Jos AkkermansVrije Universiteit Amsterdam | VU · Department of Management & Organization Studies
Jos Akkermans
www.josakkermans.com
About
82
Publications
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Introduction
I am an Associate Professor of Sustainable Careers and Organizational Behavior at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. My research mainly focuses on sustainable careers, employability, career transitions, and career shocks. I am an Associate Editor for the Journal of Vocational Behavior, and part of the executive board of the Academy of Management Careers Division (currently Division Chair Elect).
Additional affiliations
January 2017 - March 2020
Position
- Professor (Associate)
Description
- I am as associate editor at the Journal of Vocational Behavior, part of the executive team of the Academy of Management Careers Division, editorial board member for EJWOP, CDI, and JCD, and program director of an MSc program in Business Administration.
October 2013 - January 2017
October 2013 - January 2017
Position
- Professor (Assistant)
Description
- I have attained my Senior University Teaching Qualification and I won the Faculty Best Teacher award in 2016. I teach HRM & OB courses to (International) Business Administration students, and I am the specialization coordinator of the HRM Master program.
Education
August 2008 - June 2013
September 2005 - July 2006
September 2002 - July 2005
Publications
Publications (82)
This study aimed to investigate whether career competencies could enhance an employee's subjective career success in terms of perceived employability and work–home balance via job crafting behaviors. Based on Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Theory, we examined a potential motivational process in which career competencies, as a personal resource, would...
This two-wave study aimed to examine future time perspective (FTP) as an antecedent of job crafting, and in turn job crafting as a mediator in associations between FTP and work outcomes. Based on the lifespan socio-emotional selectivity theory, we expected that open-ended and limited FTP would evoke different forms of job crafting, which in turn wo...
The aim of our study was to investigate the effectiveness of the CareerSKILLS program, a career development intervention based on career competencies and the JOBS methodology, which aims to stimulate career self-management and well-being of young employees. In a quasi-randomized control trial, the effects of the program were tested in a homogeneous...
A new and promising area of research has recently emerged in the field of career development: career competencies. The present article provides a framework of career competencies that integrates several perspectives from the literature (e.g., Defillippi & Arthur, 1994; Mirvis & Hall, 1994; De Vos, De Clippeleer, & Dewilde, 2009; Kuijpers, 2003). Th...
The COVID‐19 pandemic, as a major crisis event, could have changed people's career goals. We examined change trajectories in self‐transcendent versus self‐enhancement career strivings during the COVID‐19 pandemic among 662 employees from Germany with eight measurement waves across 7 months. Building on event systems theory and the literature on pro...
Purpose and approach
This article presents the case for creating stronger connections between research on graduate and worker employability. We offer a narrative review of commonalities and differences between these research streams and offer thoughts and suggestions for further integration and mutual learning.
Findings
We outline some of the main...
This article provides a critical review of developments in the literature on career success. We review work from both the organizational psychology (OP) and organizational behavior (OB) disciplines, highlighting the different perspectives, strengths, and weaknesses of each area and attempt to reconcile these perspectives on career success to sugges...
A successful school-to-work transition is crucial to an individual’s initial entry into the labor market and overall sustainable career development. Scholarly interest in how emerging adults (i.e., late teens to late 20s) can achieve a successful transition to work has grown considerably, stemming from various disciplines, such as educational scien...
This article develops a conceptual understanding of initial employability development, specifically the transition into first career destinations. Substantial previous research focuses on the role of individuals in ensuring employment readiness and continued employability development. Studies also identify the importance of employers for sustained...
This study adopts a resource perspective to investigate the development of graduates' resource-based employability across a 1-year internship. We examined factors referring to agency (job crafting in the form of crafting challenges and crafting resources) and context (organizational social socialization tactics) as mechanisms contributing to employ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a synthesis of the contingent work field and to advocate a sustainable career perspective on contingent work.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting a broader review approach allowed to synthesize the contingent work literature across contingent work types (temporary agency work, gig work and freelance...
This article adds several conceptual and theoretical reflections to the article "Career proactivity: A bibliometric literature review and a future research agenda" by Jiang et al. (2022). The authors conducted a timely and relevant study by analyzing and integrating literature on career proactivity from the domains of organizational and vocational...
This study examines the extent to which career competencies (knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to manage one's own work and learning experiences to achieve the desired career progression) are prevalent amongst early career researchers (ECRs). We adapted the Career Competencies Questionnaire (Akkermans et al., 2013). Competencies to ECRs' t...
Despite growing interest in the concept of team work engagement (TWE), relatively little is known about the conditions that allow it to emerge. Based on the literature on work engagement and team climate, this study introduces the concept of TWE climate and examines its conceptual attributes. Based on a one-and-a-half-year qualitative investigation...
This white paper (White Paper 1) sets out the framework in which we can understand careers today, namely within a context of sustainable careers. This is about dynamically managing changes within a career, with attention to growth, workability and employability in both the short and long term.
The paper is part of a series on careers, in collaborat...
Contemporary labor markets are characterized by rapidly growing numbers of solo self-employed workers who have their own businesses without employing employees. However, research on solo self-employment has almost exclusively focused on the decision to move into self-employment, thereby failing to consider the long-term career consequences of being...
Purpose
This article aims to introduce the special issue entitled “the role of career shocks in contemporary career development,” synthesize key contributions and formulate a future research agenda.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors provide an introduction of the current state-of-the-art in career shocks research, offer an overview of the ke...
The focus of this chapter
will be on young people making the transition into higher education or further training, as well as the subsequent exit from higher education into the world of work. Career guidance and counselling researchers and practitioners will present an overview
of the existing career guidance and counselling (CGC) practices in vari...
While scholars have devoted considerable attention to proactive career behaviors, little is known about the drivers behind these behaviors. In this study, we build on conservation of resources theory to study nonlinearity in the relationship between (objective and subjective) career success and career crafting behaviors (i.e., proactive career refl...
Current perspectives on career success have yet to show whether and how subjective career success evaluations may change over time and across career phases. By adopting a retrospective life-span approach to careers, our qualitative inquiry into the career experiences of 63 professionals contributes to the temporal understanding of subjective career...
The field of career studies primarily focuses on understanding people’s lifelong succession of work experiences, the structure of opportunity to work, and the relationship between careers and work and other aspects of life. Career research is conducted by scholars in a variety of disciplines, including psychology, management, and sociology. As such...
This chapter presents a bibliometric review of research methods in the field of career studies. We analyzed all empirical articles in JVB, CDI, CDQ, JCA, and JCD between 2014-2018 to draw conclusions about the main methods used in the field. We also reflect on similarities and differences between subfields and we formulate a research agenda.
Career shocks have become an increasingly important part of current careers scholarship. In this article, we focus on the role of career shocks in career choice, career development, and career adaptation by exploring interdisciplinary connections with the domains of: (1) job search, (2) human resource management, (3) entrepreneurship, and (4) diver...
School-to-work (STW) pathways and transitions are key developmental processes in young adulthood. During this time, young adults face multiple choices and challenges. Young Adult Development at the School-to-Work Transition describes pathways for students to successfully transition to the work environment. The book examines social, economic, cultur...
We investigated the moderating role of interpersonal spin in the relationships between positive affect, career decision self‐efficacy (CDSE), and career indecision among young adults (16 women, 79 men). Interpersonal spin was calculated using the diary method, wherein students reported their daily interpersonal behaviors for 14 consecutive days. Re...
Building on the integrative career competencies framework, we examined the indirect association between career competencies, assessed at graduation, and subjective career success (SCS) via employability activities, both assessed six months after graduation, among a sample of 613 Italian graduates. We also examined the moderating role of three facet...
In this chapter we have examined the STWT from a sustainable
careers perspective and argued that an adaptive STWT is crucial as
a building block for long- term sustainability of careers. We showed that the
STWT has become more challenging for young adults and we underlined
how individual agency and structural factors can interact to lay an early fo...
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to test the mediating role of relative deprivation in the relationship between perceived overqualification and counterproductive work behavior. In addition to testing this mediation, the authors posited that ambition would interact with perceived overqualification to predict relative deprivation and, through it...
An ambitious social justice programme designed to help unemployed young adults develop key psychosocial competencies for finding and sustaining employment during the school-to- work transition, Career LEAP (Local Employment Action Partnership) was developed by Carmel O’Sullivan, School of Education, Trinity College Dublin, and her research team, Je...
The covid-19 pandemic is a career shock for many people across the globe. In this article, we reflect on how insights from the literature on career shocks can help us understand the career consequences of the pandemic and offer suggestions for future research in this area. In particular, we offer three “key lessons”. The first lesson is that the im...
This study examines to what extent the four aspects of movement capital (i.e., human capital, adaptability, self-awareness, and social capital) contribute to individuals’ perceived employability. Building on the model of career mobility, we expected positive effects of all movement capital aspects on perceived employability over time. Hypotheses we...
Project managers experience unique careers that are not yet sufficiently understood, and more people than ever before are pursuing such careers. The research on project management and careers is therefore urgently needed in order to better understand the processes and systems shaping the careers of project managers. We address this gap by reviewing...
This special issue aims to contribute to further integration between the fields of project management and career studies. With this special issue introduction article, a review article, and five empirical articles, the issue contributes both to outside-in and inside-out advancement of the literature on project managers’ career paths. We sincerely h...
This paper aims to move the research field on sustainable careers forward by building conceptual clarity about what a sustainable career means and delineating what distinguishes sustainable from non-sustainable careers, thereby providing key indicators of a sustainable career. Moreover, we approach sustainable careers from a systemic and dynamic pe...
We have learned that sustainable careers involve the proactive and reactive actions of both employees and their employers. Sustainable careers thus require more than individual agency, such as building sustainable career resources through leisure activities or asking for I-deals to accommodate work-life needs. They also include responding to circum...
Individuals can proactively craft their careers by shaping both their individual jobs and the series of jobs or roles that comprise their career journeys. We illustrate how being proactive at one’s job (i.e., job crafting) may allow individuals to achieve a better job for themselves and how being competent with regard to one’s career (i.e., career...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the career shocks that young, newly graduated entrepreneurs experience in the process of starting a business.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopted a qualitative approach, drawing upon 25 semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs who recently graduated from university (up to the age of 30...
In this study, we examine employees' perceptions of their work ability from a sustainable career perspective. Specifically, we investigate the role of a person's perceived current fit (i.e., autonomy, strengths use and needs-supply fit), and future fit with their job as resources that affect perceived work ability, defined as the extent to which em...
This study investigates the relationship between perceived investments in Human Resource (HR) practices and workplace commitment, from the perspective of social exchange theory. An innovative feature is that we introduce perceived employability as a potential mediator, thus bringing in a career perspective: our argument is that perceived investment...
Despite the wealth of research showing that psychological contract breach (PCB) has negative outcomes for individuals, knowledge about the influence of the social context in which breaches are experienced is still scarce. This is surprising, as scholars have argued that work climates, such as when unit members are generally highly committed, could...
Despite the established view that investing in developing one's career competencies would lead to career success and employability, little is known about the role of career shocks (i.e., positive and negative unexpected career-related events) in this relationship. To examine the role of career shocks in the relationship between career competencies,...
The literature on psychological contract formation and evaluation is extremely rich, yet the role of social context has thus far been under researched. Studying the role of social context, however, is important as psychological contract formation, fulfillment, and breach are likely to be influenced by social contextual factors such as supervisors,...
In addition to acquiring occupation-specific knowledge and skills, students need to develop a set of career self-management skills – or resources – that helps them to successfully maneuver the various career-related challenges they face and that stimulate their well-being, engagement, and performance in studying tasks. In the current study, we appl...
In this paper, we provoke the strong focus on personal agency in employability research. We counter three dominant assumptions in the literature, namely, (a) that employability is an individual asset, (b) that employability is owned by the individual, and (c) that employability leads to positive outcomes. A key observation is that the three dominan...
Orientation: This article addresses the interplay between individual agency and contextual
factors in contemporary career development processes. In light of the prominence of the
former in the contemporary scholarly debate, we present a case for a more comprehensive approach by heeding the latter as well.
Research purpose: The main aim of this art...
Purpose
Virtually all contemporary scientific papers studying careers emphasize its changing nature. Indeed, careers have been changing during recent decades, for example becoming more complex and unpredictable. Furthermore, hallmarks of the new career – such as individual agency – are clearly increasing in importance in today’s labor market. This...
Core self-evaluations (CSE) have predictive value for important work outcomes such as job satisfaction and job performance. However, little is known about the mechanisms that may explain these relationships. The purpose of the present study is to contribute to CSE theory by proposing and subsequently providing a first test of theoretically relevant...
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to bring together job design and career theory in the
examination of how proactive employees optimize their well-being (i.e. job satisfaction and perceived
health) through job crafting and career competencies. This study offers an integrated account of the
pathway from proactive personality to well-being.
Desi...
Purpose
The aging workforce is becoming an increasingly important topic in today’s labor market. However, most scientific research and organizational policies focus on chronological age as the main determinant of successful aging. Based on life span developmental theories – primarily socioemotional selectivity theory and motivational theory of life...
In dit artikel geven we een overzicht van ons onderzoek naar het welzijn en de loop‐baanontwikkeling van jonge werknemers die de transitie naar de arbeidsmarkt gaan maken of recent gemaakt hebben. We bespreken onze bevindingen op het gebied van werkkenmerken die belangrijk zijn voor jongeren om hen goed te laten functioneren en we gaan in op de loo...
This article provides an overview of our research on the well-being and career development of young employees who are about to make, or have recently made, the transition from school to work. We discuss our findings with regard to the job characteristics that are important for enabling young adults to perform well, and with regard to the career com...
A new perspective on the work and career of young employees
A new perspective on the work and career of young employees
This article provides an overview of our research on the well-being and career development of young employees who are about to make, or have recently made, the transition from school to work. We discuss our findings with regard to...
A major work-related transition that individuals go through in the beginning of their
career is the school-to-work transition (STWT) . During this transition young individuals
face many challenges and changes in a relatively brief period of time, such
as developing a professional identity (McKee-Ryan et al. 2005 ), fi nding suitable
employment (e.g...
Employability, which is an individual’s chance of a job in the internal and/or external labor market, is crucial both for employees and employers in today’s extremely competitive business landscape. The importance of this claim was strongly reinforced by the global economic crisis and its lingering high unemployment and competition for talent. Rese...
Jonge werknemers zijn het hardst getroffen door de wereldwijde economische crisis, resulterend in een enorme jeugdwerkeloosheid. Hoe kunnen we juist deze groep stimuleren in hun loopbaanontwikkeling en hun welzijn? Dit artikel bespreekt de belangrijkste bevindingen van een promotieonderzoek op dit thema.
De wereldwijde economische recessie van de afgelopen jaren heeft grote gevolgen
gehad voor de werkgelegenheid en de loopbanen van werknemers. Vooral onder
jongeren is de werkloosheid explosief gestegen, terwijl hun kansen op de arbeidsmarkt
afgenomen zijn. Het succesvol vormgeven van werk en loopbaan tijdens
de eerste jaren van hun werkende leven i...
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify job characteristics that determine young
employees’ wellbeing, health, and performance, and to compare educational groups.
Design/methodology/approach – Using the job demands-resources (JD-R) model and 2-wave
longitudinal data (n ¼ 1,284), the paper compares employees with a lower educational level...
Middelbaar opgeleide jongeren vormen een belangrijke groep in Nederland,
maar er is weinig bekend over hun loopbaanontwikkeling en inzetbaarheid.
Dit artikel presenteert de resultaten van een interviewstudie,
bedoeld om meer inzicht te genereren ten behoeve van
ondersteuning van deze doelgroep.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to gain more insight into the well‐being, health and performance of young intermediate educated employees. First, employees with low education (9 years or less), intermediate education (10‐14 years of education), and high education (15 years or more) are compared on a number of factors related to well‐being, hea...
samenvatting Wanneer ik dit voorwoord schrijf, is de schoolvakantie net afgelopen. Vergaderingen, besprekingen en andere afspraken worden
weer gepland en vastgelegd in mijn agenda. Zo ook een vergadering voor de 21e Standby Dag, met als thema ‘Jong geleerd, Oud gedaan’. Het programma van deze dag op zaterdag 24 november is bijgevoegd bij deze
Stand...
Questions
Question (1)
I am currently testing a structural moderation model in AMOS using the orthogonalization procedure as advocated by Little et al. (2006). I am using the Big Five personality traits as moderators, and I have built five different models, i.e., one model for each Big 5 trait.
Everything is working out fine, BUT something strange is happening for one of the Big 5 traits, Neuroticism. When I run the model with 2.000 bootstraps, the estimates and SE's of neuroticism on the outcome variables are extremely high. Neuroticism was measured with a 5-point scale, but the estimates range from 24-35, and the SE's from 97-147! To make it even more confusing, the Beta values are very high, ranging from .36 to .75 (!). The normal correlations in SPSS are fine, and an SPSS regression also shows much more logical outcomes.
I have checked everything regarding the parcels, etc., and everything has been calculated correctly. So, there is nothing wrong with the actual variables and the latent factors. These high estimates and SEs are not occurring with the other Big 5 traits, only with this one. Something seems to be happening in this structural model that influences the results. I have done a quick Google search, but was unable to come up with a good explanation of what is happening heren.
Does anyone have any idea what the problem is and how I could solve this? Many thanks in advance for your responses!
