Purpose This study examines how artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes professional identity in the creative industries. Although prior research has largely emphasized the technological capabilities and industry-level implications of AI, limited attention has been devoted to how creative professionals themselves interpret and negotiate its consequences for creativity, authorship, and career development. Design/methodology/approach An inductive qualitative design is conducted based on 40 semi-structured interviews with professionals from the Italian audiovisual industry, including actors, directors, screenwriters, technicians, and AI experts. Data were analyzed using the Gioia methodology. Findings Findings show that AI does not simply support creative work but disrupts established understandings of what it means to be a creative professional. Three interconnected forms of identity work emerge: resisting, extending, and crafting (REC). While some participants defend the human and symbolic foundations of creativity, others embrace AI as a source of experimentation and new skill formation. More critically, AI also generates identity ambiguity and fragmentation, blurring boundaries between human originality, technological assistance, and professional legitimacy. Originality/value This work addresses an important gap in AI and creative work research by shifting attention from technological adoption to the identity-level consequences of AI. Through a unique and heterogeneous dataset spanning multiple creative occupations, the study introduces the REC framework and conceptualizes AI as a disruptive identity force that simultaneously enables, threatens, and redefines career sustainability.
This study aims to examine when and how job complexity may prompt occupational reconsideration. Drawing on an identity appraisal perspective, it tests the inverted-U-shaped association between perceived job complexity and occupational identity threat, the corresponding indirect association with career change intention and the moderating role of workplace sense of power. Two complementary studies were conducted. Study 1 analyzed from the Second European Skills and Jobs Survey data involving 43,859 employees in 29 European countries to examine the focal association. Study 2 used two-wave survey data from 434 Chinese full-time employees to test the full research model. Study 1 identified an inverted-U association between job complexity and occupational identity threat in the pooled cross-national sample. Study 2 supported this pattern. Occupational identity threat peaked at intermediate complexity and was positively associated with career change intention. The indirect curvilinear association through occupational identity threat was also significant. Workplace sense of power was associated with lower threat and a more pronounced inverted-U association. This study develops a nonlinear account of job complexity's occupational identity implications. It links everyday work design to occupational reconsideration through occupational identity threat. It also identifies workplace sense of power as a factor shaping the appraisal of complex work.
Purpose This paper examines immigrant earnings trajectories and labour-market positioning across industries and employment arrangements in six Canadian provinces, as well as how industry patterns relate to digital intensity, telework feasibility, and productivity-relevant allocation. Design/methodology/approach Canadian Census microdata, 1971–2021 compare immigrant and native-born earnings across ten arrival cohorts by gender and age at arrival. For two recent cohorts, an earnings-based positioning measure combines industry mean annual earnings with full-time or part-time status multinomial-logit average marginal effects are estimated. The study also maps 2021 industry employment shares to external digital-intensity and telework-feasibility classifications. Individual productivity, artificial-intelligence (AI) adoption, Information and Communications Technology use, and remote-work uptake are not observed. Findings Entry earnings gaps and incomplete cohort convergence persist, especially among women and recent cohorts. Across the two positioning cohorts, immigrants are less likely than comparable native-born workers to hold full-time jobs in higher-earnings industries; gaps vary by source region and do not uniformly narrow. Education is associated with better positioning but does not eliminate gaps Immigrant employment is more concentrated in many digitally intensive categories but less concentrated in several higher-earnings, high-telework-feasibility industries digital intensity is not systematically related to immigrant employment shares. Originality/value The paper combines five decades of earnings evidence across ten cohorts with a two-cohort positioning measure and descriptive digital and telework mapping. It complements individual-level careers research by identifying structural differences in opportunity access with possible, unmeasured productivity implications.
Purpose This study addresses the limitations of variable-centred employability research by advancing a configurational perspective on employability development within career development scholarship. It proposes the Configurational Employability Development Model (CEDM), explaining how Student Entrepreneurship Experience, psychological, social, and institutional career resources interact to shape employability development across heterogeneous emerging-economy contexts. Design/methodology/approach A two-phase research design was employed. Phase I used the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) with a 24-member international expert panel to establish theoretically grounded calibration anchors. Phase II applied fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to a three-wave longitudinal panel of 347 university students (analytic sample: N = 310) from Vietnam, Uzbekistan, and Nigeria to identify sufficient configurations associated with employability development and examine causal asymmetry. Findings Four equifinal pathways to high employability development were identified (solution consistency = 0.87; coverage = 0.79). Psychological Capital emerged as a near-necessary career resource (consistency = 0.93), whereas Student Entrepreneurship Experience functioned as a core but individually insufficient condition whose contribution depended on complementary institutional and social resources. The findings also demonstrate causal asymmetry and reveal variation in the prominence of institutional resources across the measured period. Research limitations/implications Although limited to three emerging economies and a relatively short longitudinal period, the study provides theoretical and practical insights for career development research, higher education policy, and context-sensitive graduate employability strategies. Originality/value It extends employability research by demonstrating configuration-specific institutional substitutability, resource complementarity, and multiple career-development pathways beyond linear, variable-centred explanations. It extends employability research by demonstrating institutional substitutability, resource complementarity, and multiple career-development pathways beyond linear, variable-centred explanations.
Purpose Drawing on the Work as Calling Theory (WCT), we developed and tested a longitudinal model of how employees’ career calling develops over time. Specifically, we examined the dynamic relationships among job crafting towards strengths (JCS), inclusive leadership, and career calling, as well as the moderating role of core self-evaluation (CSE). Design/methodology/approach This study employed a three-wave longitudinal survey design with data collected from 309 Chinese employees at three-month intervals and analyzed the data using cross-lagged panel modeling (CLPM), supplemented by random-intercept cross-lagged panel modeling (RI-CLPM). Findings CLPM results showed that JCS and career calling positively predicted each other from T1 to T2, whereas only career calling predicted subsequent JCS from T2 to T3. Perceived inclusive leadership and career calling showed reciprocal positive associations across both time intervals. Supplementary RI-CLPM analyses further suggested that these interrelationships partly reflected stable between-person differences, although T2 career calling positively predicted T3 JCS and perceived inclusive leadership at the within-person level. Furthermore, moderation analyses showed that the association between JCS and subsequent career calling became more positive at higher levels of CSE across both time intervals, whereas CSE weakened the positive association between perceived inclusive leadership and subsequent career calling from T2 to T3. Originality/value This study extends Work as Calling Theory by advancing a more dynamic understanding of career calling and offers practical insights into how organizations can foster employees’ career calling through proactive job crafting, supportive leadership, and differentiated developmental support.
