“Because I am worth it and employable”: A cross-cultural study on self-esteem and employability orientation as personal resources for psychological well-being at work

Abstract

Building on the Conservation of Resources (COR) framework (Hobfoll American Psychologist, 44(3), 513–524, 1989), employability can be conceived as a personal resource that, similarly to core self-evaluation concepts such as self-esteem, relates favourably to a wide array of both work-related and more general well-being outcomes. We carried out a survey involving 254 Italian and 254 Finnish employees via a self-report questionnaire to investigate whether employability orientation acted as a mediator on the well-established relationship between self-esteem and psychological well-being. Results indicated that self-esteem was positively associated with employability orientation; moreover, country moderated such relationship, given that the association between these two variables was stronger among Italian than Finnish employees. Furthermore, self-esteem predicted different facets of psychological well-being at work (job satisfaction, vigour, emotional exhaustion, psychological symptoms) in both countries. We investigated both the mediated effect of employability orientation on the association between self-esteem and psychological well-being and the possible moderating effect originated by the country of origin of respondents. In several cases, employability orientation partly mediated the effects of self-esteem on psychological well-being. Findings confirm self-esteem and employability to be personal resources that are likely to affect positively psychological well-being at work.