🎬 Coherence in future selves: A network based approach

Link to recording: https://youtu.be/fAcsOqWNjmo

Part of Future of Work Institute’s Thursday Seminar Series

When thinking about one’s future work life and career, not all organization members have a coherent vision of who they would like to become. Instead, some imagine disconnected attributes for their future work self and feel torn between them. This paper explores how coherent future work selves impact people’s efforts and capability to work towards their desired future career. We conceptualize future work selves as networks of identity-based attributes, and coherence as the degree to which these networks are characterized by complementary connections. In a highly coherent future self, facilitative linkages between attributes have been built, promoting efficient use of resources in the pursuit of the desired future work self. In Study 1, we developed and validated a measure to capture future work self coherence. In Study 2, we then showed that future work self coherence was related to career adaptability in a sample of 120 MBA students. In Study 3, we predicted career adaptability and proactive career behavior in a lagged study of 141 online panel respondents. Finally, with a temporally-lagged sample of 517 employees at 11 organizations, we showed in Study 4 that vitality mediated the relationship between future self coherence and proactive career behavior. Our work advances our understanding of how people’s more or less coherent view of who they want to be influences their efforts to “become” what they imagine.

About the Speaker

Professor Karoline Strauss

Karoline Strauss is Professor in organisational behaviour at ESSEC Business School. She holds a PhD in organisational psychology from the University of Sheffield. Karoline's research interests broadly focus on individuals' relationship with the future. Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Management, the Journal of Applied Psychology, and Human Resource Management. Karoline was representative-at-large at the Academy of Management's Managerial and Organizational Cognition division and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Management, and the British Journal of Management.

Venue

• Online: via Webex
• In-person: 78 Murray Street, Level 2 Room 213

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