Employees’ work engagement and job commitment: The moderating role of career anchors

Abstract

Orientation: Organisations continue to focus on human resource initiatives for enhancingemployee commitment, satisfaction and engagement in order to gain a competitive edge in adynamic and fast-changing marketplace.

Research purpose: The objective of the present study was to assess whether individuals’career anchors (measured by the career orientations inventory) significantly moderate therelationship between their work engagement (measured by the Utrecht work engagementscale) and job commitment (measured by the organisation-related commitment scale).

Motivation for the study: Although the literature review suggests that people’s workengagement and job commitment may be influenced by their career anchors, there seems to bea paucity of research examining the interaction effects between these three variables.

Research approach, design and method: A cross-sectional quantitative survey approach wasused. A non-probability purposive sample of adults (N = 318) employed in a human resourcecapacity in the South African service industry participated in the study. Stepwise hierarchicalmoderated regression analysis was performed to achieve the objective of the study.

Main findings: The results showed that the work engagement-job commitment relationshipwas generally stronger for high career anchor preferences than for low career anchorpreferences.Practical/managerial implications: The results of the study can be useful when human resourceinterventions for enhancing employees’ engagement and commitment are developed.

Contribution: The results of the study add new insights to the career literature by showing thatpeople’s career self-concepts (as reflected by their career anchors) are important to consider inenhancing their work engagement and job commitment.