Career plateau research is heavily focused on the private sector at the management level. There are few studies which examine career plateau in the public sector and no studies of career plateau in the Canadian core public sector. This qualitative research study is the first career plateau study focused on the core public sector in Canada. The systematic review study includes a map of the career plateau research and completed a synthesis analysis to provide new insights into career plateau. The second study involved an initial 67 participants with further data being gathered from focused interviews of 48 participants who were classified as career plateaued. Echo sorting and content analysis of the resulting data was completed to explore the perceived causes of career plateau; identify the affective impacts of career plateau on public servants; examine the behavioural responses of public servants to being career plateaued; and identify organizational implications. The study results indicate that public servants perceive the causes and affective impacts of career plateau generally consistent with existing research findings while some of the perceived causes categories may possibly be unique to the public service setting. However, public servants may respond to career plateau in two unique ways involving public service value responses and responses based on public sector organizational characteristics. Given that this is the first study to be completed on career plateau in the Canadian public service, all the findings must be considered tentative. The categories developed throughout the study describing how public servants feel and respond to career plateau as well as the organizational implications all require further refinement and more empirical testing. / Graduate / 2021-05-01

This thesis examines the capacity and desire of older workers to provide discretionary effort and skilled contributions in what some researchers consider to be the predominant form of new career, the 'boundaryless career'. Features of the 'boundaryless career' include multiple employers, and the demise of the organisational loyalty that was embodied within the image of the 'company man'. The research is justified by the fall in Australia's fertility rates and the simultaneous ageing of Australia's population. In combination, these are predicted to produce significant shortfalls in skilled labour, which experts believe will require organisations to better manage and utilise its older workers. The case study and pattern matching methodology involved interviews with forty volunteer older workers who worked in the headquarters of Australia Post, which enjoys a formidable local and international reputation. 'Career plateau' was a term used by many to describe their perception of their current career position and prospects. Their descriptions of their work situation and their ambitions, at work and in retirement, were analysed for patterns which were then compared with literature on career plateaus, motivation and job design, and the 'boundaryless career'. This analysis was overlaid onto a foundation of contemporary management practice with regard to older workers, current business environments and issues, and views on the skill sets needed for the future. This foundation emerged from a review of academic literature, business and government reports and from an ongoing review of the Australian Financial Review over the six years of the study. Contributions to theory and practice are claimed in the parent theories of career plateau, and older worker motivation; together with the focus theory of boundaryless careers. Although there are legitimate organisational constraints on optimising the older worker contribution, older workers do not contribute to capacity, and organisations do little to optimise their contribution. Joint organisational and individual worker attention to skills maintenance and career management over an entire working life will likely be 'boundaryless' for both organisations and the older workforce.

The theses investigates the problematics of career plateau in a big organization. In theoretical part conceptions of career, its phases and types, possibilities for development, succes criteria, career plateuing, its types, causes and effects are described, also possible ways to handle the career plateau are discussed, on one side from individual point of view on the other side from organizational point of view. Empirical part consists of organisation's description and a research concerning the perception of individual career development and career plateauing among employees of the organization. The research includes qualitative and quantitative approach and focuses on organisational and structural plateauing. Possible practical solutions in the field of human ressources management are given.

Career plateau has been identified as stressful experiences that can lead to employee negative feelings and attitudes in the workplace. However, empirical studies that examine how career plateau relates to employee outcomes and the conditions that moderate the above relationships have been scarce. Using an occupational stress model as the foundation, this study examined whether two types of career plateau (i.e., hierarchical plateau and job content plateau) relate to employee outcomes (emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and affective organizational commitment). Furthermore, this study examined whether the proposed psychological processes (future career uncertainty and subjective monotony) mediate the above relationships and whether components of workplace spirituality (i.e., inner life and belongingness to community) moderate the relationship between career plateau and psychological processes. Based on responses of 243 participants, hierarchical regression results indicate that both plateaus relate negatively with job satisfaction, job involvement, and affective organizational commitment. However, only hierarchical plateau relates positively to emotional exhaustion, whereas job content plateau is not related to emotional exhaustion. Also, individuals’ future career uncertainty partially mediates the relationship between hierarchical plateau and employee emotional exhaustion and job attitudes, whereas subjective monotony partially mediates the relationship between job content plateau and job attitudes, but completely mediates the relationship between job content plateau and emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, only the inner life component of workplace spirituality moderates the relationship between hierarchical plateau and future career uncertainty. Based on the study findings, managerial implications, limitations and suggestions for future research directions are given.

Talented people are the key factor for enterprises to maintain their competitive advantage. Since 1980s, due to the changes of internal and external environments, reorganization and simplification have become the patterns of organizations, which indicating promotion possibility in an organization has been relatively reduced. These generate the feeling of development limitation within employees and result in the phenomenon of career plateau. However, high performance work system is regarded as a set of management system in human resources field , and it includes most types of best management practices. Therefore, this study attempts to explore antecedents and consequences of variable of the career plateau, including a negative correlation between high performance work system and career plateau as well as the impact of the career plateau on role performance and turnover intention, and whether the perceived supervisor support will be an interference effect. In this study, pairing questionnaires are offered to executives and organizational members 47 effective matching samples are received. Hierarchical linear model is used in this study to verify the hypothesis. The results show: 1. Career plateau is negatively associated with role performance; 2. Career plateau is positively associated with the turnover intention; 3. The effect of perceived supervisor support can interfere with both career plateau and turnover intention. The findings of this study indicate: 1. Organizations should establish career planning and development for employees in order to reduce the adverse effects of career plateau; 2. Organizations should find a method to increase employees¡¦ perceived of supervisor support in order to reduce the negative effects of career plateau; 3. High performance work system is a systematic system. It should be assessed in depth regarding the way of solving the career plateau. Finally, suggestions for future research and the limitation of this study are also discussed. Keywords: career plateau, high performance work system, role performance, turnover intention, perceived supervisor support

The changing working environment and ageing workforce suggest that many workers will inevitably reach a career plateau, a stage where people regard future promotions as unlikely, or no longer feel challenged at work. Experiencing career plateau is found to be associated with negative job attitudes and performance in the workplace. However, existing studies have been mainly cross-sectional in design and few of them investigate the mechanisms and the conditions that influence the negative relationship. This study follows a quantitative longitudinal research design to further enhance the understanding of the relationships between career plateau and job outcomes. The job outcomes in this research include work attitudes such as job satisfaction, organisational commitment, turnover intentions and three aspects of job performance. Specifically, the three research aims of this thesis are: (1) to understand the causal directions between career plateau and job outcomes, (2) to examine whether employees’ unmet expectations may explain these relations and (3) to investigate whether employees’ age may modify the mediation effects of career plateau on job outcomes via unmet expectations. Three waves of data were collected from working individuals in various industries over an eight-month period. The majority of the participants were working in the UK or in Taiwan. Results showed that unmet expectations partially explain the negative relationship between career plateau and job attitudes over time but not for job performance. Furthermore, age did not affect the strength of the mediation effect of career plateau on the job outcomes through unmet expectations. The significance of this research is three-fold. First, it provides a new explanation for the unfavourable work attitudes of plateaued individuals. The findings that career plateaued employees have lower job satisfaction, lower organisational commitment and higher turnover intentions can partly be explained by unfulfilled expectations in receiving promotions or challenging tasks. Second, the study signals the danger of career plateau at any age, as younger and older workers were found to be equally influenced by career plateau. Finally, this is the first study in the area that seeks to resolve the debate over the directional relationship between career plateau and job outcomes. The implications in theory and in practice, limitations and suggestions for future research directions are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the relationship between career plateauing and mentoring. First, the relationship between career plateauing and work-related attitudes was investigated. Next, the relationship between mentoring experience and work-related attitudes was examined. Finally, both experience as a mentor and mentoring provided were examined as moderators between career plateauing and work-related attitudes. Three hundred and six government employees located in the southeastern United States completed surveys (50.08% response rate). Of those, 110 reported mentor experience and 196 reported no mentor experience. In general, results provided support for the relationship between job content and hierarchical plateauing and negative work-related attitudes. No support was found for the relationship between job tenure and work-related attitudes. Support was found for the relationship between mentoring experience and positive work-related attitudes. With the exception of contextual performance, the relationship between mentoring provided and work-related attitudes was not supported. Little support was found for the interaction between mentor experience and plateauing, suggesting that mentoring others may not alleviate the negative effects of career plateauing. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The research objective was to develop, through two phases involving development and validation, a measure of the psychological work contract for managerial level employees. The psychological contract is the unwritten implicit contract that forms in the minds of employees and contains the obligations and expectations that they believe exists between themselves and the organization. In the first and qualitative phase of the study, a structured interview procedure resulted in the collection of 651 responses from a convenience sample of 35 managers from seven New Zealand organizations. Responses related to what these managers believed they were obligated to provide the organization (perceived organizational expectations), and what they believed the organization was obligated to provide them (their expectations). Content analysis of these 651 statements resulted in the development of two initial measures of the psychological contract (employee obligations, organization obligations). The employee obligations measure (perceived organizational expectations of the employee) contained 16 items, and the organization obligations measure (employee expectations of the organization) contained 23 items. In the second and quantitative phase of the study, and using the same criteria for participation as for phase one, a convenience sample of 124 managers from 13 New Zealand organizations completed questionnaires. The questionnaires included the measures of psychological contract content developed in phase one of the study, and 8 organizational psychology variables to be included in a nomological network. The nomological network included intention to quit, perceived organizational support, work and job involvement, job satisfaction, career plateau, organizational commitment, person-organization fit, and 2 performance measures. A separate questionnaire covering job performance and organizational citizenship behaviour was completed by 94 of the participants' managers. Of the 54 relationships predicted in the nomological network, 41 were significant. Of the 13 non-significant relationships, 10 involved relationships with the two performance measures. The measures of the psychological contract were subjected to a construct validation process involving two steps. The first step involved item and factor analysis. Factor analysis of the two measures of the psychological contract revealed two factors in each. One factor, termed relational obligations and reflecting a collective interest between the employee and the organization, included the items that were believed to influence more directly the relationship between managers and the organization. This factor included items such as be committed to the job (an employee obligation) and provide a physically and socially safe environment (an organizational obligation). The other factor, termed transactional obligations and reflecting a self/other interest on the part of the employee, included the items that were believed to be of a more direct employment transactions nature. This factor included items such as stay true to your own values and beliefs (an employee obligation) and provide professional and personal support (an organizational obligation). In the second step of the validation process, the measures of the psychological contract were embedded into the nomological network and their relationships with the ten variables in that network were tested. Of the ten hypothesised relationships, only one emerged as significant, that being the relationship between the organization obligations component of the psychological contract and person-organization fit. Minimal support for construct validity of the measures of the psychological contract was provided confirming that further effort will be required before complete construct validity may be claimed for the measured. Although the contribution the research makes to the field of knowledge may be limited, it does provide some validation of existing measures of the psychological contract, developed in other studies using different samples. The present findings increase our knowledge of the content of the psychological contract for managers. Additionally, a methodological framework has been established for continuing research into the content of psychological contracts, including an exploration of the relationship between content and fulfilment, along with a structure for comparing the psychological contract of disparate occupational groups. The most likely explanation for the hypotheses not being fully supported is that it is fulfilment (or conversely breach or violation) of the psychological contract, rather than the content of the contract per se, that is related to the variables in the nomological network. Whilst the hypotheses were based on research that considered fulfilment of the contract, this study focussed on the content of psychological contracts. The reasons for basing the hypotheses on research that considered fulfilment, the influence of this decision on hypothesis testing, and other possible explanations for the hypotheses not finding greater support, are explored. The limitations of the study, and possible directions for future research, are discussed.

Les déterminants de la performance du vendeur ont fait l’objet d’un vaste courant de recherche dont il ressort que les variables personnelles sont les plus explicatives de la variation de la performance. Parallèlement, la recherche sur le plateau de carrière du vendeur qui est encore peu développée, propose des actions visant à éviter le plateau.Cette recherche propose un modèle structurel de déterminants de la performance du vendeur fondés sur certains traits de personnalité : l’esprit de compétition, la rigueur, l’estime de soi et l’efficacité personnelle et analyse les relations entre ces traits entre eux et entre l’effort et la performance. Cette recherche précise également la modération du plateau de carrière sur certaines variables du modèle.Il ressort de cette recherche la validation d’un modèle conceptuel de déterminants de la performance du vendeur fondé sur les traits de personnalité et, de la modération positive et faible du plateau de carrière sur les liens entre l’esprit de compétition, la rigueur et l’effort et,la performance, qui forment ces traits de personnalité.Cette étude met en lumière le rôle d’une triade composée de l’efficacité personnelle, de l’effort et de la rigueur comme variables explicatives de la performance des vendeurs performants. Une autre caractéristique des vendeurs performants concerne l’orientation deleurs efforts dirigés en efforts habiles, avec un haut niveau d’effort qui tend à devenir unenorme de travail pour les vendeurs performants expérimentés. Au contraire, les vendeursstandards ont une direction de leurs efforts moins habile.Une autre caractéristique des vendeurs performants concerne l’efficacité personnelle et leurcapacité à analyser leurs expériences d’abord passées puis présentes pour déterminer leurs expériences actives de maîtrise. Les vendeurs performants sont rigoureux et, tout en restant centré sur l’objectif à atteindre, savent analyser la situation et adapter les actions et les moyens à mettre en oeuvre pour l’atteindre. Enfin, l’esprit de compétition agit en catalyseur de cette triade efficacité personnelle-effort-rigueur. Pour les vendeurs performants de 45 ans et moins, l’effort et l’efficacité personnelle sont deux variables essentielles et le relais est pris ensuite, au-delà de 45 ans par la rigueur et l’esprit de compétition.Le plateau de carrière des vendeurs performants est un plateau accepté notamment parce qu’ils vivent un enrichissement du poste. Cet enrichissement du poste est la conséquence du stress dans le rôle et des expériences positives. / The research on the performance determinants of the salesperson has been widely studied and it appears that the variation on performance is mostly due to personal variables.The research on the salesperson plateau is less studied and aims mainly at actions to avoid plateauing.This research proposes a structural model on the performance determinants of salesperson based on personality traits: competitiveness, conscientiousness, self-esteem and self-efficacy,and analyses the relationships between these traits among them, and between effort and performance. This research points out as well the weak moderating effect of the plateau on the variables of the model.A conceptual model on the performance determinants of the salesperson is validated and, theweak positive moderating effect of the plateau on the structural path between competitiveness,conscientiousness, effort and performance is confirmed.This study points out the role of a triad made of self-efficacy, effort and conscientiousness a sexplaining variables of the performance of performing salespeople. Another characteristic of aperforming salesperson regards their effort which is smart, and their high level of effort becomes normative for senior performing salespersons. To the contrary, average performing salespersons have a less smart effort and a more hard effort.Another characteristic of performing salespersons regards self-efficacy and their ability inanalyzing their experiences firstly past experiences, and then present experiences in order todetermine their enactive mastery. Performing salespersons are conscientious and whileremaining focused on the objective, they analyze the situation and adapt their actions and means to reach the objective. Competitiveness is a catalyzer of the triad self-efficacy-effort conscientiousness.For performing salespersons of age ≤ 45, effort and self-efficacy are the main drivers and then, after the age 45, conscientiousness and competitiveness become the main drivers.The career plateau of performing salespersons is accepted in particular because they experience job enrichment, and this job enrichment is a consequence of the role stress and positive experiences.