مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Arguably, voluntary job changes (VJC) have to bear positive consequences for the individual changing jobs. Although many studies tend to combine voluntary with involuntary turnover (Capelli & Hamori, 2007, p. 331), all of them show that employees utilize their employability (Forrier, Verbruggen, & De Cuyper, 2015) for the sake of an increased salary (Lam, Ng, & Feldman, 2012) or a higher level of satisfaction (Rigotti, Korek, & Otto, 2014). But in a career context within which the ease of movement and the desirability of change – the two main antecedents of VJC – are said to increase (Direnzo & Greenhaus, 2011), the VJCconsequences relationship is likely to change as well, at least from a longitudinal perspective.

Change and stability in careers have been intensively investigated over the past few years, not least because the context of careers is coming increasingly into focus (Arnold & Cohen, 2008). Some authors argue that based on economic developments, organizations increasingly turn to the external labor market and are hesitant to establish long-term contracts with their employees (Cappelli, 1999). Due to delayering and outsourcing, career advancement within one organization becomes rather the exception than the rule (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996). The feeling of job security declines (Smith, 2010), and individuals become aware of the importance of remaining employable (Baruch, 2001) and developing transferable career competencies (DeFillippi & Arthur, 1994) or career capital (Latzke, Schneidhofer, Pernkopf, Rohr, & Mayrhofer, 2015).

All these factors contribute to the fact that job change behavior has become modified (Direnzo & Greenhaus, 2011), so that e.g. job search takes place continuously in light of the required employability. Nevertheless it remains unresolved whether these developments in the career context eventually lead to a change in income gains, or satisfaction surpluses, over time. Well aware that there are critical voices doubting the assertions of the so-called new careers literature theoretically (Inkson, Gunz, Ganesh, & Roper, 2012) and empirically (Rodrigues & Guest, 2010), we add to this debate and test whether its assumptions hold for the consequences of job changes in the context of Germany. Additionally, we take advantage of the psychological literature on cognition for tackling the development of job satisfaction.