Managers Promote Knowledged Staff ’ s Person-Career Fit : Career Self-Management and Perceived Organizational Support

This paper aims to examine the impact of knowledged staff’s subjective person-career fit on the knowledged staff’s career subjective well-being. Moreover, this study further investigated the subjective person–career fit could be influenced by the career selfmanagement and perceived organizational support. However, the antecedents of knowledged staff’s person-career fit seemed to have been under-investigated in the management literature. A questionnaire survey was used as a research instrument, and 221 full-time knowledged employees from China took part in the investigation. The hypotheses were tested by using partial least squares and structural equation modeling tool. The results confirmed that good subjective person-career fit would significantly increase the knowledged staff’s career subjective well-being. Yet, the results also suggested that career self-management and perceived organizational support are the mechanisms that promoted this relation. This paper made a valuable contribution to career literatures discussions about the effect of career self-management and organizational support on the knowledged staff’s subjective person-career fit. This paper also would be useful to the academic communities, the public and other interested parties who are interested in improving individual career subjective well-being during their periods of career.


INTRODUCTION
There has been more information produced in the last 70 years than during the previous 2000 years.Information is very important to everyone.We define the people who access and use significant portions of this exploding information resources as knowledge employees.Knowledge workers are unlike previous generations of worker, not only because of their access to educational opportunities, but because they own the means of production, i.e. knowledge that is located in brains, dialogue and symbols (Blackler, 1995).The most important contribution management needs to make in 21th century is to increase the productivity of knowledge work and knowledge workers (Drucker, 1999).Success for the organizations will be based not just on what the growing number of knowledge workers know, but on how fast they can learn and share their knowledge, the latter is related.As a consequence, productivity is dependent on the contributions of specialist knowledge workers (Tovstiga, 1999).
person-career fit means that the employees' preferences or abilities do not line up with the responsibilities of the career (Caldwell and O'Reilly, 1990;Ehrhart, 2006).A large body of literature has considered person-job fit as a foundation of job-seeking behavior.(Caldwell and Burger, 1998;Saks and Ashforth, 1997).Researchers also studied the impacts of poor person-job fit on workplace behaviors, and they found that poor person-job fit could lead to job dissatisfaction, low organizational commitment and high turnover intention (Boon et al., 2011;Yang and Sianturi, 2017).Following previous studies, the current research examines the relationship between knowledged staff's subjective person-career fit and the knowledged staff's career subjective well-being, the effects of career selfmanagement and support in organization.Some studies then showed that the career self-management could help the employees develop knowledge and problem-solving skills (Gillies, 2004).As career self-management could reinforce the learners' knowledge, abilities, social relations and self-confidence (Johnson and Johnson, 2009), the present work attempts to investigate whether or not career self-management could also enhance the knowledged staff's subjective Person-job fit.Perceived organizational support (POS) may also affect the knowledged staff's subjective person-job fit.Previous studies showed that organizational supports are giving employee more training and stimulating employee potential (J.B. DeConinck, 2010).Furthermore, researchers indicated that organizational supports may increase the employees' emotional tie to the organizations (Shore and Wayne, 1993) and enable the employees' knowledge and abilities to expand better (Ballout, 2007;Dawley et al., 2010).Hence, this paper investigated whether or not knowledged staff who receive more organizational supports could also feel higher person-career fit in the workplace.
In summary, this research focuses on whether career self-management and POS may enhance the knowledged staff's subjective person-career fit (Figure 1).Based on previous studies, we propose that strong person-career fit would significantly increase career subjective well-being (Thomas Kalliath, Parveen Kalliath, 2012), while career self-management and organizational support may be the mechanisms that could enhance this relationship.

State of the literature
• Much previous studies showed that organizational supports are giving employee more emotional tie to the organizations.There were little of literature investigated whether or not more organizational supports could feel higher person-career fit in the workplace.
• A large body of literature has considered poor person-job fit as a foundation of workplace behaviors.
However, there were little of literature has considered person-job fit as a foundation of career subjective well-being.
• There were little of researches in the field of knowledge management and career management focusing on whether career self-management and perceived organizational supports may enhance the knowledged staff's subjective person-career fit.

Contribution of this paper to the literature
• Good subjective person-career fit would significantly increase the knowledged staff's career subjective wellbeing.
• Knowledged staff's career self-management and perceived organizational support are the mechanisms that promoted this relation between subjective person-career fit & career subjective well-being.
• This study made a valuable contribution to knowledge management and career literatures discussions about the effect of career self-management and organizational support on the knowledged staff's subjective person-career fit.

Literature and Hypotheses
A company's competitiveness mainly depends on its innovative ability.Employee innovation behaviour is recognized as a critical part of an organization's ability to be innovative (Amabile, 1988).In current knowledge economy, this is particularly true for organization in the world, globalization and the rapid fluctuation of the world markets cause a variety of challenges in the business world.In knowledge age, knowledged staff are also not exempt from these challenges and are required to be increasingly more flexible.Therefore, knowledged staff's career subjective well-being is much more and more important.A big open economy, which is going through a critical phase of anticipation global competition.China is therefore experiencing a painful process of change and restructuring in order to compete in global market.In a dynamic business environment and knowledge management age, creating new knowledge, applying knowledge and in the words of Peter Drucker: "Making it productive." is to have any real impact on the way we do business, organization needs to fundamentally focus on creativity and innovation.Those whose career subjective well-being are high can develop, adopt and implement new ideas for products and work process.Career subjective well-being is very critical for organization to obtain success.Researchers have investigated that employees have the ability to develop career subjective well-being within its work environment, such that they are able to introduce new ideas and implemented in a specific organizational context.
Over the past several years, numerous studies have identified those factors that enhance career subjective well-being (Barron and Harrington, 1981).However, it is unfortunate that insufficient tailored studies have been made of knowledged employees, to explore the relationship between career self-management, organizational support, and career subjective well-being.
The main aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between knowledged staff's career selfmanagement and career subjective well-being.

Career Self-Management
The notion of joint responsibility assumes that individual efforts are needed for career subjective wellbeing, as well as an appropriate career management program on the part of the employer.
Employees are active to satisfy their personal career goals, and it is the task of employers to ensure that this process helps the organization achieve its goals.
The job market is undergoing globalization, declining job security, which requires employees to take the responsibility for more self-management than before.Abele and Wiese (2009) were conducted to analyse the nomological network of general self-management strategies, specific self-management strategies and central indicators of career success, self-referent subjective success and other-referent career success.Their study has shown that the link from self-management to subjective success was independent of objective success.
The two primary aspects of individual career management, according to the psychological success model of Hall and Foster (1997), are individual career planning and individual career tactics, both are potentially useful in obtaining career performance, they entail different types of actions (Andrea Abele E, 2008).

Figure 1. Research model
Individual career planning refers to the process of identifying what one wants from one's career, assessing his or her strengths and weaknesses in relation to these goals, and deciding what efforts need to be done to realize these goals in the light of one's own strengths and weaknesses.It comprises a variety of individual decisions that ought to be made as rationally and systematically as possible if planning is to contribute to career success.However, career planning needs to be supported by good tactics for implementation, in the light of changing circumstances that are often difficult to predict in advance.Unless individuals are able to develop and execute strategies for carrying out their plans, they are unlikely to be successful.A series of career tactics have been advocated, all of which involve manipulating the situation in which individuals find themselves to their own advantage, so that they can successfully achieve their goals.
In sum, career self-management should lead to more successful careers subjective and objective career success.
It is logical that individual level factors need to be taken into account when investigating the antecedents and correlates of career subjective well-being.Thus, in this study we propose perceived organizational support is related to knowledge workers' person-career fit, which is the predictor of career subjective well-being.
As far as the above is concerned, the following hypotheses are developed: H1: There will be a positive relationship between career self-management and person-career fit.Employees who have high levels of career self-management will report greater person-career fit than employee who has low levels of career self-management.

POS
The attention on perceived organizational supports has increased since 1980s.Perceived organizational support (POS) refers to employees' beliefs concerning the extent to which the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being (Eisenberger et al., 1986).We can use social exchange view to explain the reciprocal effect of commitment between the employee and the employer.POS is not a unitary concept, but incorporates a hierarchy of perspectives that, not only include work-based factors, such as job support, but also factors that broadly reflect life support and general feelings of wellbeing, such as caring benefits and value fit.Rhoades and Eisenberger (2002) found POS to be positively associated with opportunities for greater recognition and pay and promotion.Within the work field, POS may emanate either from the supervisor or other senior managers.Kirchmeyer (1998) found supervisor support significantly predicted men's and women's managerial perceived career success and Greenhaus et al. (1990) found supervisor support to be significantly related to employees' career satisfaction.Nabi (2001) suggested social support to fall into three categories: personal, peer, and network.He found peer support to be strongly related to men's subjective career success, whereas personal support to be strongly related to women's subjective career success.Supportive supervisors affect individuals' willingness to engage in development activities (Noe, 1996) and are critical for subordinate perception of fit.In some organizations, for example, social support provided by supervisor may take the form of career guidance and information, learning opportunities and challenging work assignments that promote career advancement (Greenhaus et al., 1990).
Given POS broadly reflects life support and general feelings of well-being, such as value fit, it seems logical to suggest that perceived organizational support is related to person-career fit as well.It is reasonable that perceived social support at work in the form of mentorship, training, caring benefit and supportive work relationships would lead to greater career opportunities and enhanced perception of person-career fit.Hence, we propose that perceived organizational support at work would lead to greater person-career fit and enhanced career satisfaction.
We propose that the level of perceived organizational support will impact perception of fit.
P2: There will be a positive relationship between perceived organizational support and person-career fit.Knowledge workers who perceive high levels of organizational support will report greater person-career fit than those who perceive low levels of support.

Career Subjective Well-Being
The issue of career subjective well-being (well-being at work) has attracted the attention of many researchers in recent years (Currie, 2001;Nicole Renee Baptiste, 2008).The similar research on career well-being are the Literature of job satisfaction and the Literature of career success.Subjective person-environment fit is an important topic that has received considerable attention by many researchers (Boles et al., 2012).When Knowledge workers make the employment decision, value congruence between them and the organization is the central plank of this aspect of person-environment fit (Chatman, 1989;Ostroff et al., 2005).
Person-organization fit is one type of person-environment fits, which emphasizes the importance of fit between employees' personality and an organization's culture (Werbel and DeMarie, 2005).Serious knowledge workers are likely to demonstrate as much concern about choosing the most appropriate career for them to perform.
The studies proposed a range of potential consequences that person-environment fit have significant impacts on.Such as, Carless, S. (2005) further concluded that consequences such as organizational attraction and job acceptance intentions could affect employee person-environment fit.Anna Saiti Yiannis Papadopoulos (2015) investigated the relationship between certain aspects of job satisfaction and the personal characteristics of school educators as well as the relationship between these aspects of job satisfaction and total satisfaction.Damiano Fiorillo Nunzia Nappo (2014) indicated social relations are helpful in gaining more and in improving career prospects, which also showed that meetings with friends increase job satisfaction through self-perceived health, suggesting a "buffering effect" of the networks of friends.
Employees' subjective person-career fit may also play an important role in initiating career subjective wellbeing.Subjective person-career fit refers to the employees' personal perceptions regarding how well their skills and abilities fit with the career.
As far as the above is concerned, the following hypotheses are developed: H1: There will be a positive relationship between person-career fit and career subjective well-being.Employees who have high levels of person-career fit will report greater career subjective well-being than employee who has low levels of person-career fit.
The remainders of the paper comprise three main sections.The next section discusses the method, including procedure, samples and variable measure.This is followed by presentation of the result.The final section discusses the results and outlines the implication for practice.

Procedure
We collected data from knowledged employees working in organizations in China through a professional training center.Members who were full-time employees were contacted face to face or by E-mail and invited to participate.Those who agreed completed electronic questionnaires and returned them to the researchers.To increase participation, the project was sponsored by one executive board member of the centre.We informed potential respondents that employees who completed the survey would receive gift certificates to account for their time.Overall, 250 members were contacted and 221 of them provided usable responses (response rate of 88.4 percent).
Anonymous questionnaire surveys method allows us to observe the impact of career self-management, organizational support and subjective Person-career fit on the knowledged employees' career subjective well-being.In addition, questionnaire surveys are low-cost, time-efficient and suitable for a large sample.Using anonymous questionnaires can also promise the confidentiality of the respondents.For these reasons, anonymous questionnaire surveys were used in this research.

Participants
They answered questions regarding age, gender, education level, position, position tenure and so on.The samples for the study was drawn from employees in multiple organizations (e.g.consulting, manufacturing, public transportation, retail, wholesale, etc.), and a variety of positions.Such variation is favorable for the generalizability of our findings.In terms of demographics, 63 percent of respondents were male, with an average age of 32.08 years (SD=6.77).Sixteen percent of the respondents were aged between 18 and 27 years, while 47 percent were aged between 28 and 37 years.30 percent of the respondents were between the ages of 38 and 47, and the rest were older than 47. 36 percent of the respondents had two-year college degrees and the 68 percent of the respondents had fouryear college degrees.38 percent of the respondents had tenures of five years or less and 41 percent had tenures of between six and ten years.The rest of the respondents had been with their hotel for more than ten years.The number of years the sampled has worked in their current position was as follows: 5 years or less (5.8%), 5-10 years (31.9%), 10-15 years (34.1%), and over 15 years (20.2%).

Measurement
In this study, multi-item measures were used for the knowledged employees' subjective Person-job fit, career self-management, organizational support and the knowledged employees' subjective well-being at work.All questions in this study were answered on a seven-point Likert-type scale (totally agree 7, totally disagree 1).The items were averaged for an overall score in the correlation analyses (Table 3).The internal consistency was estimated using Cronbach's alpha.As the data were gathered using the same survey instrument, the problem of common method bias may exist.We followed the suggestions proposed by Podsakoff et al. (2003) in the survey design of respondent anonymity.
Career self-management.It was measured by a four-item scale, designed to assess each of the main aspects of career planning and tactics identified by Hall in his psychological success model.There were five items in the career planning subscale (α = 0.72), to each of which subjects responded on a scale from 1 (very untrue of me) to 5 (very true of me).The Cronbach's alpha for the Career self-management in the organization was about 0.83.Perceived organizational support.It was measured based on the research of Eisenbergeretal (1990) andRiggleetal (2009).Again, response options ranged from totally agree to totally disagree.The sample items included "My organization considers my goals and values" and "My organization really cares about my well-being".It was measured by a six-item scale.The Cronbach's alpha for the Career self-management in the organization was about 0.85.
The knowledged employees' subjective Person-career fit.Researchers have discussed subjective personcarer fit in the relevant studies (Saks and Ashforth, 1997;Chiou and Lee et al., 2017), and according to previous studies, employees' subjective person-caerre fit can be measured (Ehrhart, 2006;Steijn, 2008).In this research, the items for the knowledged employees' subjective person-career fit were designed based on the relevant discussions of previous studies (Ehrhart, 2006;Singhand Greenhaus, 2004).A sample item of this construct was "I have a good fit with my career".It was measured by a five-item scale.The Cronbach's alpha for the Career self-management in the organization was about 0.86.
The knowledged employees' subjective well-being at workplace.With regard to employee well-being, S. Douglas Pugh and Markus Groth (2011) focused on job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion as two key outcome variables, given that these are two of the most frequently examined outcomes in the previous literature.Therefore, a five-item scale (Greenhaus et al., 1990) was adopted to assess the individual's career subjective Well-being, an internally generated and defined career outcome.A sample item is "I feel happy because of the success I have achieved in my career."The coefficient of α of 0.82 in this study was comparable to the range of 0.83 to 0.89 reported previously (Aryee et al., 1994;Greenhaus et al., 1990).The items of all the constructs were further arranged in parcels separately and taken as indicator of latent variable in the model (Hall et al., 1999).

RESULT
The study attempted to understand the factors that may affect knowledged employees' career subjective well-being.We first examined the factor loadings, composite reliability, Cronbach's alpha and average variance extracted (AVE) from the items.The result can be seen in Table 1.We then tested the hypotheses by applying the software application of Smart PLS 2.0.
The loadings, composite reliability, Cronbach's alpha and AVE of the constructs, as can be seen in Table 1.All the factor loadings exceed the 0.7 criterion, suggesting appropriate result.The Cronbach' alphas and composite reliability scores also exceed the advocated value of 0.80, showing adequate reliability.As shown in Table 1, the AVE scores exceeded the accepted values of 0.5, suggesting appropriate convergent validity.
Table 2 presented correlations for the variables and the square root of AVE.The square root of the AVE was applied to assess the discriminant validity between constructs.It was pointed out that the measures could have adequate discriminant validity if the square root of the AVE for each construct was higher than the correlation between the construct and other constructs.As shown in Table 2, all the square roots of AVE exceeded the value of the correlation coefficients, indicating that the measurement model had adequate discriminant validity.To deal with the multicollinearity problem, the variance inflation factor (VIF) values were presented.VIFs were used to examine the effect of multicollinearity.Table 2 showed that all the VIF values fell between 1.35 and 1.62, suggesting there were no serious problems with multicol linearity.Figure 2 and Table 3 presented the results of hypothesis testing.As can be seen in Table 3, the knowledged employees' career self-management fit was positively related to their person-career fit (path coefficient=0.42**,t=5.45, p-value <0.01).Hence, H1, which stated that knowledged employees' career self-management was positively related to the knowledged employees' person-career fit was supported.H2 stated that perceived organizational support would be positively related to the knowledged employees' subjective person-career fit.The results supported H2 (path coefficient =0.32**, t=4.23, p-value<0.01),indicating that the greater the knowledged employees' support from organization, the higher the knowledged employees' subjective person-career fit.H3 posited that person-career fit would significantly associate with the knowledged employees' subjective well-being.The findings indicated that the respondents would possess a higher level of career subjective well-being when they perceived person-career fit (path coefficient=0.55*,t=6.12, p-value<0.01).Based on these findings, H3 were supported.

Discussion
Innovation, such technical innovation will save manufacturing firm much time and labour, innovation in manufacturing firm has different manifestations, such that companies can modify production technics flow, adopt implement new ideas for products and work instruction or make use of technological innovation.Innovation is important sources that enable organization obtain success.In a dynamic business environment, employees' subjective well-being is often described as the key to organizational effectiveness and a necessity for long-term success, especially for knowledged employees.Given the complex and rapidly changing nature of the current work environment, employees' career subjective well-being is very critical.Therefore, identifying the factors that improve career subjective well-being is very important.
The findings support the research hypotheses.More specifically, the findings suggest that career selfmanagement, support in organization can predict person-career fit, which lead to career subjective well-being.
In modern labour markets, individuals' capabilities can effectively influence their environment and regulate their behaviour, which may be critical to firm's success (Converse, 2012).Therefore, employees should take responsibility in enhancing career self-management when entering an organization.

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During these decades, there is a more and more widespread agreement among researchers and practitioners that many have important implications for individual subjective well-being at workplace.Logically, career self-management can influence career subjective well-being.
Subjective person-career fit is conceptualized as the extent of an individual's psychological identification with his or her career.Those who have higher perception of person-career fit will put more forth substantial effort towards the achievement of individual career goal, hence they will have more career subjective well-beings.
Many researchers identified a set of important antecedents of career subjective well-being, such as organizational effectiveness, supervisory encouragement (Orpen, 1990), work force (Oldham and Cummings, 1996), the quality of the relationship between employee and supervisor.In this study, we found career selfmanagement in turn is a strong predictor of individual creativity.This article has attempted to offer a deep insight into the relationship between career self-management and career subjective well-being, person-career fit as a mediator.
Knowledge of the predictors of employees' subjective well-being is important and help for organization seeking to the good way to develop and select worker.

Implications of the Results
This research offers some valuable practical insights for both employees and managers.As stated by Osman M. Karatepe (2012, p. 48), "the satisfaction-performance relationship should not be dismissed in future empirical studies."Therefore, when organizations desire better performance, they should provide the supporting policies.The manager should foster employees' employee involvement in a number of possible areas such as strategic goal setting, shared governance, committees, and needs assessments, change initiatives, process studies and rotating team leadership.And, finally to encourage career self-management behaviour and increased empowerment an organization must develop a shared vision and strategic direction.
Since career self-management is a vital antecedent of person-career fit and career subjective well-being, organization that seek to enhance employees' performance should benefit from an understanding of the relationship between career self-management and person-career fit.
Previous research has shown that organizational support was related to employees' job satisfaction, job performance, positive mood, affective commitment and turnover behaviour (Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002;Liu, 2017).The results of this study showed that the POS also positively related to subjective person-career fit.Based on this result, we think that the researchers and practitioners who are interested in knowledged employee's subjective person-career fit should also take the potential influence of organizational support into account.
Despite the widely-held belief that fit or congruence between individual vocational value and practiced vocations leads to better satisfaction and performance, investigated relations between person-vocation fit and these variables tend to be weak.We examine this relation in the current study.The outcomes are important for career researchers and practitioners as they draw attention to the possible drawbacks of contemporary careers.The data supported a positive association between person-career fit and career subjective well-being.

Conclusion
Person-career fit is an important element in the investigation of the evolution of career subjective wellbeing.This research is to examine the mediator of the relationship between career self-management and career subjective well-being.The research findings indicate that career self-management and support in organization could predict the career subjective well-being.Individuals who perceived high levels of organizational support will report greater subjective person-career fit than those who do not.Managers can potentially enhance knowledged employees' career subjective well-being by support their career management.

Table 1 .
Results of loadings, composite reliability, Cronbach's alpha and AVE from the constructs (N=221)

Table 2 .
Correlations for the constructs and the square root of AVE (N=221) Notes: The number in parenthesis is the square root of AVE; **significant at p < 0.01 Figure 2. PLS Result