Introduction - In the era of boundaryless career, employees are facing increasing uncertainties and challenges to pursue career success. Thus, it is becoming more important for individuals to develop a clear future work self and to take proactive action as well.
Purpose: Integrating the conservation of resource (COR) theory and the perspective of proactive behavior, this study is to investigate the positive effect of future work self salience on career success in boundaryless careers, as well as the mediating mechanism of proactive career behavior and the moderating effect of performance feedback.
Method - We conducted a three-wave longitudinal study, and collected multi-source data from 339 employees in a Chinese company.
Results - The results showed that a future work self salience was positively related to both employees' promotability (objective career success) and career satisfaction (subjective career success), and proactive career behavior played a significant mediating role. Furthermore, performance feedback was found to act as a significant moderating role among the above-mentioned mediating process, demonstrating a moderated mediating model. That is, in the context of sufficient performance feedback, future work self salience could promote employees' career success through taking more proactive career behaviors.
Conclusion - Our findings revealed how and when future work self salience is related to career success, which offers theoretical implications for understanding career success in the era of boundaryless career time findings also has practical implications for human resource managers and employees to achieve more effective career management and career success.