Career ambition and employee performance behaviour: The presence of ideological development

Abstract

This study develops and tests a theoretical model that investigates how career ambition can have an impact on different types of academics’ performance behaviour and how ideological development at work can affect this model in a special context of a communist country. In a study of 991 employees in a large university in Vietnam, the model is largely supported. The findings suggest that in-role behaviour has a significant mediating role in the effect of career ambition on extra-role behaviour and that this mediating effect is stronger among the group of employees who have participated in advanced ideological development in the context of Vietnamese higher education. This study advances the understanding of an underdeveloped relationship between career ambition and employee performance behaviour and expands the knowledge of the impact of ideological development at work.