Significant Life Events and Career Sustainability: A Three-Wave Study

Shagini Udayar, Leandro Ivan Canzio, Ieva Urbanaviciute, Jonas Masdonati and Jérôme Rossier
Additional contact information
Shagini Udayar: Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Leandro Ivan Canzio: Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research LIVES, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Ieva Urbanaviciute: Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research LIVES, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Jonas Masdonati: Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Jérôme Rossier: Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 23, 1-21

Abstract: Over the last three decades, the professional landscape has changed, and career paths have become more plural, complex, and flexible, as well as less predictable. Consequently, career sustainability has become a major concern. Since the framework of sustainable careers captures the complexities of modern careers, we used it in the present study to understand how various types of significant life events (i.e., negative work events, negative nonwork events, positive work events, and positive nonwork events) hinder or foster career sustainability among 870 professionally active adults in Switzerland using a longitudinal design. We used repeated measures analysis of variance to study changes in health (i.e., self-rated health and stress at work), happiness (i.e., life satisfaction, quality of life, and job satisfaction), and productivity (i.e., employability and career prospects) by the type of significant life events over time, from 1 year before the event (T0) to 1 year after the event (T2). Results indicated that work events are important to consider when studying career sustainability as there is evidence for spillover effects from work to life. Specifically, experiencing positive work events seems to foster career sustainability, and these effects seem to be stronger than the negative effect of negative work or nonwork life events on health, happiness, and productivity.

Keywords: career sustainability; significant life events; self-rated health; life satisfaction; quality of life; work stress; job satisfaction; employability; career prospects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/23/13129/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/23/13129/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:23:p:13129-:d:689147

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().