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Proactive work behaviors, such as taking charge (Fuller and Marler, 2009), job crafting (Plomp et al., 2016), and networking (Tschopp et al., 2015) are central themes in the contemporary careers and organizational psychology literature. With a shift of responsibility for careers away from organizations to individuals, employees are increasingly called to take ownership of their own work and life experiences (Arthur et al., 2017). There is also increasing positive recognition for exhibiting ambition in their work context – previously considered a negative individual trait (Larimer et al., 2007; Pettigrove, 2007). Indeed, employee ambition is now regularly associated with increased work performance (Huang et al., 2014) and career satisfaction (Judge and Kammeyer-Mueller, 2012).
Yet, we still know very little about the mechanisms that explain the positive relationship between employee ambition and career satisfaction. From a management perspective, for example, there is a paucity of understanding about what managers can do to help employees to fulfill their ambition and which management practices, such as pay, facilitate this relationship (see e.g. Akhtar et al., 2015; Chng and Wang, 2015). This paper will contribute to the contemporary careers and compensation literature, therefore, by investigating this relationship. Specifically, we propose that taking charge behavior is an important mediator of the relationship between employee ambition and career satisfaction. We also propose that pay moderates this mediated relationship, such that after a pay increase ambitious employees will be more likely to engage in taking charge behavior. We also propose that this interaction will increase their subsequent career satisfaction.
The arguments presented in this paper are predicated on two key themes: taking charge behavior and pay. Taking charge behavior can be best understood as “voluntary and constructive efforts, by individual employees, to effect organizationally functional change with respect to how work is executed within the contexts of their jobs, work units, or organizations” (Morrison and Phelps, 1999, p. 403). A key component of this type of behavior is that it is change-oriented and innovative, triggering employees to be more adaptive, to learn and to develop their workplace competencies (Grant and Ashford, 2008). As a result, they are also likely to be better at understanding their job and work environment and at managing their own careers, thus resulting...