The Relationship between Career Growth and Job Engagement among Young Employees: The Mediating Role of Normative Commitment and the Moderating Role of Organizational Justice

Abstract

With the sharp changes in external environment, sustainable competitive advantage is importance resource that the enterprises need to get in the fierce market game. The 90’s are becoming the backbone of enterprises, and under the background of human resources, driving the development of the enterprise innovation ability by cultivating highly professional knowledge staff is the important measure of enterprise to obtain sustainable competitive advantage. This study will explore the relationship between employees’ career growth and work engagement, in order to provide effective advice for enterprise to cultivate staffs with high job engagement. Based on social exchange theory, empirical results indicate that career growth has significant positive impact on employees’ job engagement through a mediating role of normative commitment. Meanwhile, the two assumptions about the moderating role of organizational justice are not supported, which are including that organizational justice plays a moderating role between career growth and job engagement, and organizational justice adjusts the mediating role of normative commitment between career growth and job engagement. Empirical results indicate that organizational justice plays a moderating role between normative commitment and job engagement. The research results show that enterprises can satisfy employees’ career growth needs, such as economic, power, ability, social and emotional needs, thus achieving the goal of improving employee’s organization normative commitment level, and eventually achieving the goal of employees work commitment.