Working Authenticity: A Study of Organizational Career Management and Ideal Self-Discrepancy

Abstract

Research on ideal self-discrepancy suggests that individuals proactively strive to reduce ideal self-discrepancy due to the discomfort and emotional vulnerabilities associated with it. Less is known about whether companies can help in this individualistic process through career management practices. Using a sample of 331 employees from a four-wave eight-month longitudinal study, we show that organizational career management is negatively associated with ideal self-discrepancy via organizational identification, and such relationship is strengthened by protean career orientation. Moreover, though individual career management in general complements organizational career management in narrowing ideal self-discrepancy, only employees with high protean career orientation see the effect of individual career management on strengthening the relationship between organizational identification and ideal self-discrepancy whereas their counterparts see an opposite effect. This study extends prior work by bringing in the role of organizations and shows that even in the boundaryless career era with high mobility, employers can still help employees reduce ideal self-discrepancy via organizational identification through differentiated human resources management based on protean career orientation.