ANTECEDENTS OF WORK CENTRALITY AMONG EARLY CAREER EMPLOYEES

Abstract

The study aimed to test model on antecedents of work centrality among early career employees. Previous models have linked work centrality with demographical or personal variables and to its outcome variables. Still their findings limit implications for work place counselors. This study has considered job related antecedents of work centrality among early career employees working in public and private sector of Islamabad including self-efficacy, work events, job involvement and work motivation. The variables were assessed by using scales on work centrality (Paullay, Alliger & Stone-Romero, 1994), work motivation (Gagne, et.al, 2008), general self-efficacy (Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1995) and work event (Sharabi & Harpaz, 2010). The data was collected from 400 early career employees working in public and private social service sector that includes hospitals, universities, defense sector and non-governmental organizations in Islamabad by using convenient sampling technique. Linear regression analysis, t-test and multiple regression analysis were used with the help of SPSS. Findings have shown that job involvement and work motivation influence work centrality but self-efficacy has no significant influence on work centrality of early career employees. But there is no significant influence of working events on work centrality of early career employees. However, expressive work events such as inter-personal relationship, interest and variety in work, and responsibility are found to be related. Exploratory analysis shows that there is no significant difference in the effect of sector wise on work centrality for private and public sector employees. Furthermore, there is no significant difference between genders, with respect to their work centrality as well. Results showed the influence of job-related variables on work centrality with respect to different social sectors including defense, health, educational and NGOs in Islamabad. In all four sectors including health, defense, education and NGOs, work motivation has a greater contribution in influencing work centrality. Work motivation is one of the strongest predictor in defense sector, educational sector and in NGOs. However, in all four sectors, doctor’s selfefficacy has more influence on employees work centrality. The findings also show that there is no significant difference between the two age groups including 25-30 and 30-35. Findings provide implications to work place counselors and Human resource to improve work centrality by taking concrete steps to improve certain aspects of expressive work events along with job involvement and work motivation.