Organizational career growth, affective occupational commitment and turnover intentions Qingxiong Weng a, ⁎, James C. McElroy b a University of Science and Technology of China, Fuzhou Command College of CAPF, Hefei, Anhui Province PR China b Department of Management, Iowa State University, 2350 Gerdin Business Building, Ames, IA 50011, USA article info abstract Article history: Received 9 November 2011 Available online 2 February 2012 Survey data, collected from the People's Republic of China, were used to test Weng's (2010) four facet model of career growth and to examine its effect on occupational commitment and turnover intentions. Weng conceptualized career growth as consisting of four factors: career goal progress, professional ability development, promotion speed, and remuneration growth. Results from a sample of 396 managers failed to confirm the four factor model, show- ing instead the need to collapse promotion speed and remuneration growth into a single facet, rewards. The three remaining dimensions of career growth were negatively related to turn- over intentions and affective occupational commitment was found to partially mediate these relationships. Results are discussed in terms of using career growth to manage turnover. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Career growth Occupational commitment Turnover intentions Today an individual's career is no longer tied to a single organization, as career changes and job mobility have become com- mon phenomena (Rousseau, 1998). To be successful in one's career, employees today have to balance the relationship between their desire for career growth and their attitudes toward their current organizations. Recent research has shown career growth opportunities to be an important determinant of employee–organizational relationships. Organizations that provide mechanisms for employee career growth create a mutual investment type of relationship with their employees (Tsui, Pearce, Porter, & Tripoli, 1997), a relationship that ties career growth to important outcomes such as organizational commitment (Weng, McElroy, Morrow, & Liu, 2010). However, one would expect that any relationship between career growth and employee outcomes would depend on whether the employee is committed to pursuing a career, rather than simply holding a job, in the first place. Rather than considering career growth in terms of the general utility of one's present job for future career outcomes (Bedeian, Kemery, & Pizzolatto, 1991), we use Weng's (2010) multidimensional conceptualization of career growth. His model suggests that career growth consists of four factors: meeting career goals, developing one's professional abilities, and receiving promo- tions, and compensation commensurate with those abilities. In essence, this view of career growth is an individual-level, organi- zation specific, concept. That is, he argues that career growth is a measure of the degree to which an individual perceives that their current organization creates an environment in which the employee is able to meet his/her career-related needs and rein- forces those accomplishments through promotions and compensation (Weng et al., 2010). However, this model was developed using a wide cross-section of employees, including managers, professional, and clerical across 176 organizations. One purpose of this study is to test the validity of Weng's (2010) multidimensional conceptualization of career growth using a sample limited to managers. We focus on managers because they are more likely than workers to be presented with career growth opportunities, particularly in China. A second purpose of this study is to examine the mechanisms by which organizational career growth influences work-related outcomes. Of particular interest is how the various aspects of organizational career growth relate to the outcome of occupational commitment. Of all of the forms of work commitment, career or occupational commitment has received the least attention (Aryee Journal of Vocational Behavior 80 (2012) 256–265 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: wqx886@126.com (Q. Weng), jmcelroy@iastate.edu (J.C. McElroy). 0001-8791/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2012.01.014 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Vocational Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jvb