The role of dispositional employability in determining individual differences in career success

Abstract

The purpose of the study was twofold: (1) to reassess the model of Dispositional Employability (DE) proposed by Fugate and Kinicki (2008) in the Croatian economic context, and (2) to validate a new measure of DE through testing its discriminant and incremental validity in relation to core self- -evaluations (CSE). A Croatian version of the DE scale was constructed based on a qualitative study and applied to a heterogeneous sample of 966 Croatian employees. In addition, we measured CSE, as well as four criterion variables: subjective career success, general job satisfaction, relative income and perceived employability. A CFA was performed to test whether the measures of DE and CSE were assessing two distinct dimensions. The results are in line with the hypothesis of the discriminant validity of the constructs. Moreover, results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that DE accounted for additional variance of subjective career success, job satisfaction and perceived employability above and beyond control variables and CSE. These findings indicate which psycho-social characteristics make people employable in different economic contexts and provide empirical support for the validity of a new DE scale. In the end, we discuss limitations, contributions and suggestions for future research.