Career calling across cultures, contexts, and time: new answers to “old” questions

Perceiving work as a calling has been shown to be a way to gain greater well-being, satisfaction, and health at work. Career calling can be broadly understood as a purposeful, meaningful, and passion-driven engagement in a career that one feels drawn to pursue and that contributes to a greater good. Despite the promising increase in the study of career calling, the understanding of the generalizability of the concept to different cultures and its development over time are still limited and raise issues for the theoretical development of the field and the applicability of results to organizational contexts. First, the lack of a systemic analysis of the meaning and equivalence of calling across cultures limits the generalizability of theory and practice to research with culturally diverse workers. Second, the limited knowledge about organizational and social predictors of calling limits the development of interventions to promote its development at work. Finally, the absence of knowledge on the dynamic nature of calling prevents the understanding of how calling can be maintained and developed every day. To address these questions, the symposium brings together four empirical contributions to share new and original insights. The first presentation, by Vianello et al., will discuss cross-cultural differences in the conceptualization of calling. Using samples from India, Turkey, China, Italy, the United States, and The Netherlands, they observed that the concept of calling may be universal in its structure and, surprisingly, that the level of calling is higher in non-western countries. Next, Gerdel et al. will focus on predictors of calling and specifically on the role of leader’s calling in promoting follower’s calling through perceived supervisor support and leader-member exchange. The preliminary results supported the partial mediation of perceived supervisor support and leader-member exchange in a trickle-down effect from perceived leader’s calling to follower’s calling. This study, which will be enriched by longitudinal data at the time of the conference, addresses the need in the literature for more studies that investigate predictors of calling at the social and organizational levels. The third and fourth contributions will explore calling as a dynamic phenomenon. The third contribution by Conway and Clinton will focus on career calling enactment and consequences in everyday life using two daily diary studies. The results showed that the intensity of calling positively influences the level of engagement in daily activities and influences the report of positive and negative events, which in turn affect daily wellbeing and motivation. For the first time, evidence will be provided that calling affects behaviors and perceptions on a daily basis, highlighting the need for more research that investigates the dynamic of calling with an even-base perspective. The fourth contribution by Schleithoff and Uslu will present the results of a mixed method study including qualitative semi-structured interviews and a quantitative diary study. The findings revealed that people dynamically change their orientation from perceiving work as a calling or a career and that the way people approach their calling, in terms of identification and purpose, affect the daily stability and resilience of their calling orientation. The presentations will be followed by a discussion led by Prof. Lysova, a leading researcher in the field, who will provide comments on each presentation, as well as recommendations for future research on calling. The symposium aligns with the goal of the congress by focusing on the future of work as more equal, diverse, and inclusive. Understanding how people approach work and how a meaningful and healthy approach to work as a calling can be developed will be critical to creating more decent, healthy and sustainable careers for everyone in the future. The symposium has both theoretical and practical implications. All presentations address relevant and under investigated open questions about career calling. Contributors will provide valuable insights for practitioners by giving advice on how workers from different cultural contexts interpret career calling, and on how calling can be promoted and influence people in the workplace. In conclusion, the symposium will present results that support the generalizability of research and theory on calling across different cultures, identify predictors of calling at the organizational and social levels, and suggest that calling is a dynamic phenomenon that changes and influences daily work experience. The symposium is of interest to both academics and practitioners.