Document Type : Article
Authors
Faculty of Management and Accounting Shahid Beh&zwn
Abstract
Within the context of the knowledge-based economy, individuals increasingly control their own development, careers and destinies, rather than the organisations that employ them. The term; human capital refers to the productive resources of employees that create value for themselves and for the organisations of which they are a part (Gratton & Ghoshal, 2003).The organisational perspective refers to human capital as the source of innovation and strategic renewal (Bontis, 1998). On an individual level, human capital is defined as a combination of four elements; genetic inheritance, education, experience, and attitudes about life and business (Hudson, 1993). The development of human capital is dependent on an individuals ability to identify and manage learning needs; learning and optimising the use of learning through career planning, job search skills and managing a work/life balance. Social capital refers to the networks of relationships that provide access to the resources that the members of the network possess or have access to. So, social capital is fluid, and reciprocal relationships with people help individuals to develop intellectual capital by accessing the knowledge and skills those people possess.Career success is commonly defined as the positive psychological or work-related outcomes or achievements one accumulates as a result of work experience (Judge et al., 1995). From this definition, career success can be viewed from both objective and subjective perspectives (Van Maanen & Schein, 1977). Hall & Chandler (2005) asserted that the subjective career is most pertinent from the vantage point of the individual, as he evaluates different facets of his career. In this subjective attitude, career success is in the eye of the beholder and reflects the importance of a persons own set of values, attitudes and goals in judging his or her career success. In contrast, Hughes highlighted the criticality of the objective career when considering the antage point of society, and an external perspective that validates the tangible facets of an individuals career, such as income, promotions, hierarchical job levels and job mobility (Hughes, 1958; Van Maanen & Schein, 1977; Hall & Chandler, 2005). Exploration of the subjective career is, and continues to be, timely, given the fundamental shift that has occurred within the career context (Hall & Mirvis, 1995; Arthur & Rousseau, 1996).Current literature suggests that researchers study both subjective and objective career successes for credibility. Thus, in this paper, we examine subjective and objective career success.Since most studies, up to now, have focused on the organizational outcome of human and social capital, this study was to investigate the relationship between human and social capital, and job success. Towards this goal, this study is of applied research and, based on the type of data gathering, is descriptive/correlational. In doing so, we use hierarchical regression analysis (step-by-step), in order to test the hypotheses. Demographical variables, such as; sex, job experience, age and educational status, are regarded as control variables. Then, the effect of independent variables on dependent variables was measured. The study sample consists of 219 branch managers of Mellat Bank.The results suggest that, according to hierarchical regression analysis, human and social capital have a positive effect on objective and subjective job success. Human capital only has an effect on objective career success, but, social capital has a significant effect on both objective and subjective career successes. This implies that in the case of the subjects studied, the human capital dimension, which includes technical knowledge and skills learning capacity, has a significant effect on creating and increasing objective and subjective job successes. The social capital dimension includes relationships with key persons in the organizational network, and reliability, which have the most effect on objective and subjective job success or, more precisely, internal job satisfaction.The surprising point is that the effect of social capital was much greater than the effect of human capital on objective job success.
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