Contextual and Individual Determinants of Sustainable Careers: A Serial Indirect Effect Model through Career Crafting and Person-Career Fit

Abstract

The evolving nature of contemporary careers has sparked an interest in the sustainability of individual careers, which encompasses the pursuit of careers in a manner that promotes health, productivity, and overall happiness. Although previous studies have provided valuable perspectives on sustainable careers, there remains a notable lack of evidence regarding the interplay between individual and contextual determinants in crafting sustainable careers. Therefore, integrating the framework of sustainable careers with the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this study proposes a serial indirect effect mechanism that examines the relationship between contextual determinants (i.e., work/family demands and resources) and career sustainability indicators (i.e., work-family balance, employability, work engagement, and work strain) sequentially through career crafting and person-career fit. A two-wave time-lagged survey was conducted with 412 employees from Turkey. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to test the proposed model, while Process Macro analyses were conducted to examine the serial indirect effects. Results showed that contextual demands and resources were positively associated with career crafting and such career initiatives were related to optimized person-career fit and career sustainability indicators. Notably, contextual determinants were indirectly related to employability and work engagement serially via career crafting and person-career fit. Highlighting the importance of a whole-life perspective in career development, which involves work and family contexts, this study reveals the integral role of career proactivity and its interplay with contextual determinants in building sustainable careers.

1. Introduction

In today’s professional landscape, careers are increasingly characterized as involving intensified work tasks, adaptability to changing technology, and increased concerns for economic and social inequalities [1]. These circumstances have led to a higher vulnerability among individuals to experience burnout and insecurity in their careers as contextual demands grow and managing the current workload becomes harder, thereby jeopardizing the sustainability of individual careers [2]. Consequently, recent scholarly interest has grown in what makes individual careers sustainable or unsustainable. Initial perspectives have provided insight into key characteristics of sustainable careers, such as continuous renewal, social and economic security, flexible arrangements, sense of meaning, or interaction between different life domains (e.g., work-family) [3,4]. Hence, the concept of career sustainability evolved into a perspective that incorporates various aspects of individual careers, such as context, time, and person [5]. As conceptualized by De Vos et al. [5], a sustainable career encompasses a series of career experiences that dynamically change over time, span diverse social contexts, and are driven by individual proactivity, thereby contributing to a sense of meaning. Accordingly, they illustrate that the primary indicators of a sustainable career are evidenced through health, happiness, and productivity [5].

Recent research focusing on sustainable careers has examined the various aspects, indicators, and determinants. More specifically, prior evidence has predominantly focused on the role of work-related contextual determinants, such as perceived supervisory support or organizational practices [6,7,8]. However, relatively few studies have adopted a whole-life perspective and examined the role of non-work or family contexts in crafting sustainable careers [9,10]. Given that careers are affected by different life domains, adopting a perspective incorporating work and family contextual determinants and the harmony between these contexts can have the potential to broaden our understanding of sustainable careers [9]. Moreover, along with the contextual determinants, the recent literature has provided evidence for the individual determinants of sustainable careers, such as personality traits, career competencies, or individual strategies [11,12,13,14]. Although these studies have provided valuable insights into sustainable careers, there remains a notable lack of evidence on the role of individual career proactivity. Moreover, the existing literature has offered scant evidence regarding how the interaction between contextual characteristics and individual proactive mechanisms influences building sustainable careers. Given that a sustainable career primarily necessitates a dynamic alignment with personal values and career opportunities, a career actor’s proactivity plays a crucial role in ensuring a better person-career fit [15]. Accordingly, as a form of career proactivity, the concept of career crafting has recently gained scholarly interest [16,17], holding the potential to elucidate proactive mechanisms within sustainable careers. Career crafting broadly refers to proactive initiatives aimed at optimizing one’s career outcomes through improving person-career fit [18]. Such proactive career crafting initiatives include reflecting positive career meaning, changing relational boundaries, utilizing relational resources, or expanding task boundaries [16]. Hence, by crafting their careers, individuals can reach a better person-career fit, which broadly refers to the consistency between individuals’ career experiences and their values, aspirations, interests, and skills [18,19], thereby building more sustainable careers.

Addressing the existing gaps in the understanding of sustainable careers, we aim to investigate the interplay between contextual (i.e., work/family demands and resources) and individual determinants (i.e., career crafting, person-career fit) in building sustainable careers. To better understand contextual and individual career dynamics, we integrate the framework of sustainable careers [5] with the Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory [20]. In line with the COR theory’s main argument that individuals aim to attain, conserve, and develop resources they intrinsically value [20], the model of sustainable careers underscores the role of initiatives for gaining career resources and optimizing career demands [5]. Therefore, we argue that work/family demands and resources may harmoniously shape one’s career initiatives and outcomes. Moreover, we integrate the concepts of career crafting and person-career fit, as individual intervening mechanisms, into the theoretical model of this study. Drawing from the view that an optimized person-career fit represents an integral part of sustainable careers [5], we predict that a well-crafted person-career fit helps optimize indicators of sustainable careers. In this regard, the conceptual framework of this study conjointly involves indicators of sustainable careers for each group (i.e., health, happiness, and productivity), as suggested by De Vos et al. [5]. The study incorporates employability as a productivity indicator, work-family balance as a happiness indicator, work engagement as a psychological health indicator, and work strain as a physical health indicator of sustainable careers. Taken together, conceptualizing career crafting as an individual proactive mechanism that involves gaining career resources and optimizing demands, we propose a serial indirect effect model in which contextual work/family demands and resources relate to career crafting, and such career proactivity is associated with improved career sustainability indicators through an enhanced person-career fit. We test the proposed relationships in a serial indirect effect model by analyzing two-wave time-lagged data from a sample of 412 employees in Turkey. The conceptual model is depicted in Figure 1.

This study attempts to contribute to understanding sustainable careers in several ways. First, we investigate contextual predictors of sustainable careers from a whole-life, perspective encompassing individuals’ perceived demands and resources in work and family contexts. Adopting a perspective highlighting work and non-work domains may provide a better insight into the contextual dynamics of sustainable careers [2,9]. Moreover, by integrating the framework of sustainable careers [5] with the COR Theory [20], we attempt to explain how perceived contextual demands and resources motivate individuals to engage in proactivity to craft sustainable careers (e.g., conserving or investing in valuable career resources). Second, we examine career crafting and person-career fit as individual predictors of career sustainability indicators. Considering the lack of evidence on the relationship between sustainable careers and individuals’ career proactivity, results can enhance our understanding of the behavioral predictors of sustainable careers. Moreover, this study represents one of the first investigations into the relationship between career crafting and career sustainability indicators. In addition, although person-career fit is theorized as an integral concept for sustainable careers [5], there is a notable paucity of empirical evidence regarding person-career fit in the literature. Hence, this study can present valuable evidence for understanding the role of person-career fit. Third, we test a serial indirect effect model, which focuses on the relationship between contextual demands/resources and career sustainability indicators sequentially through career crafting and person-career fit. Such an approach may help us explore the interplay between the contextual and individual determinants of sustainable careers. Overall, this study aims to contribute to the current understanding of sustainable careers regarding contextual and individual dynamics. Finally, we discuss practical implications that may help professionals and practitioners co-build sustainable careers; we also suggest research directions for further investigations that may extend our knowledge of sustainable careers.

2. Conceptual Framework

2.1. Career Sustainability

Along with the environmental aspect of sustainability, the social aspect involving individual careers has recently gained scholarly attention [4,21]. Contextual influences such as rapidly changing technology, intensification of work, and increasing concerns for social inequalities have sparked the emergence of sustainability as a crucial concept in career research [1]. Taking into account these factors within the career context, early perspectives conceptualized sustainable careers as incorporating opportunities for renewal and continuous learning, flexible work arrangements, financial security, a balance between work and non-work contexts, a profound sense of meaning, and social justice [1,3,4,15]. Similarly, a prominent perspective suggested by De Vos et al. [5] focused on what makes careers sustainable or unsustainable and posited an extensive theoretical model of sustainable careers. They provided three key dimensions of sustainable careers: time, context, and person. First, the time dimension involves evolving career experiences over time rather than a static view. It underlines that individuals continuously attempt to meet current career needs without compromising future goals. This dimension also emphasizes conserving and gaining career resources in the career development process through a dynamic person-career fit over time. Second, the context dimension encompasses insight into how diverse stakeholders, such as family, friends, colleagues, or society, influence one’s career sustainability across the lifespan. This aspect emphasizes that individuals possess particular contextual demands and resources, which have a decisive role in their career behaviors and needs [22]. Third, the person dimension incorporates the factors of agency and meaning. In that sense, individuals are the primary actors in their careers and attempt to craft their careers’ sustainability through proactivity and adaptability. Individuals’ career development over time is a consequence of various decisions made by the actor, not the pure result of contextual factors. As individuals proactively and adaptively make career decisions in line with their values and needs, they experience more meaningful careers [22]. Consequently, career sustainability refers to “sequences of career experiences reflected through a variety of patterns of continuity over time, thereby crossing several social spaces, characterized by individual agency, herewith providing meaning to the individual” [22]. In addition, De Vos et al. [5] underscore that a dynamic person-career fit reflects the essence of sustainable careers.

Furthermore, De Vos et al.’s [5] model of sustainable careers illustrates particular indicators rather than outcomes. As such, they proposed three groups of essential indicators of sustainable careers: health, happiness, and productivity. Health indicators encompass a dynamic fit between individuals’ career demands and their physical and psychological capacities (e.g., vitality, strain, and well-being). Happiness indicators include a dynamic fit between individuals’ career expectations and their feelings of success and satisfaction. From a whole-life perspective, it involves the subjective indicators of feeling satisfied with one’s career, family, or social life. Productivity indicators incorporate a dynamic fit between individual career competencies and societal or organizational human capital expectations (e.g., role performance, employability). Overall, De Vos et al. [5] suggest that these three groups of indicators are equally important for the individual. Accordingly, the current study incorporates an indicator representing each group. The study includes work-family balance as a happiness indicator. Work-family balance broadly refers to the perception of having satisfactorily fulfilled the various demands of work and family contexts [23]. Given that the balance between different life domains may provide positive affection and a sense of happiness, it may reflect a crucial element of career sustainability over time [2]. Furthermore, the current study involves work engagement as a psychological health indicator and work strain as a physical health indicator of sustainable careers. Work engagement reflects a positive, motivational, work-related psychological state of mind represented by vigor, dedication, and absorption [24]. Work strain broadly refers to the adverse experiences (e.g., burnout) triggered by conditional work stressors (e.g., work intensification) [25]. These two indicators, representing one’s psychological and physical capacities, can portray one’s career sustainability regarding health. Lastly, the study incorporates employability as a productivity indicator for sustainable careers. Regarding individual careers, employability refers to one’s ability to identify and realize career opportunities in both internal and external markets over time [26]. Given that a sense of employability ensures career continuity over time, it represents an integral component of sustainable careers [5].

2.2. Career Crafting and Person-Career Fit

Contemporary careers have evolved into a more flexible and dynamic nature due to the greater mobility across organizations and the growth in precarious forms of employment (e.g., self-employment) [2]. These contemporary changes are illustrated by the prominent perspectives in career research, such as boundaryless and protean careers [27,28]. These perspectives emphasize that individuals need to proactively take charge of their own careers and thus sustain their career development [29,30]. Along with these perspectives, the evolving nature of contemporary careers has introduced the importance of proactive career behaviors [31]. Such career proactivity orientations involve recognizing the possible long-term consequences of present career decisions, thereby helping individuals build more sustainable careers [32,33]. As one of the proactive career initiatives, the concept of career crafting has recently gained scholarly attention [16,18]. Drawing on the Job Crafting Theory, which suggests that individuals’ relational, cognitive, and task-related proactive initiatives help them optimize person-job fit [34], career crafting refers to proactive initiatives aimed at optimizing one’s career outcomes through improving person-career fit [16,17]. Rather than other forms of proactive career initiatives, career crafting concentrates on individuals’ initiatives towards an optimized person-career fit, which refers to the extent to which individuals’ career experiences are compatible with their values, needs, interests, and competencies [17,19]. An optimized person-career fit requires an optimal and dynamic balance between continuously changing career demands (e.g., skills and knowledge) and personal orientations. In this regard, given that an individual career involving a potential incompatibility between personal orientations and career demands would be more likely to encounter unsustainable circumstances, a well-crafted person-career fit reflects the essence of sustainable career development [5].

This study adopts a measurement framework for career crafting suggested by Lee et al. [16], which emphasizes proactively gaining career resources and seeking career alternatives more congruent to personal needs and values. Focusing on the cognitive, relational, and task-related aspects of proactivity, this framework includes career initiatives such as changing relational boundaries, utilizing relational resources, reflecting positive career meaning, and expanding task boundaries [16]. To illustrate, taking initiatives like establishing and maintaining career networks that can help one’s career development (i.e., relational crafting), taking on extra work tasks or responsibilities that can help improve career competencies (i.e., task crafting), and framing a career as an integral part of creating meaning in life (i.e., cognitive crafting) reflect such proactive career crafting initiatives [16]. By integrating career crafting into the model of sustainable careers, this study conceptualizes career crafting as a proactive mechanism that individuals engage in to enhance the sustainability of their careers through an optimized person-career fit.

2.3. Contextual Determinants: Work/Family Demands and Resources

Drawing on the resource investment and conservation principles of COR Theory [20], the present study argues how the resources and demands originating from individuals’ work and family contexts motivate them to craft sustainable careers. In a broad sense, work and family demands involve one’s perceived level of effort, sense of responsibility, and attention required in work and family contexts [35,36]. Perceived work demands are generally shaped by factors such as one’s work role characteristics, workload, shift arrangements, responsibilities, or autonomy [35]. On the other hand, one’s perception regarding family demands is shaped by factors such as family role characteristics or hours spent on dependent care [35]. Although previous approaches illustrated that contextual work and family demands undermine individuals’ productive, behavioral, or health-related career outcomes in different life contexts [37,38], such contextual demands, to a certain extent, may also represent a motivational trigger for individual proactivity [39]. Likewise, Nalis et al. [40] showed that as individuals’ career demands intensified, they became more motivated to explore new career networks and reflect on their careers. In this regard, drawing on the COR Theory [20], we predict that individuals perceiving relatively more intense contextual demands may be more oriented to take proactive career initiatives, such as seeking new resources or utilizing existing resources more efficiently to deal with the increasing contextual demands. For example, people can proactively reach out for assistance from supervisors or colleagues, which can aid them in managing increasingly demanding work responsibilities. Alternatively, those more flexible work-family arrangements, thereby crafting a more sustainable career.

Furthermore, contextual resources broadly refer to the conditions or social support that are located outside the individual, such as home, spousal support, social networks, and supportive colleagues or supervisors at work [37]. The COR Theory suggests that individuals with greater resources are less vulnerable to resource loss and more capable of gaining new resources [20]. For instance, adopting the COR perspective, a recent study by Janssen et al. [41] showed that the learning value of the job represents a contextual resource for individuals and thus motivates them to engage in career crafting. Likewise, drawing on the COR theory, we propose that individuals with relatively higher work and family resources may be more likely to craft their careers and thus optimize their person-career fit. In this regard, this study includes the cross-domain contextual resources of family-supportive supervision and work-supportive family. Family-supportive supervision includes behaviors exhibited by supervisors that are supportive of individuals’ family needs, such as asking employees for suggestions to make it easier for them to balance work and family demands [42,43]. Previous studies revealed that such family-supportive supervisory behaviors help individuals optimize work-family balance, performance, health [44], and career sustainability [45]. Based on the COR Theory, a family-supportive supervisor may represent a valuable cross-domain resource for individuals, which can motivate them to engage in career crafting to shape a more sustainable career. For instance, supervisors’ supportive manner towards the employees’ childcare responsibilities may lead them to better plan their workdays, thereby reducing their stress and improving their work performance. Another cross-domain resource, work-supportive family, involves behaviors enacted by family members providing emotional and instrumental support for individuals’ work tasks or conditions, such as family members’ understanding manner towards one’s work-related problems and arranging home-related tasks when needed [46,47]. From the theoretical perspective of the COR Theory, a work-supportive family can also be a valuable cross-domain resource for individuals. Such a resource can act as a motivator, encouraging individuals to craft their careers, optimize person-career fit, and build more sustainable careers. For example, receiving emotional support from a spouse after a difficult day at work can help one optimize psychological well-being and refocus on career goals. Taken together, arguing that these contextual resources and demands may be associated with individual career crafting initiatives and person-career fit, we hypothesize as follows:

H1: 

Perceived contextual (a) work demands and (b) family demands positively relate to career crafting; they also indirectly relate to person-career fit through career crafting.

H2: 

Perceived contextual resources of (a) family-supportive supervision and (b) work-supportive family positively relate to career crafting; they also indirectly relate to person-career fit through career crafting.

2.4. Individual Determinants of Career Sustainability Indicators

One of the key aspects of the career sustainability framework is the person [5]. As the central agents in their careers, individuals are responsible for how their career develops over time [33,48]. Sustainable career development requires a dynamic alignment with personal values and career preferences over time, thereby providing a sense of meaning to the individual. Hence, sustainable careers undoubtedly involve active career proactivity, self-awareness, and self-management [15,48]. Such career proactivity encompasses balancing different domains of life (e.g., work and family), developing career skills and competencies that can enhance individual employability, or seeking career resources that can help optimize individual effectiveness and well-being [33]. Although the relationship between career proactivity and career sustainability is widely acknowledged by various theoretical analyses [5,32], there is a notable paucity of empirical research focusing on this relationship. Exceptionally, a recent study by Talluri et al. [11] found a serial indirect effect of proactive personality on career sustainability through career adaptability and proactive career behaviors. In addition, a qualitative investigation conducted by van den Groenendaal et al. [49] focused on solo self-employed workers’ career sustainability by examining career self-management strategies and contextual enablers and barriers. They found that employees pursuing proactive crafting strategies were more likely to optimize happiness and productivity indicators, even though they experienced potential trade-offs with their health [49].

Addressing the lack of insight in the literature, we aim to integrate career crafting with the framework of sustainable careers and argue that career crafting, as a form of career proactivity, can help individuals acquire and utilize career resources to fulfill career demands and personal needs, thereby improving career sustainability indicators regarding happiness (i.e., work-family balance), health (i.e., work engagement and reduced work strain), and productivity (i.e., employability). Moreover, along with its role in such career sustainability indicators, career crafting may also be setting the stage for producing sustainable career outcomes [32]. As such, career crafting reflects a proactive mechanism targeting improving career outcomes through improving person-career fit [17]. As suggested by the sustainable careers framework [5], a person-career fit shaped by proactivity plays a key role in improving career sustainability indicators. In this regard, we predict that career crafting will be related to career sustainability indicators both directly and indirectly via enhanced person-career fit. Therefore, we hypothesize as follows:

H3: 

Career crafting positively relates to career sustainability indicators of (a) work-family balance, (b) work engagement, (c) employability, and negatively relates to (d) work strain, both directly and indirectly through person-career fit.

2.5. The Serial Indirect Effect via Career Crafting and Person-Career Fit

Drawing on a perspective integrating COR theory and the framework of sustainable careers, we further propose a serial indirect effect model in which contextual work/family demands and resources relate to individual career crafting initiatives, and such career initiatives are associated with improved career sustainability indicators through an increased person-career fit. The underlying theoretical argument is that work/family demands and resources represent contextual motivators for career proactivity, which involves conserving substantial career resources and gaining new ones. Thus, engaging in such career proactivity can provide an increased fit between individual needs and career demands, which further results in optimized happiness, health, and productivity indicators for individual careers [5]. In that vein, we hypothesize as follows:

H4: 

Contextual demands indirectly relate to career sustainability indicators of (a) work-family balance, (b) work engagement, (c) employability, and (d) work strain serially via career crafting and person-career fit.

H5: 

Contextual resources indirectly relate to career sustainability indicators of (a) work-family balance, (b) work engagement, (c) employability, and (d) work strain serially via career crafting and person-career fit.

3. Method

3.1. Participants and Procedure

Adopting a quantitative research approach, we planned a two-wave time-lagged survey design to test the conceptual model. Utilizing a convenience sampling technique, we included employees from diverse organizations and sectors in the northwestern region of Turkey in this study. Participants were selected based on specific eligibility criteria, including a minimum of one year of full-time employment experience, current employment with a company, and the exclusion of individuals who were company owners or freelance workers. To conduct the survey, we first informed participants about the purpose and procedures of the research via e-mails or visiting face-to-face. To guarantee participant confidentiality and anonymity, we requested that those accepting to participate in the research to fill out the self-report questionnaires. The questionnaires were sent to the participants via hardcopy or online forms at two separate time points. Our motivation for adopting such a time-lagged survey design in this study was to diminish the potential common method biases by creating a temporal separation in measurement [50,51]. Therefore, we aimed to measure the variables that are sequentially related to each other as predictors and outcomes at different time points [50]. The two-wave data collection consisted of a two-week measurement interval, which was held in December 2022 and January 2023. At Time-1, the constructs of work and family demands, family-supportive supervision, work-supportive family, person-career fit, and demographics were measured. At Time-2, the constructs of career crafting, work-family balance, work engagement, work strain, and employability were measured. To match the individual data gathered at Time-1 and Time-2, we requested participants to indicate the last four digits of their mobile phone numbers, age, and gender in both forms. At Time-1, we gathered 507 valid forms. After two weeks, we requested that participants fill out the second form of the study and collected 412 valid forms (T1-T2 response rate: 81.1%). Therefore, the final sample consisted of 412 pairs of data for the analyses. A flowchart describing the methodological procedures followed in this study is illustrated in Figure 2. Of the 412 participants, 49.6% were female and 51.1% were married. Participants’ average age was 33.8 years (SD = 6.98), and they were between 22 and 55 years old. 51.6% of the participants did not have a child, while the rest mostly had one child (29.4%). Most participants had bachelor’s degrees (60.4%). They had career experiences ranging from one year to 32 years; the average experience was 9.8 years (SD = 6.94). Participants from a variety of sectors were included: manufacturing (13.3%), education (11.7%), automotive (11.6%), information technologies (11.4%), public services (10.4%), healthcare (10.1%), retail (9.5%), finance (9.3%), and other sectors (12.8%).

3.2. Measures

To measure the constructs, we adopted multi-item scales from the extant literature. We measured all the constructs on a five-point Likert scale. The scales for work and family demands, family-supportive supervision, work-supportive family, person-career fit, employability, work engagement, and work strain ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). The scale for career crafting ranged from (1) does not describe me at all to (5) completely describes me, and the scale for work-family balance ranged from (1) very dissatisfied to (5) very satisfied. We administered the questionnaire forms in Turkish. The authors of this study and two independent researchers performed a translation procedure adhering to the back-translation approach in cross-cultural research as proposed by Brislin [52]. The scales used in the study are as follows (see Appendix A for the complete list of original scale items used in the study):

Work and family demands. We measured perceived work and family demands by using the scale developed by Boyar et al. [35]. The scale includes five items measuring work demands and four items measuring family demands.

Family-supportive supervision. We adopted four items reflecting each dimension of perceived emotional support, instrumental support, role model, and creative work-family management from the scale developed by Hammer et al. [42].

Work-supportive family. We adopted four items from the family support inventory developed by King et al. [46]: two items representing emotional support and two items representing instrumental support from family members.

Person-career fit. We adapted the six-item person-job fit scale developed by Cable and DeRue [53] to reflect career-level fit perceptions. The scale includes two dimensions: needs-supplies fit and demands-abilities fit. The scale produced a sufficient level of internal consistency.

Career crafting. We used the Career Crafting Assessment scale developed by Lee et al. [16], which is composed of 15 items and four dimensions of career crafting: changing relational boundaries (four items), utilizing relational resources (four items), reflecting positive career meaning (four items), and expanding task boundaries (three items).

Work-family balance. We measured perceived work-family balance by using the scale developed by Valcour [23]. The scale includes five items assessing how satisfied a person is regarding their work-family balance.

Work engagement. We adopted three items representing each dimension of vigor, dedication, and absorption from the scale developed by Schaufeli et al. [24].

Work strain. To measure perceived work strain, we used a two-item scale developed by Li et al. [54].

Employability. We adopted six items from the scale developed by Rothwell & Arnold [55]: three items representing internal employability and three items representing external employability.

Control variables. Considering that age, gender, marital status, education, career experience, and the number of children may determine one’s career development initiatives, we aimed to control for these variables in further analyses.

4. Results

4.1. Construct Validity and Reliability

We evaluated the construct validity by using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) via IBM SPSS Amos 23.0. The CFA results revealed that the hypothesized second-order 10-factor measurement model fits adequately (χ² = 2076.43, df = 1324, χ²/df = 1.57, CFI = 0.94, NNFI = 0.93, SRMR = 0.047, RMSEA = 0.037). The hypothesized model included a four-dimensional career crafting construct, a two-dimensional person-career fit construct, a two-dimensional perceived employability construct, and seven unidimensional constructs. Additionally, we compared the hypothesized model with alternative models. The results indicated that the first-order 15-factor measurement model demonstrated a good fit (χ² = 1965.39, df = 1272, χ²/df = 1.54, CFI = 0.95, NNFI = 0.94, SRMR = 0.051, RMSEA = 0.062), while one-factor model indicated an overall poor fit (χ² = 8754.62, df = 1377, χ²/df = 6.36, CFI = 0.40, NNFI = 0.38, SRMR = 0.120, RMSEA = 0.114) (see

Table 1. CFA Alternative Model Results.

	χ2	df	χ2/df	Δχ2	Δdf	CFI	NNFI	SRMR	RMSEA
Ten-factor Model a	2076.43 **	1324	1.57	-	-	0.94	0.93	0.047	0.037
Fifteen-factor Model b	1965.39 **	1272	1.54	111.04	52	0.95	0.94	0.051	0.062
One-factor model	8754.62	1377	6.36	6678.18	53	0.40	0.38	0.120	0.114

Notes: N = 412. ** p < 0.01. df: degree of freedom. CFI: comparative fit index. NNFI: Non-Normed Fit Index. SRMR: standardized root mean square residual. RMSEA: root mean square error of approximation. ^a: Model includes the second-order constructs of career crafting, person-career fit, and perceived employability. ^b: Model includes all the constructs in first-order.

). Considering that both the hypothesized second-order model and the first-order model fit the data well and the statistical difference between these models is rather minor, we continued the analyses with the initial hypothesized second-order model.

To ensure convergent validity, we examined the factor loadings, AVE (average variance extracted) scores, and construct reliability scores [56]. Standardized factor loadings of items were generally above 0.70 (see Appendix A for items and factor loadings). Six items had factor loadings lower than 0.70, but they were significant and loaded higher than 0.50, and thus, were retained. The AVE scores of all variables were above the cutoff value of 0.50. Construct reliability scores for each variable were well beyond 0.70. The results indicate that the constructs in the model have convergent validity [56]. Furthermore, the results revealed that there are moderate correlations between the constructs, and the squared root of AVE scores for each construct was greater than the correlations with other constructs, which indicates that the constructs in the model have discriminant validity [57].

Table 2. Descriptive Statistics and Correlations.

	Mean	SD	CR	AVE	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
1. WD	3.88	0.71	0.86	0.55	(0.74)
2. FD	3.63	0.79	0.90	0.70	0.351 **	(0.84)
3. FSS	3.41	0.87	0.89	0.67	−0.219 **	−0.123 *	(0.82)
4. WSF	3.96	0.75	0.85	0.59	−0.026	−0.110 *	0.336 **	(0.77)
5. CC	3.92	0.46	0.95	0.56	0.138 **	0.157 **	0.378 **	0.301 **	(0.75)
6. CC-CRB	4.05	0.56	0.84	0.57	0.126 *	0.082	0.300 **	0.246 **	0.744 **	(0.75)
7. CC-URR	3.71	0.69	0.83	0.55	0.128 **	0.157 **	0.315 **	0.262 **	0.821 **	0.538 **	(0.74)
8. CC-RPM	4.04	0.58	0.80	0.51	0.101 *	0.127 **	0.194 **	0.174 **	0.748 **	0.412 **	0.457 **	(0.71)
9. CC-ETB	3.87	0.67	0.85	0.65	0.034	0.079	0.291 **	0.188 **	0.575 **	0.199 **	0.284 **	0.298 **	(0.81)
10. PCFIT	3.66	0.58	0.92	0.66	0.056	0.128 **	0.348 **	0.278 **	0.688 **	0.497 **	0.572 **	0.479 **	0.445 **	(0.81)
11. WFBAL	3.52	0.73	0.92	0.70	−0.201 **	−0.103 *	0.467 **	0.431 **	0.508 **	0.444 **	0.404 **	0.316 **	0.312 **	0.401 **
12. WENG	3.96	0.63	0.82	0.60	0.016	−0.054	0.392 **	0.248 **	0.608 **	0.423 **	0.454 **	0.462 **	0.438 **	0.500 **
13. WSTR	2.90	0.90	0.86	0.75	0.392 **	0.139 **	−0.380 **	−0.272 **	−0.266 **	−0.277 **	−0.204 **	−0.143 **	−0.151 **	−0.288 **
14. EMPL	3.71	0.61	0.88	0.55	0.025	0.050	0.337 **	0.288 **	0.479 **	0.385 **	0.360 **	0.340 **	0.310 **	0.480 **
15. Age	33.76	6.98	-	-	0.056	0.167 **	−0.041	−0.102 *	−0.072	0.018	−0.074	−0.138 **	−0.002	−0.054
16. Gender	0.50	0.50	-	-	−0.103 *	0.039	0.021	−0.023	−0.053	−0.007	−0.047	−0.072	−0.024	0.035
17. Marital	0.51	0.50	-	-	0.048	0.212 **	0.052	0.035	0.056	0.081	0.026	−0.047	0.121 *	0.066
18. Child	0.71	0.86	-	-	0.007	0.174 **	0.057	0.023	−0.008	0.033	−0.034	−0.052	0.043	0.011
19. Education	1.47	0.64	-	-	−0.108 *	−0.052	0.074	−0.044	0.063	0.009	0.076	0.114 *	−0.034	0.020
20. Experience	9.81	6.94	-	-	0.104 *	0.189 **	−0.037	−0.090	−0.035	0.020	−0.051	−0.076	0.017	−0.021

Notes: N = 412. ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05. Diagonals show the square root of AVE. CR: construct reliability. AVE: average variance extracted. CC: career crafting. CRB: changing relational boundaries. URR: utilizing relational resources. RPM: reflecting positive career meaning. ETB: extending task boundaries. WD: work demands. FD: family demands. FSS: family-supportive supervision. WSF: work-supportive family. PCFIT: person-career fit. WFBAL: work-family balance. WENG: work engagement. WSTR: work strain. EMPL: employability. Gender is coded as 0 = female, 1 = male. Marital status is coded as 0 = single, 1 = married. Education is coded as 1 = bachelor’s degree, 2 = master’s degree, 3 = doctoral degree.

demonstrates the descriptive statistics, CR and AVE scores, and correlations.

4.2. Hypothesis Tests

To test the predicted hypotheses, we performed hierarchical regression analyses via IBM SPSS. In addition, to test the indirect effects, we carried out analyses through SPSS Process Macro, which produces more robust and reliable results through a bootstrapping method [58]. We performed Process Macro’s measurement model-4 and model-6 to test the simple and serial indirect effect paths. The estimates were obtained by running 5000 bootstraps and resampling with a 95% CI. We first tested the relationships between contextual demands and resources, career crafting, and person-career fit. Results revealed that perceived work demands (β = 0.163, p < 0.01), family demands (β = 0.176, p < 0.01), family-supportive supervision (β = 0.361, p < 0.01), and work-supportive family (β = 0.200, p < 0.01) were positively related to career crafting. We also found that family demands (β = 0.164, p < 0.01) and contextual resources of family-supportive supervision (β = 0.316, p < 0.01) and work-supportive family (β = 0.189, p < 0.01) were positively related to person-career fit, while the relationship between work demands and person-career fit was insignificant (see

Table 3. Hierarchical Regression Model Results: Contextual Demands and Resources, Career Crafting, and Person-Career Fit.

Independent Variables	Dependent Variables
	Career Crafting		Person-Career Fit		Person-Career Fit
	β	t	β	t	β	t
Work Demands	0.163	3.43 **	0.078	1.58	−0.025	−0.62
Family Demands	0.176	3.72 **	0.164	3.31 **	0.052	1.30
Family-Supportive Supervision	0.361	7.67 **	0.316	6.45 **	0.087	2.10 *
Work-Supportive Family	0.200	4.32 **	0.189	3.91 **	0.062	1.58
Career Crafting					0.633	15.28 **
	R2 = 0.261		R2 = 0.197		R2 = 0.493
					ΔR2 = 0.296
	F(10; 401) = 14.184 **		F(10; 401) = 9.847 **		F(11; 400) = 35.381 **

Notes: N = 412. ** p < 0.01. * p < 0.05. Standardized coefficients (β) are shown.

).

Moreover, we tested whether an indirect relationship existed between contextual demands/resources and person-career fit through career crafting. When career crafting was included in the regression model, it was found to be positively related to person-career fit (β = 0.633, p < 0.01), and the effect sizes of contextual demands and resources decreased substantially. Results also showed that perceived work demands (b = 0.0852, CI: [0.0312, 0.1446]) and family demands (b = 0.0821, CI: [0.0370, 0.1249]) were indirectly related to person-career fit via career crafting. Therefore, H1a and H1b were supported. Furthermore, family-supportive supervision (b = 0.1530, CI: [0.1067, 0.2025]) and work-supportive family (b = 0.0991, CI: [0.0544, 0.1464]) had significant indirect effects on person-career fit via career crafting. Thus, H2a and H2b were supported.

Furthermore, we tested the relationship between career crafting and career sustainability indicators. Findings from hierarchical regression analyses revealed significant relationships between career crafting, person-career fit, and career sustainability indicators (see

Table 4. Hierarchical Regression Model Results: Career Crafting, Person-career Fit, and Career Sustainability Indicators.

Independent Variables	Dependent Variables
	Person-Career Fit		Work-Family Balance		Work Engagement		Employability		Work Strain
	β	t	β	t	β	t	β	t	β	t
Career Crafting	0.688	18.97 **	0.517	12.10 **	0.612	15.53 **	0.494	11.43 **	−0.271	−5.69 **
	R2 = 0.479		R2 = 0.278		R2 = 0.386		R2 = 0.261		R2 = 0.102
	F(7; 404) = 53.250 **		F(7; 404) = 22.277 **		F(7; 404) = 36.414 **		F(7; 404) = 20.381 **		F(7; 404) = 6.586 **
Career Crafting			0.453	7.73 **	0.501	9.34 **	0.299	5.16 **	−0.143	−2.20 *
Person-Career Fit			0.092	1.58	0.160	3.00 **	0.283	4.92 **	−0.186	−2.88 **
			R2 = 0.283		R2 = 0.400		R2 = 0.303		R2 = 0.120
			ΔR2 = 0.005		ΔR2 = 0.014		ΔR2 = 0.042		ΔR2 = 0.018
			F(8; 403) = 19.881 **		F(8; 403) = 33.621 **		F(8; 403) = 21.885 **		F(8; 403) = 6.905 **

Notes: N = 412. ** p < 0.01. * p < 0.05. Standardized coefficients (β) are shown.

). Initially, we found that career crafting was positively related to person-career fit (β = 0.688, p < 0.01), work-family balance (β = 0.517, p < 0.01), work engagement (β = 0.612, p < 0.01), employability (β = 0.494, p < 0.01), and negatively related to work strain (β = −0.271, p < 0.01). In addition, results showed that career crafting had a positive indirect effect on work engagement (b = 0.1520, CI: [0.0575, 0.2520]), employability (b = 0.2624, CI: [0.1564, 0.3788]), and a negative indirect effect on work strain (b = −0.2525, CI: [−0.4445, −0.0826]) via person-career fit. Therefore, H3b, H3c, and H3d were supported. Although analyses revealed a significant direct effect of career crafting on work-family balance, there was no significant indirect effect of career crafting on work-family balance through person-career fit. Thus, H3a was partially supported.

Additionally, by performing three-step hierarchical regression analyses, we tested the relationship between contextual demand/resources and career sustainability indicators (i.e., work-family balance, work engagement, employability, and work strain). We also included career crafting and person-career fit sequentially in each step, thereby examining any potential change in the model’s explained variance. First, hierarchical regression analysis results regarding the work-family balance model demonstrated that the contextual resources of family-supportive supervision (β = 0.332, p < 0.01) and work-supportive family (β = 0.320, p < 0.01) were positively related to work-family balance. As for contextual demands, results revealed that work demands (β = −0.121, p < 0.01) were negatively related to work-family balance, while family demands were found to be insignificant. When career crafting was included in the second step of the analysis, it was found to be positively related to work-family balance (β = 0.417, p < 0.01) and increased the explained variance substantially (ΔR² = 0.129). In the third step of the analysis, the person-career fit was included in the model. Results did not yield a significant relationship between work-family balance and person-career fit (see

Table 5. Hierarchical Regression Model Results: Work-Family Balance.

Independent Variables	Dependent Variable
	Work-Family Balance		Work-Family Balance		Work-Family Balance
	β	t	β	t	β	t
Work Demands	−0.121	−2.66 **	−0.189	−4.55 **	−0.189	−4.53 **
Family Demands	0.003	0.08	−0.070	−1.68	−0.071	−1.70
Family-Supportive Supervision	0.332	7.40 **	0.182	4.19 **	0.180	4.12 **
Work-Supportive Family	0.320	7.23 **	0.237	5.80 **	0.235	5.74 **
Career Crafting			0.417	9.70 **	0.403	7.44 **
Person-Career Fit					0.022	0.43
	R2 = 0.324		R2 = 0.453		R2 = 0.453
			ΔR2 = 0.129		ΔR2 = 0.000
	F(10; 401) = 19.286 **		F(11; 400) = 30.180 **		F(12; 399) = 27.625 **

Notes: N = 412. ** p < 0.01. Standardized coefficients (β) are shown.

).

Second, findings from the hierarchical regression analysis pertaining to the work engagement model indicated that the contextual resources of family-supportive supervision (β = 0.362, p < 0.01) and work-supportive family (β = 0.131, p < 0.01) were positively related to work engagement. Additionally, results showed that work demands (β = 0.111, p < 0.05) were positively related to work engagement, while family demands were found to be insignificant. In the second step of the analysis, when career crafting was involved, it was found to be positively related to work engagement (β = 0.571, p < 0.01) and increased the explained variance substantially (ΔR² = 0.242). In the third step of the analysis, the person-career fit was involved in the model. Although person-career fit was found to be positively related to work engagement (β = 0.142, p < 0.01), the explained variance did not change largely (ΔR² = 0.010) (see

Table 6. Hierarchical Regression Model Results: Work Engagement.

Independent Variables	Dependent Variable
	Work Engagement		Work Engagement		Work Engagement
	β	t	β	t	β	t
Work Demands	0.111	2.23 *	0.017	0.41	0.020	0.49
Family Demands	−0.056	−1.14	−0.157	−3.74 **	−0.165	−3.94 **
Family-Supportive Supervision	0.362	7.38 **	0.155	3.53 **	0.143	3.26 **
Work-Supportive Family	0.131	2.71 **	0.016	0.39	0.007	0.18
Career Crafting			0.571	13.11 **	0.481	8.84 **
Person-Career Fit					0.142	2.72 **
	R2 = 0.196		R2 = 0.438		R2 = 0.448
			ΔR2 = 0.242		ΔR2 = 0.010
	F(10; 401) = 9.815 **		F(11; 400) = 28.369 **		F(12; 399) = 27.044 **

Notes: N = 412. ** p < 0.01. * p < 0.05. Standardized coefficients (β) are shown.

).

Third, hierarchical regression analysis results regarding the employability model displayed that the contextual resources of family-supportive supervision (β = 0.300, p < 0.01) and work-supportive family (β = 0.207, p < 0.01) were positively related to employability. However, findings revealed that the relationships between contextual demands and employability were insignificant. In the second step of the analysis, when career crafting was included, it was found to be positively related to employability (β = 0.401, p < 0.01) and largely increased the explained variance (ΔR² = 0.120). When person-career fit was included in the model in the third step of the analysis, it was found to be positively related to employability (β = 0.247, p < 0.01) and relatively increased the explained variance (ΔR² = 0.031) (see

Table 7. Hierarchical Regression Model Results: Employability.

Independent Variables	Dependent Variable
	Employability		Employability		Employability
	β	t	β	t	β	t
Work Demands	0.050	1.02	−0.014	−0.31	−0.008	−0.18
Family Demands	0.069	1.40	−0.001	−0.32	−0.014	−0.31
Family-Supportive Supervision	0.300	6.08 **	0.155	3.18 **	0.133	2.77 **
Work-Supportive Family	0.207	4.27 **	0.127	2.76 **	0.111	2.47 *
Career Crafting			0.401	8.28 **	0.244	4.10 **
Person-Career Fit					0.247	4.31 **
	R2 = 0.186		R2 = 0.306		R2 = 0.337
			ΔR2 = 0.120		ΔR2 = 0.031
	F(10; 401) = 9.220 **		F(11; 400) = 16.035 **		F(12; 399) = 16.902 **

Notes: N = 412. ** p < 0.01. * p < 0.05. Standardized coefficients (β) are shown.

).

Fourth, findings from the hierarchical regression analysis pertaining to the work strain model demonstrated that the contextual resources of family-supportive supervision (β = −0.241, p < 0.01) and work-supportive family (β = −0.199, p < 0.01) were negatively related to work strain. Additionally, results revealed that work demands (β = 0.340, p < 0.05) were positively related to work strain, while family demands were found to be insignificant. When career crafting was included in the second step of the analysis, it was found to be negatively related to work strain (β = −0.225, p < 0.01) and partially increased the explained variance (ΔR² = 0.038). In the third step of the analysis, the person-career fit was included in the model. Results indicated that person-career fit was negatively related to work strain (β = −0.120, p < 0.05), and the explained variance did not change considerably (ΔR² = 0.007) (see

Table 8. Hierarchical Regression Model Results: Work Strain.

Independent Variables	Dependent Variable
	Work Strain		Work Strain		Work Strain
	β	t	β	t	β	t
Work Demands	0.340	7.35 **	0.377	8.25 **	0.374	8.21 **
Family Demands	−0.002	−0.05	0.037	0.81	0.043	0.95
Family-Supportive Supervision	−0.241	−5.27 **	−0.160	−3.35 **	−0.149	−3.12 **
Work-Supportive Family	−0.199	−4.43 **	−0.154	−3.44 **	−0.147	−3.28 **
Career Crafting			−0.225	−4.76 **	−0.149	−2.51 *
Person-Career Fit					−0.120	−2.11 *
	R2 = 0.302		R2 = 0.340		R2 = 0.347
			ΔR2 = 0.038		ΔR2 = 0.007
	F(10; 401) = 17.409 **		F(11; 400) = 18.747 **		F(12; 399) = 17.708 **

Notes: N = 412. ** p < 0.01. * p < 0.05. Standardized coefficients (β) are shown.

).

Moreover, we performed Process Macro analyses to test the serial indirect effect model between contextual demands and career sustainability indicators through career crafting and person-career fit. Results revealed that work/family demands and work-family balance were not serially linked through career crafting and person-career fit. Hence, H4a was not supported. Rather, we found that both work demands (b = 0.0705, CI: [0.0254, 0.1185]) and family demands (b = 0.0679, CI: [0.0313, 0.1069]) were indirectly related to work-family balance via career crafting. Findings also showed that work/family demands and work engagement were serially linked through career crafting and person-career fit. We found that work demands were both directly (β = 0.111, p < 0.05) and indirectly (b = 0.0131, CI: [0.0025, 0.0278]) related to work engagement. Although family demand was not directly related to work engagement, it was indirectly related to work engagement (b = 0.0126, CI: [0.0029, 0.0254]). Hence, H4b was supported. We also found that work/family demands and employability were serially linked via career crafting and person-career fit. Although work and family demands were not directly related to employability, both work demands (b = 0.0222, CI: [0.0064, 0.0442]) and family demands (b = 0.0214, CI: [0.0079, 0.0375]) were indirectly related to employability. Therefore, H4c was supported. In addition, although the results demonstrated that work/family demands had marginally significant indirect effects on work strain, the confidence intervals were too close to the acceptable threshold, and the t-values did not reach a p < 0.05 significance level. Therefore, H4d was not supported. However, results revealed significant indirect effects of work demands (b = −0.0467, CI: [−0.0910, −0.0138]) and family demands (b = −0.0450, CI: [−0.0823, −0.0169]) on work strain through career crafting.

Furthermore, we tested the serial indirect effect model between contextual resources and career sustainability indicators through career crafting and person-career fit. Findings displayed that although the contextual resources of family-supportive supervision (β = 0.332, p < 0.01) and work-supportive family (β = 0.320, p < 0.01) were positively and directly related to work-family balance, a serial indirect effect model was not significant in this relationship. Hence, H5a was not supported. Rather, we found that both family-supportive supervision (b = 0.1265, CI: [0.0852, 0.1705]) and work-supportive family (b = 0.0819, CI: [0.0426, 0.1251]) had indirect effects on work-family balance via career crafting. Results also revealed that contextual resources and work engagement were serially linked via career crafting and person-career fit. We found that family-supportive supervision was both directly (β = 0.362, p < 0.01) and indirectly (b = 0.0235, CI: [0.0074, 0.0428]) related to work engagement. Similarly, the work-supportive family was both directly (β = 0.131, p < 0.01) and indirectly (b = 0.0152, CI: [0.0042, 0.0285]) related to work engagement. Thus, H5b was supported. Moreover, we found that contextual resources and employability were serially linked via career crafting and person-career fit. Family-supportive supervision was both directly (β = 0.300, p < 0.01) and indirectly (b = 0.0398, CI: [0.0193, 0.0653]) related to employability. Furthermore, the work-supportive family was both directly (β = 0.207, p < 0.01) and indirectly (b = 0.0258, CI: [0.0102, 0.0460]) related to employability. Therefore, H5c was supported. Finally, even though the findings demonstrated that contextual resources also had marginally significant indirect effects on work strain, the confidence intervals were too close to the acceptable threshold, and the t-values did not reach a p < 0.05 significance level. Therefore, H5d was not supported. However, findings displayed significant indirect effects of family-supportive supervision (b = −0.0838, CI: [−0.1333, −0.0387]) and work-supportive family (b = −0.0542, CI: [−0.0910, −0.0229]) on work strain through career crafting.

Table 9. Indirect Effects.

	Indirect Effect
Hypothesis/Indirect Path	Effect (b)	SE	LLCI	ULCI	t
H1a: Work Demands→CC→PCF	0.0852	0.0286	0.0312	0.1446	2.98 **
H1b: Family Demands→CC→PCF	0.0821	0.0228	0.0370	0.1249	3.60 **
H2a: Family-Supportive Supervision→CC→PCF	0.1530	0.0237	0.1067	0.2025	6.45 **
H2b: Work-Supportive Family→CC→PCF	0.0991	0.0233	0.0544	0.1464	4.25 **
H3a: CC→PCF→Work-Family Balance	0.1023	0.0631	−0.0172	0.2310	1.62
H3b: CC→PCF→Work Engagement	0.1520	0.0492	0.0575	0.2520	3.09 **
H3c: CC→PCF→Employability	0.2624	0.0568	0.1564	0.3788	4.62 **
H3d: CC→PCF→Work Strain	−0.2525	0.0916	−0.4445	−0.0826	−2.75 **
H4a: Work Demands→CC→PCF→Work-Family Balance	0.0024	0.0060	−0.0082	0.0159	0.40
H4a: Family Demands→CC→PCF→Work-Family Balance	0.0023	0.0056	−0.0083	0.0139	0.41
H4b: Work Demands→CC→PCF→Work Engagement	0.0131	0.0065	0.0025	0.0278	2.01 *
H4b: Family Demands→CC→PCF→Work Engagement	0.0126	0.0057	0.0029	0.0254	2.21 *
H4c: Work Demands→CC→PCF→Employability	0.0222	0.0098	0.0064	0.0442	2.26 *
H4c: Family Demands→CC→PCF→Employability	0.0214	0.0076	0.0079	0.0375	2.81 **
H4d: Work Demands→CC→PCF→Work Strain	−0.0158	0.0105	−0.0404	−0.0003	−1.50
H4d: Family Demands→CC→PCF→Work Strain	−0.0152	0.0090	−0.0356	−0.0001	−1.69
H5a: Family-Supportive S.→CC→PCF→Work-Family Balance	0.0044	0.0101	−0.0148	0.0255	0.43
H5a: Work-Supportive Family→CC→PCF→Work-Family Balance	0.0028	0.0067	−0.0101	0.0166	0.41
H5b: Family-Supportive S.→CC→PCF→Work Engagement	0.0235	0.0091	0.0074	0.0428	2.58 **
H5b: Work-Supportive Family→CC→PCF→Work Engagement	0.0152	0.0062	0.0042	0.0285	2.45 *
H5c: Family-Supportive S.→CC→PCF→Employability	0.0398	0.0117	0.0193	0.0653	3.40 **
H5c: Work-Supportive Family→CC→PCF→Employability	0.0258	0.0092	0.0102	0.0460	2.80 **
H5d: Family-Supportive S.→CC→PCF→Work Strain	−0.0283	0.0154	−0.0612	−0.0005	−1.84
H5d: Work-Supportive Family→CC→PCF→Work Strain	−0.0183	0.0104	−0.0421	−0.0007	−1.76

Notes. N = 412. ** p < 0.01. * p < 0.05. Unstandardized and bootstrapped results are shown (b). CC: career crafting. PCF: person-career fit. LLCI: Lower-level confidence interval, ULCI: Upper-level confidence interval, SE: Standard error.

shows the results regarding the indirect effect paths.

5. Discussion

5.1. Theoretical Implications

This study contributes to the understanding of sustainable careers in several ways. First, adopting a whole-life perspective involving work and family domains, we attempted to extend our knowledge of the context aspect of sustainable careers [9,10]. The results broadly showed that contextual demands and resources motivate individuals to craft sustainable careers. In line with the main argument of the COR theory that individuals with greater resources are more motivated to gain new resources and less vulnerable to potential resource losses [20], results indicated that individuals perceiving higher resources in the work and family contexts (e.g., family-supportive supervision, work-supportive family) were more likely to engage in career crafting and thus enhance their person-career fit. To illustrate, a supervisor’s understanding approach towards the employees’ dependent care responsibilities, such as planning more flexible shifts for them, may support employees in better utilizing relational resources, thereby reaching an enhanced and sustainable person-career fit. Moreover, although prior perspectives suggested that higher contextual demands undermine individual health, productivity, and behavioral outcomes in different life contexts [37,38], we proposed that contextual demands, to some degree, might also reflect a motivational trigger for proactive behaviors [39]. Accordingly, results demonstrated that individuals with higher work and family demands were more likely to engage in career crafting and hence improve their person-career fit. For instance, employees can proactively seek support from colleagues or supervisors, which can help them deal with demanding work responsibilities. Thus, they can craft their relational resources at work and reach a better person-career fit. Or, employees possessing demanding family responsibilities, such as eldercare or childcare, may proactively search for different job opportunities that can involve flexible work-family arrangements, thereby crafting an optimized person-career fit in a sustainable way. These findings provide support for prior research that examined the role of contextual factors on career crafting [40,41] and career sustainability [6,8,10,59], and further contribute to the understanding that work and family-related demands and resources are among the key determinants of individual initiatives for crafting sustainable careers.

Second, considering the paucity of empirical evidence for the role of individual career proactivity in sustainable careers, we investigated career crafting and person-career fit as individual predictors of career sustainability indicators. Results generally demonstrated that career crafting was related to career sustainability indicators directly and indirectly through person-career fit. This result could be attributed to the argument that career crafting reflects a proactive mechanism, which involves acquiring and utilizing career resources to cope with career demands, thereby enhancing one’s career sustainability in terms of health, happiness, and productivity indicators. Moreover, such career crafting initiatives might pave the way for enhanced sustainable career indicators by optimizing the person-career fit. These findings provide substantial support for the conceptual premises of sustainable careers that career proactivity helps individuals enhance person-career fit, balance different life domains, increase employability via developing career competencies, and optimize health and effectiveness [5,15,32]. Consistent with the present results, previous studies have demonstrated that proactive career initiatives and career self-management strategies help enhance career sustainability [11,49]. Providing support for theoretical premises and empirical evidence in the literature, this study also represents one of the pioneering investigations on the relationship between career crafting, person-career fit, and career sustainability. In addition, given the limited attention to person-career fit in the literature, this study can provide a valuable contribution to understanding the concept.

Third, we examined a serial indirect effect model between contextual demands/resources and career sustainability indicators. To explain this relationship, we sequentially included the individual determinants of career crafting and person-career fit. Results showed that work/family demands and resources were related to career crafting, and such proactive career initiatives were associated with enhanced employability and work engagement through an increased person-career fit. Although results did not show a significant serial indirect effect model between contextual determinants and career sustainability indicators of work-family balance and work strain, contextual predictors were significantly related to all four career sustainability indicators via career crafting. These findings might confirm the view that contextually triggered career proactivity can produce optimized health, happiness, and productivity indicators for individual careers. Moreover, these results empirically support theoretical propositions of a sustainable careers framework that suggest contextual and individual predictors shape career sustainability indicators via a sense of person-career fit [5]. Taken together, the present findings might also help us gain better insights into the interplay between the contextual and individual determinants of sustainable careers.

5.2. Practical Implications

The study has several practical implications for both organizations and working professionals regarding sustainable career development. First, current findings draw attention to the whole-life perspective and context aspects of sustainable career development. As such, results illustrate how cross-domain resources (i.e., family-supportive supervision, work-supportive family) motivate individuals to craft sustainable careers. These work and family resources help individuals take initiatives for balancing work and family, improving their employability and work engagement, and reducing work-related strain [59]. In this regard, we suggest that organizations might develop family-supportive practices and policies to ensure a healthy, engaged, and productive workforce [1]. Such family-supportive practices might encompass flexible arrangements (e.g., flextime, part-time) or dependent care support (e.g., on-site or subsidized childcare support, eldercare support, paid maternity and paternity leave) [60]. Building a workplace culture that values the balance between work and family contexts might reflect one of the key initiatives for a sustainable workforce [1,61]. More specifically, organizational practitioners may assist employees in understanding how their career goals can affect their family lives and help them develop strategies to achieve both work and family goals effectively by utilizing available resources and overcoming potential barriers [9]. Such organizational initiatives may produce customized solutions for individual careers that can foster sustainable career development.

Second, the present findings call attention to the role of individual career proactivity and person-career fit in building sustainable careers. In this regard, results demonstrate how career crafting initiatives help optimize person-career fit, work-family balance, employability, work engagement, and reduce work strain. Hence, we suggest that professionals could proactively craft their careers by seeking and utilizing relational resources (e.g., supervisor or spouse support), integrating career experiences with life aspirations to reflect a positive career meaning, or diversifying tasks and responsibilities that contribute to career goals [16,18,59]. By crafting their careers, professionals can better optimize the sense of person-career fit, which results in enhanced individual health, happiness, and productivity in a sustainable way [15]. In addition, organizational policies and practices could be integrated with individual proactive career initiatives to ensure more sustainable career development for employees and enhanced performance outcomes for organizations [1]. In this sense, organizations might support individual initiatives by providing career crafting training or intervention programs that illuminate how employees proactively optimize their person-career fit, thereby building more sustainable careers [62]. For example, such training programs may involve discussing proactive strategies about how one can reach career goals by crafting relational boundaries (e.g., exercising proactive networking), crafting task boundaries (e.g., developing a set of career skills and competencies), or crafting a personally meaningful career. In addition, for organizations to comprehensively support sustainable careers, it is essential to empower employees to clarify their sustainability goals and motivate them to ask for customized career arrangements (e.g., flexible work or sabbaticals) [48]. Such an organizational approach may help employees build self-awareness in their career trajectories and enable them to collaboratively construct meaning in their careers, thus crafting more sustainable careers [48].

5.3. Limitations and Future Research

The study has several limitations that might illuminate potential avenues for future research. First, we collected two-wave time-lagged data by using self-report questionnaires. Although adopting temporal separation methodology diminishes the potential risk of common method bias [50], the findings cannot yield causal inferences. Future research may collect longitudinal data with multiple time points that can allow for testing the causal links through indirect paths.

Second, the self-report survey design used in this study represents another limitation regarding common method bias [50,51]. Despite the widespread preference for self-report evaluation in career research, there is a potential drawback in terms of the accuracy of respondent assessments. Therefore, future studies may opt for a data collection strategy involving responses from various sources like family members, colleagues, or supervisors, thereby minimizing measurement biases [50,51].

Third, the study adopts an individual-level approach to understanding sustainable careers. Further investigations may focus on how individual initiatives can be integrated with societal and organizational policies and practices; thus, contextual barriers and facilitators for sustainable careers can be better enlightened [1,49]. Furthermore, considering the transformative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals’ career sustainability experiences, initiatives, and accessibility, there is an exciting opportunity for future research to illuminate these dynamics through comprehensive, in-depth interviews [48,59]. Moreover, while integrating COR theory with sustainable careers, it is important to consider the trade-offs between personal, professional, and societal goals in the pursuit of sustainable careers and their implications for individuals and organizations. Hence, future research could explore further the obstacles and compromises individuals encounter, offering a more detailed comprehension of the intricacies involved in fostering sustainable career development. Additionally, considering job crafting as a proactive strategy linked to improved individual well-being and productivity indicators [63,64], future research could also investigate the combined effects of crafting initiatives at both job and career levels on the sustainability of individuals’ careers [65].

Fourth, the sample analyzed in this study involves employees working in various organizations and sectors in a developing country. Given that contemporary careers have evolved into a more dynamic nature due to sophisticated technologies, changing career orientations, competitive business environments, and economic circumstances [2], further investigations might provide a more extensive view by comparatively analyzing the individual career-crafting initiatives and experiences over multiple samples from diverse contexts (e.g., different professions, career paths, industries, or economic development profiles). It is also important to acknowledge the role of ethical aspects related to power dynamics, resource allocation, and social justice in examining sustainable careers from the COR perspective. Future research could involve such ethical considerations to provide more comprehensive implications regarding the impact of the COR perspective on the perpetuation or mitigation of existing inequalities in career sustainability.

Fifth, the current study adopts the sustainable careers framework suggested by De Vos et al. [5] and contains health, happiness, and productivity indicators to assess career sustainability. Although this study used a specific set of indicators representing each group of main indicators, there are other indicators of sustainable careers, such as career success, satisfaction, performance, or stress [5]. Accordingly, future research might consider examining such indicators that can reflect sustainable career experiences. Finally, although we examined a linear relationship between contextual demands and career crafting, this relationship may also show a curvilinear profile such that moderate (i.e., optimized) demands may be more likely to trigger career crafting rather than lower or higher demands. Hence, examining such a curvilinear relationship may be a potential avenue for further research.

6. Conclusions

Considering the growing interest in what makes contemporary careers sustainable, we aimed to provide a better insight into the contextual and individual determinants of sustainable careers. Our conceptual perspective integrated the COR Theory with the framework of sustainable careers and attempted to shed new light on understanding the interplay between contextual (i.e., work/family demands and resources) and individual (i.e., career crafting and person-career fit) dynamics of sustainable careers. We proposed a serial indirect effect model, which explores the relationship between contextual determinants and career sustainability indicators sequentially through career crafting and person-career fit. The findings broadly demonstrated that contextual demands and resources were positively related to career crafting initiatives and such career initiatives were positively linked to optimized person-career fit and career sustainability indicators. Notably, results revealed that contextual determinants were indirectly related to the career sustainability indicators of work engagement and employability serially via career crafting and person-career fit. In conclusion, the study might provide an exciting opportunity to advance our knowledge of the interplay between the contextual and individual determinants of sustainable careers.