Interplay between career competencies, dispositional characteristics and contextual factors: Perspectives of technical education students

As the body of work concerning career management of individuals continue to grow within the management literature, little focus has been placed on understanding the relationship between career competencies, personality characteristics and contextual factors. Using two noteworthy research contributions on career competencies as the central subject of this research, we attempted to examine the interplay between these factors to know how they are conceptually distinct from each other. Hence, validation of the framework of career competencies that distinguish between reflective, communicative, and behavioural career competencies was undertaken at first. As the sample characteristics differed, the need was felt to re-test the scale to make it suitable for the participants of the present study, who are undergraduates with six-month internship experience in their chosen field of education. The career competencies scale was administered to the sample of 341 final year students of hotel management, communication, technology and business management of a leading private university in India. The results provided support for the content and factorial validity of the scale used. Contrary to expectations, regression analysis results revealed that the three dimensions are significantly related to each other. Given the lack of empirical work examining the relationship between career competencies and other influencing factors, we expect that the outcomes will stimulate further discussions and research in the area of career management.