How Employability Attributes Mediate the Link Between Knowledge Workers' Career Adaptation Concerns and Their Self-Perceived Employability

The study examines employability attributes as psychological mechanisms that explain the link between the career adaptation concerns and self-perceived employability of a sample of professionally qualified knowledge workers (N = 404). A cross-sectional survey was used to collect primary data. Results of a mediation analysis by means of structural equation modeling show that proactivity, career resilience, and career self-management attributes are significant intrinsic motivational mechanisms in explaining the link between high career adaptation concerns and high self-perceived employability. The study makes an important contribution to the employability literature by illustrating by means of self-determination theory the role of employability attributes as psychological processes that restore individuals' sense of autonomous functioning as expressed by their self-perceived employability. The findings advance human resource management's understanding of the role of employability attributes as mechanisms of fulfilling knowledge workers' need for competence and autonomy in the career adaptation concerns-perceived employability link. Practice implications include supportive career development practices that strengthen knowledge workers' sense of competence and autonomy when confronted with changes in job and employment conditions that affect their perceived employability.