Building sustainable careers : Motivation to Lead as a resource for leaders

In today’s intensifying and turbulent working life, employees and organizations highly value ways of supporting careers that promote happiness, health and productivity. This dissertation examined the role of leadership-related motivation (Motivation to Lead, MTL; Chan & Drasgow, 2001) as a personal resource in the sustainable career construction of highly educated Finnish leaders. This was done using both variable- and person-centered methods with cross-sectional, longitudinal, hierarchical, qualitative and quantitative data. In Study I, individual paths to leadership were examined. The results showed that for many leaders context-related and non-agentic as well as person-related and agentic factors lay behind their leader role occupancy. Intrinsic factors for leader role occupancy were associated with both better leader and follower occupational well-being. Context-related factors were associated with poor occupational well-being for both leaders themselves and their followers. Study II examined leadership motivation in more detail, focusing on its dimensionality and associations with career sustainability indicators. The analysis yielded four different MTL profiles. The leaders in these profiles differed in their indicators of career sustainability, i.e., occupational well-being, leadership-related career intentions, and follower assessments. Profiles characterized by high Affective-Identity MTL showed the most favorable outcomes, while those with the lowest AI-MTL or overall MTL were unfavorable for both the leaders themselves and their followers. Study III empirically tested the hypothesis presented in Study II on MTL as a personal resource. The results showed, over a two-year follow-up, that leadership motivation can buffer against burnout when leaders are faced with intensified job planning and career-related demands. MTL is potentially a vital personal resource for leaders in sustaining and/or strengthening their careers. The results of this research may be valuable in efforts to foster leader self-awareness and career management at both the individual and organizational level.