Career maturity and job satisfaction: the roles of job crafting and openness

Career maturity reflects an individual's readiness to make age-appropriate career decisions. Previous studies on career maturity mainly focus on specific groups and occupations, such as nurses and students, and on the career maturity that has been gradually improved by individuals due to physiological development. This paper believes that the increase of career maturity is accompanied by the whole career of individuals. Therefore, it is imperative to explore the development of career maturity from the psychological perspective in more work scenarios. Based on the Conservation of Resource Theory and the Job Demands-Resources Model, the present study explores the relationship between career maturity and job satisfaction and the underlying mechanisms involved. Analysis of two waves of time-lagged data (N = 443) showed that there was a significant positive correlation between employees' career maturity and job satisfaction; Job crafting mediated the relationship between career maturity and job satisfaction; Openness personality trait moderated both of the effect of career maturity on job crafting and the indirect effect of career maturity on job satisfaction through job crafting, such that both of the effects were stronger for employees with higher levels of openness. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.