Several important findings have been discovered in this study. First, as predicted, hierarchical plateau produces strain and negative job attitudes. It results in higher emotional exhaustion, less satisfaction with jobs, less involvement in work, and less commitment to organizations. This is also consistent with many studies that
connected hierarchical career plateau with stress and unwanted job attitudes (Allen, et al., 1998; Elsass & Ralston, 1989; Lentz & Allen, 2009; McCleese & Eby, 2007). On the other hand, though job content plateau does not influence emotional exhaustion, it is related with job dissatisfaction, lower job involvement, and lower affective
organizational commitment.
The second finding of this study is that psychological processes play important roles in contributing to plateaued employee outcomes. Specifically, hierarchical plateaued individuals experience uncertainty for their future career, whereas job content plateaued employees perceive their work as boring and monotonous. Both processes have mediating effects that pass the influence of career plateau to
individuals‟ employee outcomes. When employees feel uncertain about their future career advancement as a result of their experience of hierarchical plateau, they would feel emotionally exhausted, less likely to be satisfied with their jobs, to be involved in their works, feel affectively committed to their organizations. Similarly, job content plateau individuals, who feel bored about their jobs, also report the same
organizational outcomes. They report less satisfaction about their jobs and less involvement in their work; they are also less committed to their organizations.
However, one significant difference is that subjective monotony has a complete
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mediating effect between job content plateau and emotional exhaustion. This result indicates that job content pleateaued employees experience stress only when they regard their jobs as monotonous. In other words, job content plateau itself does not induce strain, unless plateaued individuals experienced boredom and lack of challenge about their everyday work. Possible explanations can be drawn from past research indicating that lack of career growth (Latak, 1984) or inability to change the present undesirable work situation would lead to stress (McCleese & Eby, 2007).
In terms of inner life and community‟s moderating effect between career plateaus and corresponding psychological processes, only inner life moderates the relationship between perception of hierarchical plateau and future career uncertainty. This is to say that hierarchically-plateaued individuals with higher inner life would have less feeling of uncertainty of their future career in comparison to those with lower inner life. Contrary to our predictions, the rest of the hypotheses of the moderating effect of workplace spirituality were not supported.
Some indications might explain these unsupported outcomes. With regard to hierarchical plateau, individuals‟ feeling of belongingness to a community could change as their work environment alters. For instance, under unstable economic situations, layoff of coworkers would break the connectivity among people and thus reduce individuals‟ belongingness to the workplace. Since the process variable addresses issues in the future, belongingness to a community at the present working environment may not have a moderating effect. In addition, even if individuals have strong belongingness to community, they may be reluctant to share their concerns of future career with colleagues, who most often are potential competitors for promotion opportunities.
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In terms of job content plateau, the unsupported moderating effect of inner life and community imply that individuals may clearly separate spirituality components from their work contents. Spiritual beings, who understand the meaning of their work or feel connected to community, still cannot help but feel bored when they confront repetitive tasks or routine work. Failure to find suitable moderators to buffer subjective monotony states the importance of further studies in this domain.
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5-2 Theoretical and Managerial Implications
5-2-1 Theoretical Implications
This study provides several important theoretical implications. First, the identification of psychological processes and the examination of their mediating effects provide insights on the mechanism through which career plateau influences individual and organizational outcomes. Therefore, our study directly tested and provided empirical support for the investigation that career plateau can be a stressful experience (Elsass & Ralston, 1989; Feldman & Weitz, 1988). Second, job content plateau is not a source of stress unless plateaued employees perceive their work as monotonous. This finding fills in the gap in the research domain of the less-discussed relationship between job content plateau and stress, and provides support for the homological network ofBeehr‟s (1998) refined facet model of occupational stress.
5-2-2 Managerial Implications
The present study has several practical implications. Consistent with previous studies, career plateau is negatively related with job attitudes such as job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment (Allen, et al., 1998; Chao, 1990;
Ettington, 1992; Milliman, 1992), but positively related with a personal feeling of stress such as emotional exhaustion (Elsass & Ralston, 1989; McCleese & Eby, 2007).
However, these outcomes are mediated through the sense of uncertainty and monotony. These negative outcomes can be eliminated either by alleviating the feeling of uncertainty of future career when individuals experience hierarchical plateau and lowering subjective monotony for job content plateaued individuals, or by lowering employees‟ perceptions of career plateau.
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One approach that may reduce future career uncertainty of plateaued individuals is that organizations assign them to be mentors or provide employee counseling to make individuals feel confident about their future career. Another suggestion can be drawn from the moderating role of inner life, which recommends organizations to make efforts in understanding and respecting employees‟ values and personal meaning in life, and provide programs that can help employees develop their spirituality. Individuals‟ subjective monotony can be alleviated by adopting job rotation or job enlargement, both of which could lower the boredom and increase challenges in work contents (Robbins, 2007). Suggestions to reduce perception of career plateau include offering new tasks such as mentoring younger employees (Elsass & Ralston, 1989; Ito & Brotheridge, 2001), providing lateral job movement (Elsass & Ralston, 1989; McCleese & Eby, 2007) or educating supervisors to give support or feedback to their subordinates (Allen, et al., 1999).
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5-3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
Several limitations and future research directions should be noticed. First, though samples are gathered from different industries, almost half of the samples are gathered solely from manufacturing and information technology industry. This may result in bias derived from characteristics of the industries as well as generalization.
Second, due to time restriction and limitation of researcher‟s personal relationships, this study was conducted on a cross-sectional manner, which is not free from the common method bias and was not able to examine the impact of time duration on career plateau and psychological processes. Using a longitudinal research design would provide stronger evidence for the internal validity of the examined
relationships.
One potential direction for future research to explore other possible moderators that may have been overlooked in this study. For instance, the importance individuals place on career advancement or job content variety can be a potential personal
moderator since individuals‟ perceived importance on preferred outcomes influence the degree of stress experienced (Beehr, 1998; Beehr & Bhagat, 1985a; McGrath, 1976). Employees‟ control or autonomy over work situation is another possible situational moderator because individuals with greater control can identify and create their own challenges in their work (Beehr, 1998; Ettington, 1998). Examination on the moderating effects of these variables is recommended for future research.
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本問卷到此結束，非常感謝您的協助！
第四部份：個人基本資料
1.您的性別： □1 男 □0 女 2. 您的年齡：
□1 25 歲以下 □2 26~30 歲 □3 31~35 歲 □4 36~40 歲
□5 41~45 歲 □6 46~50 歲 □7 51~55 歲 □8 56~60 歲 □9 60 歲以上 3.您的教育程度：
□1 小學畢業或以下 □2 國（初）中畢業 □3 高中職畢業 □4 專科畢業 □5 大學畢業 □6 碩士畢業 □7 博士畢業
4.您目前的職務：□1 非主管職 □2 基層主管 □3 中級主管 □4 高階主管 5. 您在目前公司服務的年資：_____年_____月
6. 您的宗教信仰： □0 無（請跳至第7 題）□1 是
□1 基督教 □2佛教 □3 道教 □4 佛教與道教 □5 回教 □6 一貫道教 □7其他___________
7. 您目前所處的產業類別：
□1 傳統製造業 □2 資訊科技業 □3 財務金融業 □4 文化教育業 □5 服務業 □6 傳播媒體業 □7 醫療生物科技業 □8 出口貿易業 □9 公務機關 □10 其他________