the relationship between career commitment and career success. It
argues that the effects of career commitment on career success can be facilitated by
self-efficacy. Employees who exhibit high career self-efficacy would increase their
commitment to attain successfully career success as opposed to those who are less
efficacious and less committed.

Conceptualisation of career success

Career success is defined as the accumulated positive work and psychological
outcomes arising from one’s work experiences (Seibert and Kraimer, 2001). Career
researchers have generally operationalised the construct to include both objective and
subjective indicators and some argue that extrinsic career outcomes are conceptually
distinct from intrinsic career outcomes (Ng et al., 2005; Arthur et al. 2005).
Extrinsic or objective factors of career success such as salary, promotions and
status are relatively more tangible or observable outcomes than intrinsic or subjective
outcomes of career success. These later outcomes of career success include less visible
indicators such as job or career satisfaction, perceptions of career accomplishments,
career commitment and career mentoring and are, therefore, relatively more internally
assessed by individuals’ own subjective judgements of career success (Poon, 2004;
Burke, 2001; Aryee et al., 1994).
Internal career success is frequently defined by psychological success which comes
from the employee’s feeling of pride and personal accomplishment of various goals in
life such as achievement, inner peace and family happiness (Hall, 1996), and is judged
by the self rather than the organisation (Gattiker and Larwood, 1986).
Whereas subjective career success takes an individualistic approach, objective
career success is externally oriented and involves a vertical advancement through
positions carrying increasing recognition, responsibility and compensation defined by
the organisation (Hall and Mirvis, 1995) and society in general (Melamed, 1996).
Although positively related, objective career success and subjective career success
are operationally (empirically) distinct, with potentially different predictors or
outcomes (Ng et al., 2005). With this acknowledgement that each of the two
perspectives are essentially relevant to conceptualise career success, it is therefore
important to include in our study both indicators of career success in order to have a
better understanding of how motivational or cognitive processes affect the way career
actors navigate through their own career paths and success.

Career commitment
Career commitment, organisational commitment and career motivation are some
examples of more recent determinants of career success that have been investigated
CDI (Kidd and Green, 2006; Day and Allen, 2004). Career commitment is defined as “the
14,7 strength of one’s motivation to work in a chosen career role” (Hall, 1971, p.59).
Changing work environments and the pace of careers in organisations have led
employees to exhibit more commitment to their careers and perhaps less or conditional
commitment to their organizations (Noordin et al., 2002). Career commitment has
become a significant source of occupational meaning and continuity as organisations
658 become flatter and less able to provide secure jobs or careers (Colarelli and Bishop,
1990; Aryee et al., 1994).
London (1983) suggested that individual differences and situational characteristics
are important predictors of career commitment, and that individuals who are high on
career motivation might have greater career satisfaction. For example, career
commitment was found to positively affect learning motivation and learning transfer
(Cheng and Ho, 2001). Individuals with a learning goal orientation were found to
commit themselves to developing a plan for performance success (Sujan et al., 1994).
Carson et al. (1999) linked career commitment and organisational commitment to
work-related outcomes and discovered that individuals who rated highly on career
commitment reported greater career satisfaction than those rated low on career
commitment. Similarly, Day and Allen (2004) found career commitment to be positively
related to career satisfaction in the case of municipal employees.
Career commitment reflects a form of work commitment that the employees have
towards their careers and could be related to desired career outcomes. Individuals with
a strong degree of career commitment and higher levels of career expectations may
make significant investments in their careers (Aryee and Tan, 1992). As such, they
should be willing to commit to the efforts needed to attain career goals through with
which they expect to have opportunities for advancement.
Empirical evidence supports the relationship between career commitment and
career success. For example, Jones and Whitmore (1995) found an association between
career commitment and promotions. In addition, Day and Allen (2004), in their survey
study of career commitment, found this variable to be positively related to salary level
and performance effectiveness. A study by Poon (2004) provided evidence that career
commitment predicted both objective and subjective career success. In accord with this
previous work, we replicate and test the relationship between career commitment and
career success outside the USA. In doing so, we argue that the careers literature can
gain from testing western theorizing of career commitment/career success relationship
in Middle Eastern setting (Lebanon) and in specific industry (the banking sector) in
order better to understand the motivational process involved in the career success
process. Thus, we hypothesize:
H1a. Career commitment will be positively related to salary level.
H1b. Career commitment will be positively related to career satisfaction.

Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is defined as individuals’ beliefs about their capability to mobilise
cognitive resources and courses of actions needed to successfully perform a specific
task within a given context (Bandura, 1982, 1997). Individuals with high self-efficacy
beliefs set higher career goals, put in more effort, and pursue career strategies that lead
to the achievement of those goals. According to King (2004), people’s self-efficacy and
their intention to exert control over career outcomes would enable them to exhibit Career
career self-management behaviours, and those career behaviours can lead to the commitment and
achievement of desired career goals and ultimately career success.
Stucliffe and Vogus (2003) noted that individuals create an overall sense of efficacy career success
and competence that enables them to gain control and mastery over task-related
behaviours. Findings have demonstrated a positive relationship between career
decision-making self-efficacy and personal attributes, thereby supporting the 659
argument that individuals with high self-efficacy exert considerable control over
their life events and successfully master decision-making tasks and behaviours in
career decision-making (Taylor and Popma, 1990; Abdalla, 1995). Empirical evidence
supports the influence of self-efficacy beliefs on career development and growth (Noe
and Wilk, 1993; Bell and Staw, 1989).

Moderating role of self-efficacy

Self-efficacy has been shown to improve and influence both motivation and task
performance. Studies have examined the relationship between leadership self-efficacy
and managers’ motivation for change. Leadership self-efficacy was found to be related
to direction setting and to gaining followers’ commitment (Paglis and Green, 2002).
Self-efficacy was also found to mediate an employee’s engagement with his/her work
(Luthans and Peterson, 2002) and the self-leadership/performance relationship, and to
predict career success as well (Day and Allen, 2004).
Because of the challenges associated with setting and committing to career goals, it
seems likely that the relationship between commitment to career goals and the
attenuation of successful actions will be moderated by self-efficacy. Self-efficacy may
interact with career commitment to affect career success because as employees become
more committed to their career goals, they are more likely to develop a plan for
performance attainment or success in their career endeavour, and to strengthen
confidence and belief in their abilities to acquire personal qualities such as skills and
competencies. Brown et al. (2005) found that both self-efficacy and goals are
determinants of successful actions.
The positive impact of self-efficacy on career attainment should become more
pronounced over time as an employee develops a greater commitment to
career-advancement goals, and put in more effort and persist longer to attain such
goals. However, lacking a sense of efficacy and motivation to successfully accomplish
career-related tasks and pursue career-relevant opportunities, over time employees
may find it difficult to reach desired career activities and outcomes. We would expect
that career self-efficacy that may motivate individuals to set and pursue meaningful
career goals would affect the commitment that individuals place on career motivation
in assessing their career progression.
Moreover, employees monitor and evaluate their own performance
accomplishments with a given task or work role and adjust their own sense of
efficacy (Chen et al., 1998). Studies have shown that the attainment of the goals set by
individuals creates the framework for task mastery and competence (Appelbaum and
Hare, 1996). They also show that individuals with high self-efficacy for a given task
would set higher personal goals (Bandura and Cervone, 1983) and “visualise success
scenarios that provide positive guides for performance” (Wood and Bandura, 1989,
p. 366) of the task than those with lower self-efficacy.
CDI The relationships between goal setting and self-efficacy and commitment are well
14,7 established. Research evidence shows that self-efficacy moderates the relationship
between goal setting and performance (Appelbaum and Hare, 1996). Bandura and
Cervone (1986) found that after setting their goals, individuals high in self-efficacy
increased their efforts to attain such goals, whereas those low in self-efficacy did not.
Arguably, employees who are highly committed to their careers are motivated to set
660 personal and assigned career goals and then develop plans to attain such goals. Such
career plans, in turn, can be reinforced by self-efficacy that influences their level of
performance (Lent et al., 1994). For example, individuals with a strong sense of
self-efficacy may use initiatives, such as appreciation of self-success and/or past
success, and interpersonal facilitation, such as networking (Quigley and Tymon, 2006),
when carrying out their career success goals. Similarly, when employees are identified
with or attached to their careers, they become more involved in career-related
behaviours (Leung and Clegg, 2001). This involvement raises their self-efficacy toward
higher performance and commitment, which are, in turn, important factors for meeting
their career expectations or outcomes. We expect to find that strong career
commitment has the most positive impact on career success among people high in
self-efficacy but may contribute relatively little to career success among people low in
self-efficacy.
H2a. Self-efficacy will moderate the relationship between career commitment and
salary level such that the relationship will be stronger at higher than at
lower levels of self-efficacy.
H2b. Self-efficacy will moderate the relationship between career commitment and
career satisfaction such that the relationship will be stronger at higher than
at lower levels of self-efficacy.

Method
Sample and procedures
Data for this study were collected by means of questionnaire. We used a snowball
sampling approach, which is commonly used means for obtaining data from few
persons known by the researcher and the members of the research team. These persons
served as informants to locate others who qualify for inclusion in the sample. We asked
40 Lebanese bank employees to voluntarily participate in this research. Members of the
team administered a self-administered questionnaire with an accompanying cover
letter that stated the purpose of the research. These members met with the participants
and asked them to identify up to ten individuals each from the managerial and/or
non-managerial ranks of their banks and to request them to anonymously fill out
surveys and return them directly in sealed envelops.
The sample was drawn from employees who are currently working in a number of
banks located in three large Lebanese cities. The cities of Beirut (capital of Lebanon),
Tripoli and Sidon were selected to provide a representative cross-section of major
banks operating in Lebanon. In total, 180 completed questionnaire surveys were
returned out of the approximately 290 distributed, yielding a response rate of 62
percent. Responding managers and non-managers were from over 35 operating banks
having over 105 branches and from a variety of functional backgrounds and
occupations, including administrative (28 per cent), managerial (18 per cent), customer
service (12 per cent), sales/marketing (12 per cent) and human resources (8 per cent). Career
The mean age of the sample was 33.43 years (SD ¼ 9.18) and the mean organizational commitment and
tenure was 7.48 years (SD ¼ 2.3). The women in the sample represented 40 percent of
the respondents, and they were on the average younger than the men were. About career success
70 per cent of the sample’s respondents were married, and 72 percent held an
undergraduate degree.
661
Measures
The major measures for this research were self-efficacy, career commitment, and career
success. Unless stated otherwise, participants responded to all questionnaire items for
measures using a rating scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
Responses on items for each measure were averaged to form an overall score such that
higher scores indicated a higher standing on the measure.

Self-efficacy
We measured self-efficacy using Kossek et al.’s (1998) 11-item measure. This scale
reflects the belief that one is capable to perform well at managing one’s career. A
sample item is, “when I make plans for my career, I am confident I can make them
work.”. The internal consistency values reported by researchers on this measure
ranged from 0.74 to 0.81 (Kossek et al., 1998; Day and Allen, 2004). In the present study,
internal consistency was 0.78.

Career commitment
Career commitment was assessed using Colarelli and Bishop’s (1990) 17-item career
commitment scale. A sample item is, “I am willing to put in a great deal of effort
beyond that normally expected in order to be successful in this career.” These
researchers reported a coefficient alpha of 0.94 for this measure and provided evidence
of good convergent validity and modest discriminate validity. Coefficient alpha for this
research was 0.82.

Career success
Consistent with previous research, two measures of objective and subjective career
success were used. Objective career success was assessed using salary level. Because
salary data was not available from organizations’ employing study participants,
respondents were asked to indicate their current annual salaries inclusive of all
bonuses. Although self-reported measures tend to attenuate the results, self-reports
have been shown to correlate highly with archival measures (Seibert et al., 2001;
Boudreau et al., 2001). For instance, Judge et al. (1995) reported (in a sample of 1338
executives) a negligible difference (only a 1 per cent deviation) between self-reported
salary and archival salary. Given that the salary data was positively skewed, a natural
logarithmic transformation was performed. Such transformation is consistent with the
practice of other researchers (Poon, 2004; Seibert et al., 2001). Subjective career success
was assessed using Greenhaus et al.’s (1990) five-item measure. A sample item is, “I am
satisfied with the success I have achieved in my career.” Greenhaus et al. (1990)
reported a coefficient alpha of 0.88 for their scale and such scale was/still the most
widely used measure in the career literature. In the present study, the coefficient alpha
was 0.80.
CDI Control variables
14,7 We controlled for three variables-specifically, gender, work experience, and education
that have been found to be significant predictors of career success. Gender was
assessed as a dichotomous variable (coded 0 ¼ male, 1 ¼ female). Work experience
was measured by the number of years of the respondents’ total work experience.

662
Results
The study used hierarchical multiple regression to test the hypotheses, entering the
control variables first, the main effect variables second, and the interaction term last.
The interaction term was formed by transforming the raw scores of the predictor and
moderator variables into deviation scores with means equal to zero. Such
transformation was aimed at eliminating the potential problem of multicollineartity
with the interaction term due to scaling (Poon, 2004; Aiken and West, 1991). The data
was tested for violations of the assumptions of normality, linearity, heteroscedasticity,
and multicollinearity; no significant problems were found after three outlier cases were
deleted and salary and work experience variables were transformed into log forms.
To examine the internal structure and convergence validity of career commitment
and self-efficacy measures, we subjected the items to an exploratory factor analysis
using Kaiser’s criterion and “varimax” rotation. The results supported a two-factor
structure, with an adjusted goodness-of-fit index (GFI) of 0.94 and a root-mean-square
residual (RMSR) of .04 and with loadings ranging from 0.58 to 0.90.
Table I presents the means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations of the study
variables. On the average, respondents reported experiencing a level of career
commitment of 3.65, a level of self-efficacy of 3.83, and a level of career satisfaction of
3.85 (measured on a five-point scale). Career commitment, self-efficacy, and the control
variables were significantly correlated with the career success variables with the
exception of gender and career satisfaction. Self-efficacy was significantly and
positively correlated with salary (r ¼ 0.27, p , 0.001) and career satisfaction (r ¼ 0.36,
p , 0.001) supporting Day and Allen’s (2004) similar findings of positive correlation
between self-efficacy and career success. The strongest correlations were found
between career commitment and career self-efficacy and between career commitment
and career satisfaction.
The effects of career commitment and self-efficacy on career success variables are
presented in Table II and Table III. Work experience emerged to strongly and
significantly predict the outcome variables as shown in all models of the study. While

Variable Means SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
a
1.Gender 0.4 0.49 –
2. Work experience b 1.05 0.19 2 0.31** –
3. Career commitment 3.65 0.34 2 0.001 0.20* –
Table I. 4. Self-efficacy 3.83 0.33 0.03 0.29** 0.80** –
Descriptive statistics: 5. Salary level b 4.39 0.22 2 0.38** 0.82** 0.26** 0.27** –
means, standard 6. Career satisfaction 3.85 0.37 2 0.09 0.26** 0.4** 0.36** 0.27** –
deviations, and
a b
correlations Notes: code 0 = male, 1 = female; natural logarithm; *p , 0.05, **p , 0.001; n = 180
 Career
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Variable b SE b SE b SE commitment and
Step 1: control variables
career success
Gender a 20.134* 0.02 20.134* 0.02 20.13* 0.02
Work experience b 0.77** 0.05 0.76** 005 0.76** 0.05
Step 2: main effects
Career commitment 0.19* 04 0.19* 0.04
663
Self-efficacy 20.09 04 20.06 0.05
Step 3: interaction effect Table II.
Career commitment £ Self-efficacy 0.17** 0.06 Hierarchical regression
R2 0.68** 0.70** 0.73** results for the effects of
D in R 2 0.002** 0.03** career commitment and
self-efficacy on salary
Notes: a coded, 0=male, 1=female; b natural logarithm, * p , 0.01, ** p , 0.001; n=180 level

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Variable ß SE ß SE ß SE

Step 1: control variables

Gender a 20.02 0.05 20.05 0.05 20.04 0.05
Work experience b 0.25** 0.15 0.16* 0.14 0.16* 0.14
Step 2: main effects
Career commitment 0.33** 0.12 0.33** 0.12
Self-efficacy 0.04 0.12 0.07 0.12
Step 3: interaction effects Table III.
Career commitment £ Self-efficacy 0.14* 0.17 Hierarchical regression
R2 0.06 0..19*** 0.22*** results for the effect of
D in R 2 0.13*** 0.03*** career commitment and
self-efficacy on career
Notes: a coded, 0=male, 1=female; b natural logarithm; * p , 0.05, **p , 0.01, ***p , 0.001; n=180 satisfaction

gender was not related to career satisfaction, it was significantly and negatively related
to salary level, suggesting a differential pay levels between men and women.
H1a predicted that career commitment would be positively related to salary level,
and H1b predicted that career commitment would be positively related to career
satisfaction. Multiple regression analyses testing a main effects model yielding a
significant and positive regression for career commitment on salary level (b ¼ 0.19,
p , 0.05) and on career satisfaction (b ¼ 0.33, p , 0.05), suggesting support for the
two hypotheses. As expected, career self-efficacy was not significantly related to career
success after career commitment and the control variables were taken into
consideration. Thus, self-efficacy was not found to be an antecedent of career success.
H2a stated that self-efficacy would moderate the relationship between career
commitment and salary, and H2b stated that self-efficacy would moderate the
relationship between career commitment and career satisfaction. As shown in model 3
(Table II), there is a significant interaction between self-efficacy and career
commitment for salary (b ¼ 0.17, p , 0.001) that explained variance in the model
beyond that due to the main effects (DR2 ¼ 0.03, p , 0.001). Similarly, the interaction
CDI term between self-efficacy and career commitment for career satisfaction shown in
14,7 model 3 (Table III) is significant and positive (b ¼ 0.14, p , 0.05) and explained
variance in the model beyond that due to the main effects ((DR2 ¼ 0.03, p , .001).
Thus, H2a and H2b are supported.
The plots of the interaction effects are shown in Figures 1 and 2. We performed
simple slope analyses (Aiken and West, 1991) taking into consideration high (one
664 standard deviation above the mean) and low (one standard deviation below the mean)
levels of the moderator. Post hoc analyses showed that for those employees with low

Figure 1.
Relationship between
career commitment and
salary level at high and
low levels of self-efficacy

Figure 2.
Relationship between
career commitment and
career satisfaction at high
and low levels of
self-efficacy
self-efficacy, career commitment was not related to salary level (b ¼ 0.10, t ¼ 1.62, Career
p . 0.05) and career satisfaction (b ¼ 0.21, t ¼ 1.58, p . 0.05), whereas for those with commitment and
high self-efficacy, career commitment was positively related to salary level (b ¼ 1.92,
t ¼ 3.3, p , 0.01) and career satisfaction (b ¼ 0.42, t ¼ 3.3, p , 0.01). These results career success
provided support for H2a and H2b.

Discussion 665
Understanding the factors that affect employees’ career success is important for
organizations seeking to develop motivated and competent workforces. One such
factor that recently gained prominence in career research is self-efficacy (Day and
Allen, 2004; Poon, 2004). Specifically, this study focused on the effects of career
commitment and self-efficacy on career success. Career commitment was found to
predict objective career success in the form of salary level and subjective career success
in the form of career satisfaction. The study also empirically examined the moderating
role that self-efficacy played in facilitating the effects of career commitment on career
success. The findings indicated that self-efficacy moderated the positive effects of
career commitment on both objective and subjective career success. Career
commitment was positively related to salary level and career satisfaction among
individuals who have at least moderate levels of self-efficacy. This suggests that
individuals having strong career commitment and a stronger sense of self-efficacy
would enjoy high salary level and a greater career satisfaction.

Limitations and directions for future research

This study has a couple of limitations. First, the study is a cross-sectional and perhaps
cross-sectional data would not allow us to draw causal inferences concerning various
hypothesised relations. Similarly, since the assessment variables were self-reported in
a single survey, common method variance could have inflated correlations between the
study variables. However, given the interaction effects of the moderated variables in
this study, there should not be any concerns about common method variance (Erdogan
and Bauer, 2005). In addition, research evidence indicates that common source variance
is less prevalent in career advancement research (Crampton and Wagner, 1994). Future
research that is designed longitudinally and includes cross-culture samples may
capture how self-efficacy beliefs or sources affect career commitment of various
individuals at different times in their careers. Second, despite the generalisability of
this study by using a diverse sample of bank employees, the study could be extended
to various service and non-service organizations and its findings could be replicated in
other countries. Findings of cross-national data revealed cultural differences in
attitudes toward achievement and success in careers across cultures (Feather, 1998).
Though this study considered self-efficacy as a moderator variable, future research
may consider other variables such as proactivity and career-enhancing factors that
have the potential to strengthen the positive effect of career commitment on career
success. For example, sources of self-efficacy may moderate career
commitment/success relationship.
Third, the theoretical and empirical effort taken in this study implied that career
commitment and career self-efficacy precede career success. These variables, however,
could be affected as well by career success. Therefore, An extension of this paper,
involving how indicators of career success affect employees’ self-efficacy beliefs and
CDI creative goal-setting within multiple organisational contexts, should be reviewed in
14,7 order to better understand how career success can affect an individual’s motivation
and career goal commitment.
Although previous research has supported the impact of self-efficacy on
work-related performance, results of this study suggest that such influence extends
to employees’ career commitment/career success interdependence.
666
Implications for practitioners
One managerial implication of the findings of this study is related to the factors that
managers tend to consider in evaluating their employee’s career development and
career success. Organizations that want their employees to achieve career success must
develop their capabilities or mastery experiences and enhance their resilient sense of
self-efficacy in addition to increasing their career commitment. Therefore, employers
need to know how people’s self-efficacy beliefs that are context-specific can be build
and developed (i.e. through mastery experience and vicarious learning) to take on work
and career-related behaviours and outcomes that are of importance to the viability of
their organizations. In addition, employers need to gain a better understanding of why
career commitment constitutes a key driver for employees to attain better career
outcomes. Evidence shows that employees who are committed to their career enjoy
relatively high career success.
Enhancing career commitment/career success linkage should be an important
objective for those responsible for improving the performance and well-being of
today’s human resources. Certainly, employee self-efficacy provides guidance about
practical implications for equipping employees with the capabilities and cognitive
resources that will enable them to enhance their satisfaction and accomplishments.
To the extent that careers in organizations have shifted from traditional types into
protean ones, career commitment would likely take a significant rise in career
environment and career research as well. This signifies that employees under protean
careers would become more interested in pursuing self-managed careers that offer them
personal accomplishment and employability. As such, traditional loyalty and
commitment to an organization will diminish relative to career commitment perceived
to become increasingly critical to employees’ personal development and success in the
workplace. Therefore, organizations may be well advised to make employees view
organizational goals as incorporating a great deal of employees’ learning motivation and
experiences and as accommodating as well ample opportunities for career development
and growth. On the other hand, career commitment according to career researchers
(Baruch, 1998; Poon, 2004) is becoming an important management concept and research
construct relative to other work behaviour concepts such as organizational commitment.
Although this study makes progress to increase understanding of how career
commitment affect directly and interactively career outcomes, future work should
include self-efficacy in career-related theoretical and empirical research.
In sum, this study may help employers understand how today’s human resources
view career success from the perspective of commitment/self-efficacy connection
framework. In addition, in an era of globalisation, the findings of this study may add
knowledge to local and international managers to develop and reward employees with
high self-efficacy who are capable of aligning work performance goals with career
goals and accomplishments.
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Further reading
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Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 26, pp. 155-76.

About the author

Hassan I. Ballout is a Professor of Management at the Lebanese University, Faculty of Economic
Sciences and Business Administration. He received his PhD (1992) from the University of Texas
at Dallas. His current research includes self-efficacy and career success, work-family conflict,
person-environment fit and career success, organizational culture and institutions and their
impact on career development. Hassan I. Ballout can be contacted at dr_ballout1@hotmail.com

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