How Does Forgone Identity Dwelling Foster Perceived Employability: A Self-Regulatory Perspective

Abstract

The dramatic changes in modern careers call for more knowledge about employability, a key indicator of career sustainability. In reply, this study introduces the recently developed concept of forgone identity dwelling (FID) into the employability debate and aims to explain whether and how FID promotes employees’ perceived employability. Specifically, we draw on a self-regulatory perspective to propose that FID may serve as a meaningful way to enhance employability through a proactive career self-regulatory pathway characterized by career crafting, especially for employees high in promotion regulatory focus. To investigate this, we used the method of a three-wave survey study conducted among 435 Chinese employees and tested the hypotheses using path analysis with Mplus. The findings showed that FID motivated the employees to engage in career crafting, which in turn positively affected their perceived employability. Furthermore, promotion focus strengthened the positive effects of FID, such that the employees high in promotion focus were more likely to translate FID into employability through career crafting. These results highlight the importance of leveraging FID experiences to enhance employees’ proactive behaviors and employability. This study is the first to link FID to sustainable career outcomes, inspiring future research to explore additional mechanisms for the nuanced effects of FID on career sustainability.

1. Introduction

Traditional careers for workers, characterized by lifetime employment and job security, have been replaced by flexible and unpredictable career paths due to significant social and economic changes [1,2]. Such complex and ever-changing labor market circumstances emphasize the responsibility of individuals to increase their own employability in order to develop a sustainable and successful career [3,4]. Indeed, employability, generally defined as an individual’s employment potential in the internal and external labor market [5], is considered an important trending topic in career studies [6]. The contemporary employability literature emphasizes perceived employability, a subjective evaluation of one’s employability, as a critical personal resource for career advancement and transitions and a competitive advantage for both employees and organizations [7,8,9,10]. It is also a key indicator of the career sustainability paradigm emerging from the psychology of sustainability and sustainable development [4,11,12].

Thus far, research on the antecedents of perceived employability has focused heavily on the role of individual factors such as demographic characteristics, personality, competencies, and capital [1,9,13]. However, recent reviews have noted that since employability is somewhat malleable, it is worth investigating the more changeable factors that influence perceived employability [14,15], such as individuals’ cognitive and behavioral practices and strategies [16,17,18], which have been much less understood. In addition, beyond the well-established antecedents, a limited amount of research has also paid attention to the important implications of identity for employability. To illustrate, scholars have argued that a constructed career identity and professional experience in one’s chosen career path contribute to perceived employability [19,20,21]. However, this research has focused only on the chosen identity, neglecting the potential impact of the identity options one has forgone on the development of employability [22,23]. This neglect can be increasingly problematic as people in modern careers have more freedom to determine who they want to be and attempt to choose a “best” career path from a wide range of possible options [22]. As such, they tend to engage in a cognitive state of thinking about and reflecting on the identity options they have given up (“the roads not taken”), which may continue to influence their current work and career outcomes [24].

To address these gaps and make an original contribution, in this study, we introduce the recently developed cognitive phenomenon of individuals dwelling on their forgone professional identities (termed “forgone identity dwelling (FID)”) [24] and aim to explore whether and how FID affects perceived employability. The construct of FID was defined as reflecting upon an alternative professional “road” that one could have formally taken but decided or was forced to forgo [24]. Dwelling on a forgone professional identity that is not part of one’s current identity structure can still affect one’s current life in important ways [22]. For example, the initial studies of FID in the work domain have found that FID can have a real impact on employees’ work-related attitudes and behaviors within organizations [24,25]. Given the theoretically broad effects of forgone identities on many facets of personal and professional functioning (e.g., individual affect, cognition, and behavior) [22], repetitive thoughts about “who someone could have been in the professional field” may serve as an important motivational factor influencing individuals’ proactive career behaviors and career sustainability in flexible modern careers [4,26], which warrants empirical research attention. Gaining insight into the potential impact of FID on perceived employability not only contributes to the inclusion of an increasingly prevalent career phenomenon in employability research, but also provides practical guidance to employees and organizations on how to translate employees’ unanswered career motives and goals into productivity.

Based on self-regulation theory, we propose a proactive self-regulatory mechanism through which FID enhances perceived employability. Self-regulation theory suggests that people’s self-regulation starts from a perceived discrepancy between the current state and the desired state (goal), which prompts them to allocate their energy and resources to work proactively toward the desired goal and further leads to goal attainment outcomes [27,28,29,30]. We argue that FID can create such a discrepancy between one’s current and unfulfilled desired state, leading employees to engage in a proactive response to approach their career desires in the form of career crafting (i.e., the proactive behaviors people take to self-manage their careers and achieve a person–career fit) [31], thereby increasing their perceived employability. Furthermore, drawing on self-regulation theory [29,32], we examine a person’s characteristic as a moderator, helping to identify who is more likely to engage in career crafting after experiencing FID, leading to distal career benefits. Specifically, we argue that people’s self-regulatory processes and outcomes following FID may differ based on their needs and strategies for self-regulation (i.e., regulatory focus) [33]. People with a high promotion focus care more about ideals, aspirations, and growth [34]. Thus, they are more likely to perceive the potential positive possibilities associated with “the road not taken”, which may lead them to proactively respond to FID by performing career crafting behaviors.

To sum up, we established a moderated mediation model to examine the mediating effect of career crafting in the relationship between FID and perceived employability, as well as the moderating effect of promotion focus (see Figure 1). As such, our study makes three significant contributions. First, we contribute to the literature on employability and sustainable careers by suggesting that FID is an important predictor of perceived employability. Adding to past studies that have primarily focused on the role of classic individual agentic factors in predicting employability [9,13,15], we examine individuals’ dwelling on forgone identity options as a cognitive strategy that enhances perceived employability. Thus, we respond to the recent call for research to incorporate relevant new drivers into the nomological network of employability [14]. Second, we identify career crafting as an important mediator. Scholars have emphasized the need to broaden the theoretical frameworks used to fully elucidate the process of how predictors affect employability [14]. Drawing on self-regulation theory, which has rarely been used in employability research, we propose a proactive self-regulatory mechanism that underlies the relationship between FID and perceived employability, thus providing further insight in this regard. In doing so, we also extend the literature on FID by identifying its career implications for the first time. While previous research has examined the effects of FID on work-related outcomes [24,25], our study investigates its indirect effect on a crucial sustainable career outcome (i.e., perceived employability) through career crafting. Third, by identifying promotion focus as a boundary condition, this study extends the research on the personal factors of the influences of FID on sustainable career outcomes.

2. Theory and Hypotheses

2.1. FID and Perceived Employability

In contemporary careers characterized by unpredictable and ever-changing career paths and increasingly unexpected shocks that threaten individual career development [4,26], an individual’s own employability is viewed as a new form of employment security and an indicator of career sustainability [14]. In this study, we focus on perceived employability [35,36], which is defined as individuals’ perceptions of their chances of obtaining and maintaining employment within the present employer (i.e., internal employability) or in the external labor market (i.e., external employability). Perceived employability reflects individuals’ evaluations of their longer-term employment prospects over the course of their careers, beyond the job security within the current organization. Thus, the development of employability is inherently consistent with the idea of promoting career sustainability, characterized by productive, healthy, and happy careers [4,7].

2.1.1. Self-Regulation Theory

We draw on self-regulation theory to examine the role of FID in increasing employees’ career crafting and, subsequently, their perceived employability, contingent on their promotion regulatory focus. Self-regulation theory is a meta-theory that explains the motivational process through which individuals strive for goals or standards [27,28,30]. Specifically, goal pursuit information provided by learning experiences allows individuals to assess the discrepancy between the current and desired state, thus stimulating individuals’ self-regulation of their physical, cognitive, and motivational states and triggering them to actively engage in various goal-directed actions aimed at reducing goal discrepancy, which in turn could contribute to their performance and goal attainment [27,28,29,30]. Moreover, self-regulation theory acknowledges that people’s experiences of self-regulation vary and that personal factors can shape their self-regulatory processes and outcomes in response to learning experiences in goal pursuit [29,32].

As such, dwelling on a forgone professional identity may facilitate a perceived discrepancy between one’s current state and an unfulfilled desired state [23], which triggers a proactive career self-regulatory process (i.e., career crafting) in relation to the positive perceptions of future career goal attainment (i.e., perceived employability).

2.1.2. FID as Predictor of Perceived Employability

The Forgone Identity Dwelling (FID) construct was developed to examine identity dwelling with respect to forgone professional identity [24]. The construct of forgone professional identity was built on the concepts of professional identity (i.e., being a member of an occupation as a self-definition) [37] and counterfactual thinking (i.e., thoughts in the form of what might have been) [38]. It reflects who people could have been in the occupational domain if different career choices had been made at past key decision points [23]. Obodaru’s (2012, 2017) qualitative work found that the majority of her participants from a variety of industries tended to wonder about their “roads not taken” and seek various strategies to keep these forgone identities salient in their current lives, as these identities are always linked to people’s unfulfilled values and goals, unrealized potential, and dreams for the future [22,23]. Thus, forgone professional identity provides a useful context for examining identity dwelling, namely, the cognitive act of thinking about one’s particular identity in a circular and repetitive manner [39]. Specifically, Burgess et al. (2022) applied identity dwelling to the context of forgone professional identity, further developing the construct of forgone identity dwelling (FID) [24]. FID assesses the extent to which individuals think about and reflect on the alternative occupational selves that they could have possessed. Their research also showed that FID would continue to shape employees’ important work outcomes in terms of job crafting and withdrawal and helping behaviors through the affective mechanism of longing.

In this study, we draw on self-regulation theory to propose that perceived employability is a positive self-regulatory outcome stemming from FID. An employee’s salient forgone identity always encompasses some of the values and goals that they aspire to but are not being realized in their current career path [23]. Thus, it can serve as a standard of comparison for one’s current self, similar to other forms of self-comparative standards (e.g., possible selves and ideal selves) [40,41]. According to self-regulation theory, dwelling on forgone identity may act as an important motivational force that triggers self-regulation. Employees can take proactive approaches to continuously monitor and evaluate their current progress toward their career desires and adjust their career goal pursuit strategies, leading to positive career outcomes (in our case, perceived employability).

More specifically, when confronted with FID, employees may not passively react to the status quo (e.g., be trapped in persistent negative emotions) but rather invest time and effort in seeking various strategies to bring the forgone identity to life. For instance, they may craft their work and leisure time to include activities and interactions that enact this identity [23] or engage in career imagination [16]. They may also build social networks and explore alternative opportunities in the labor market [9,42] and participate in various forms of learning and skill development activities [7,19]. Hence, employees with salient forgone professional identities are more self-defined and motivated and may display stronger beliefs and expectations about their longer-term happiness and their employment potential within and outside their current organization [22,43]. While not directly testing the relationship, previous research corroborates this assumption that dwelling on important forgone professional identity, always associated with one’s unanswered values and goals, may enhance one’s perception of their future employment potential. For example, scholars indicate that discrepancies between how people are and how they would like to be can be drivers of successful employability development [43,44]. Based on the above arguments and in line with self-regulation theory, we propose the following:

Hypothesis 1.

FID has a positive effect on perceived employability.

2.2. The Mediating Effect of Career Crafting in the Relationship Between FID and Perceived Employability

As modern careers have become more dynamic, individuals change organizations and jobs more frequently and proactively craft their career paths to develop meaningful work [31,45]. Building on an integration of research on proactive career behaviors [46], job crafting [47], and career competencies [48], the concept of career crafting was introduced to reflect a general approach to career-oriented proactive behaviors aimed at enhancing person–career fit. It would contribute to important career outcomes such as career success and employability (for a description of how career crafting differs from related constructs, see Tims and Akkermans, 2020) [31]. According to Tims and Akkermans (2020), career crafting consists of a cognitive component (i.e., proactive career reflection) and a behavioral component (i.e., proactive career construction), both of which refer to proactive self-management behaviors [31]. Specifically, proactive career reflection refers to proactive behaviors related to assessing and gaining insight into one’s career-related goals, motivations, and values, and proactive career construction concerns proactive behaviors focused on career-related networking, goal setting and striving, and self-profiling [45]. Drawing on self-regulation theory [27,28,29], we propose that career crafting serves as a mediator in the positive impact of FID on employees’ perceived employability.

To elaborate, we first argue that FID triggers a proactive behavioral self-regulatory process characterized by career crafting. Consistent with the career self-regulation literature [49], we suggest that FID, which facilitates employees’ perceptions of a discrepancy between the current and unfulfilled desired state in the professional domain, can be viewed as a valuable career-related learning experience. Hence, FID can motivate employees to make sense of their past identity constructions and adopt career management strategies to move toward their career desires [29,50], thus promoting career crafting. More specifically, dwelling on the counterfactuals of a forgone career path can serve as a learning opportunity that encourages employees to reflect deeply on their career-related choices and provides important self- and career knowledge (e.g., an awareness of one’s career interests, aspirations, and strengths and weaknesses) [22,51], thereby enhancing proactive career reflection. Furthermore, to reduce the perceived discrepancy induced by FID, employees tend to engage in proactive behaviors to achieve a career that they find fulfilling, such as exploring new career skills and opportunities, maintaining and expanding professional networks, and striving for career goals [2,45,52], thereby enhancing their proactive career construction.

Indeed, identity research also suggests that the desire to hold a self can strongly motivate individuals to perform goal-directed behaviors [41]. Since an unanswered forgone identity can contribute to the realization of the negative aspects in one’s current work life and a desired future that one wants to approach, it can increase proactive behaviors aimed at making changes in one’s career [22]. Consistently, previous studies have shown that FID can lead employees to proactively self-manage their work and careers by engaging in job crafting or voluntarily changing their current job or occupation [22,24]. Based on the above arguments and findings, we expect that FID can positively influence employees’ career crafting to improve long-term person–career fit in the contemporary world of work.

Moreover, we draw on self-regulation theory [27,28,29] to propose that career crafting positively influences perceived employability. Specifically, employees who engage in proactive career self-regulatory strategies (i.e., career crafting) have the motivation and ability to cope with career transitions across their lifespan and manage their own careers in desired directions [26,43], which enables them to achieve favorable career outcomes [1,8]. Indeed, career crafting reflects an effective form of proactive career management in a time when individuals’ career pathways are becoming flexible and nonlinear through a series of decisions and choices [26,31]. Through proactive career reflection, employees can look at their past occupational choice experiences and gain important insights on how to continuously explore their skills, competencies, and aspirations for sustainable career development [51,53]. This process helps them develop confidence and expectations about their future career success and employment potential [43,50]. Furthermore, through proactive career construction, employees can obtain access to new career information and influential people in their desired occupational directions, create additional career development chances, and gain valuable career resources and support [52,54], which helps them achieve career goals and improve their employability [2,31]. Indeed, a large body of empirical studies have demonstrated that employees’ proactive self-managing behaviors in their jobs and careers, such as expanding job resources, challenging job demands [55,56], and crafting opportunities for professional development [57], proactive career behaviors [58], and career crafting [53], are positively related to their perceived employability. Based on the above, we expect career crafting to have a positive effect on perceived employability.

Combining this prediction with our expected impact of FID on career crafting, we further argue that FID can trigger a career self-regulatory process characterized by proactively reflecting on and constructing one’s career (i.e., career crafting), which in turn contributes to a positive evaluation of employment potential. Therefore, we propose that career crafting serves as a mediator between FID and perceived employability.

Hypothesis 2.

Career crafting mediates the positive effect of FID on perceived employability.

2.3. The Moderating Effect of Promotion Regulatory Focus

We have argued that FID can motivate employees to engage in effective career goal pursuit behaviors (i.e., career crafting) that lead to a favorable career outcome (i.e., perceived employability). However, a question remains: under what conditions are these desirable outcomes of FID more likely to occur? Based on self-regulation theory and the regulatory focus literature, we argue that employees’ self-regulatory focus, which captures their needs, strategies, and psychological situations during self-regulation [34,59], may play a critical role. Self-regulation theory suggests that individual differences shape people’s self-regulatory processes and outcomes [29,32]. In our case, we propose that an employee’s promotion regulatory focus, characterized by a need for growth and goal striving, makes it more likely that FID will trigger a proactive self-regulatory pathway in the form of career crafting and thus contribute to perceived employability.

Specifically, the regulatory focus literature suggests that people with different regulatory foci have different perceptions of and responses to a self-discrepancy between the current and desired state [33,40]. Since employees high in promotion focus are more concerned with positive outcomes (e.g., ideals, aspirations, and advancement) and seek learning opportunities and resource growth [34], they are more likely to engage in career deliberations, see the potential career possibilities inherent in a forgone option associated with unrealized goals and potential, and actively construct their careers in their desired directions through proactive behaviors [53,60]. In addition, career crafting is consistent with a high promotion focus: it directs employees to be problem-focused with growth-based goals and helps them maximize their potential gains in forgone identities and improve their person–career fit [31,34]. Thus, there is a regulatory fit (i.e., the fit between people’s goals and how they pursue them) [61] between promotion focus and career crafting that encourages employees high in promotion focus to advance their careers through proactive behaviors in response to FID. Indeed, previous research has suggested that a person’s promotion focus plays a critical role in determining whether a proactive path is used in response to identity dynamics. For example, Wang et al., (2024) showed that people high in promotion focus were more likely to engage in approach crafting after experiencing identity threat [60]. Based on the above, we propose the following:

Hypothesis 3.

Promotion focus moderates the positive effect of FID on career crafting, such that the effect is stronger for employees with a higher promotion focus.

Combining this prediction with our expected indirect effect of FID on perceived employability through career crafting, we further draw on self-regulation theory to propose a conditional indirect effect. According to previous analyses, people differ in their experiences of self-regulation and they tend to self-regulate their behaviors in ways that fit their goals and needs [29,32,33,61]. Previous research has suggested that a person’s promotion focus can determine for whom a proactive response is more likely to be taken in the context of identity dynamics, leading to further favorable performance [60]. Similarly, our study argues that, by altering the extent to which FID affects the proactive self-regulatory process, promotion focus helps reveal for whom FID is more likely to be transferred to employability, via the mediating role of career crafting. Hence, we propose the following:

Hypothesis 4.

Promotion focus moderates the positive indirect effect of FID on perceived employability through career crafting, such that the indirect effect is stronger for employees with a higher promotion focus.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Participants and Procedures

To recruit working adults across different industries, occupations, and organizations, we collected three-wave data through the authors’ alumni networks at several large universities in China. The data collection process lasted from September to November 2023. The participants willing to take part in our study were asked to sign consent forms and complete online questionnaires after being informed of the purpose of the study. All the surveys were sent via WeChat 8.0.46, a widely used messaging application in China (see Qin et al., 2020, for a recent study using WeChat for data collection) [62]. To ensure data quality, we used identification codes to match the three waves of the surveys and to keep the responses confidential. In line with previous research [24], each of the three waves was separated by three weeks. All the participants were paid CNY 5 (about USD 0.71) per survey.

At Time 1, a total of 661 participants agreed to take part in our study and reported their levels of FID, regulatory focus, and demographic information. At Time 2, we invited the participants to report their career crafting behaviors. We received 563 valid answers. At Time 3, the participants assessed their perceived employability. After excluding unmatched responses and participants who indicated that they did not have a salient forgone professional identity, we obtained a final sample of 435 participants (response rate = 65.8%). The 435 participants completed all the survey questions with no missing data. A total of 37% of the participants were male and 70.6% had a bachelor’s degree. The average age was 26.38 years (SD = 2.88) and the average job tenure was 2.53 years (SD = 1.88). They worked mainly in technical/professional (33.3%), clerical (28.7%), managerial (11.3%), and commercial and service (9.2%) job positions. Response analyses revealed that no significant differences emerged between those who completed all three waves and those who did not in terms of our study variables at T1, i.e., FID (t = −0.37, p = 0.71) and promotion focus (t = 0.28, p = 0.78).

3.2. Measures

All the measures used in the current study have been used and validated in previous research. To ensure semantic equivalence, all the items originally developed in English were translated into Chinese using a back-translation procedure [63]. We also conducted a pre-survey of 30 MBA students, and none of the participants were confused when answering the questionnaire.

3.2.1. Forgone Identity Dwelling (FID)

At T1, FID was measured using the scale developed by Burgess et al. (2022) [24]. To effectively measure FID, Burgess et al. (2022) first created a prompt to identify participants’ most salient forgone (alternative) professional identity. The prompt clearly interpreted the connotation of forgone professional identity as an individual’s “road not taken” and asked the participants to describe the occupation, job, or position they might have had if a key career-related decision point had gone another way. The participants were then asked to rate on a three-item scale the frequency with which they thought about such an identity. All the items began, “Regarding the possibility of being your alternative identity, how often do you…”, with anchors ranging from 1 = almost never to 5 = almost always. A sample item is “…reflect on how things would have been different?” Burgess et al. (2022) reported good internal reliability and structural validity for this scale [24]. Their study also supported its content validity by showing that the items fit FID’s definition well and that the items fit better with the definition of FID than with the definitions of two related constructs: disappointment and daydreaming [24]. The reliability and validity of this scale have also been supported in the Chinese context [25]. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.88 in our sample.

3.2.2. Career Crafting

At T2, career crafting was measured via the career crafting scale developed by Tims and Akkermans (2020) [31]. This scale consists of a proactive career reflection dimension (4 items; e.g., “I explore the possibilities available to me to continue developing myself”) and a proactive career construction dimension (4 items; e.g., “I deliberately show others what I am good at”). The participants rated these items on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = almost never, 5 = almost always). Tims and Akkermans (2020) reported good structural and discriminant validity for this scale and supported its incremental validity by demonstrating that career crafting added variance in predicting perceived employability over and above organizational career management [31]. The reliability and validity of this scale in the Chinese context were confirmed in a recent study [53]. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.80 in our sample.

3.2.3. Perceived Employability

At T3, perceived employability was measured using the eleven-item scale developed by Rothwell and Arnold (2007) [35]. This scale consists of an internal employability dimension (four items; e.g., “I am aware of the opportunities arising in this organization even if they are different to what I do now”) and an external employability dimension (seven items; e.g., “I could easily retrain to make myself more employable elsewhere”). The participants rated these items on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). This scale has been used extensively to capture individuals’ self-perceived employability, providing support for its reliability and validity [42,58]. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.84 in this study.

3.2.4. Promotion Regulatory Focus

At T1, the participants responded to the promotion focus subscale (nine items) of the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire developed by Lockwood et al. (2002) [64]. A sample item is “I often think about the person I would ideally like to be in the future”. The participants rated these items on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). This scale has been widely used in previous research to measure promotion focus [25] and has been validated in the Chinese context [65], which supports its reliability and validity. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.87 in our sample.

3.2.5. Control Variables

We controlled for several demographic covariates (i.e., gender, age, education, and job tenure) because previous studies have suggested that they are associated with employees’ career crafting and perceived employability [45,53]. Analyses showed that the result pattern remained the same regardless of whether we controlled for these covariates.

3.3. Analytic Strategy

We used path analysis to examine our hypothesized model with Mplus 8.3 software. All the relationships were included in the same path model and tested in an integrated manner [66], and 5000 bootstraps with bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals were used to test the mediation and moderated mediation hypotheses [67]. First, we conducted confirmatory factor analyses to ensure the fit of the measurement model. Second, we tested the mediation model with career crafting as a mediator between FID and perceived employability. Finally, we examined the first-stage moderated mediation model, allowing promotion focus to act as a moderator in the first stage of the mediated relationship.

4. Results

4.1. Descriptive Statistics and Correlations

Table 1. Descriptive statistics, reliabilities, and correlations.

Variables	M	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1. Gender	0.63	0.48	-
2. Age	26.38	2.88	−0.11 *	−
3. Tenure	2.53	1.88	−0.09	0.44 **	−
4. Education	3.15	0.57	0.02	0.14 **	−0.10 *	−
5. FID	2.93	0.86	−0.01	−0.18 **	0.02	−0.20 **	(0.88)
6. Career crafting	3.38	0.53	−0.09	−0.10 *	0.01	0.04	0.38 **	(0.80)
7. PE	4.38	0.56	−0.02	−0.02	0.07	−0.06	0.30 **	0.53 **	(0.84)
8. Promotion focus	5.43	0.82	−0.01	−0.04	0.03	−0.03	0.23 **	0.38 **	0.45 **	(0.87)

Note. N = 435. M = mean. FID = forgone identity dwelling. PE = perceived employability. Gender (0 = male, 1 = female); education (1 = high school or below; 2 = associate degree; 3 = bachelor’s degree; 4 = master’s degree; 5 = doctoral degree). Cronbach’s alphas are reported in parentheses along the diagonal. * p < 0.05. ** p < 0.01.

presents the descriptive statistics, scale reliabilities, and correlations. In line with our predictions, FID was positively related to perceived employability (γ = 0.30, p < 0.01) and career crafting (γ = 0.38, p < 0.01). Career crafting was positively related to perceived employability (γ = 0.53, p < 0.01). In addition, we calculated the variance inflation factor (VIF) for each studied variable, and the values varied from 1.03 to 1.36 (smaller than 10), demonstrating no multicollinearity problem [68].

4.2. Preliminary Analyses

Prior to hypothesis testing, we conducted a set of confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) to examine the validity of our measures.

Table 2. Results of confirmatory factor analyses.

Model	χ2	df	χ2/df	RMSEA	CFI	TLI	SRMR
A: Four-factor Model a	756.90 ***	424	1.79	0.04	0.92	0.91	0.05
B: Three-factor Model b	1309.74 ***	429	3.05	0.07	0.79	0.77	0.06
C: Two-factor Model c	1854.47 ***	433	4.28	0.09	0.66	0.63	0.08
D: One-factor Model d	2450.35 ***	434	5.65	0.10	0.51	0.48	0.10

Note. ^a Model A is the hypothesized model which includes FID, career crafting, perceived employability, and promotion focus. ^b Mode B combines FID and career crafting. ^c Model C combines FID, career crafting, and perceived employability. ^d Model D combines all the four factors. *** p < 0.001.

presents the results of the CFAs. The results indicated that the hypothesized four-factor (i.e., FID, career crafting, perceived employability, and promotion focus) measurement model fitted the data well: χ² (df = 424) = 756.90; comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.92; Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = 0.91; root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.04; and standardized root mean squared residual (SRMR) = 0.05. All the items loaded significantly on their intended factors. We then compared the four-factor model with three alternative models (see Table 2). The model fit indices showed that the three-factor model with the FID and career crafting items combined (χ² (df = 429) = 1309.74; CFI = 0.79; TLI = 0.77; RMSEA = 0.07; SRMR = 0.06), the two-factor model with the FID, career crafting, and perceived employability items combined (χ² (df = 433) = 1854.47; CFI = 0.66; TLI = 0.63; RMSEA = 0.09; SRMR = 0.08), and the one-factor model with all the items combined (χ² (df = 434) = 2450.35; CFI = 0.51; TLI = 0.48; RMSEA = 0.10; SRMR = 0.10) provided a poor fit to the data. These results support the distinctiveness of our study variables.

Moreover, we also calculated the composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE) of each construct.

Table 3. Results of factor loadings, composite reliability, and average variance extracted.

Constructs	Items	Loadings	CR	AVE
Forgone identity dwelling	FID_1	0.80	0.88	0.72
	FID_2	0.87
	FID_3	0.87
Career crafting	CC_1	0.68	0.90	0.52
	CC_2	0.74
	CC_3	0.76
	CC_4	0.73
	CC_5	0.68
	CC_6	0.69
	CC_7	0.71
	CC_8	0.78
Promotion focus	PF_1	0.80	0.91	0.54
	PF_2	0.81
	PF_3	0.80
	PF_4	0.76
	PF_5	0.75
	PF_6	0.71
	PF_7	0.51
	PF_8	0.69
	PF_9	0.73
Perceived employability	PE_1	0.69	0.92	0.51
	PE_2	0.70
	PE_3	0.68
	PE_4	0.70
	PE_5	0.68
	PE_6	0.71
	PE_7	0.71
	PE_8	0.72
	PE_9	0.74
	PE_10	0.74
	PE_11	0.76

Note. CR = composite reliability. AVE = average variance extracted. FID = forgone identity dwelling. CC = career crafting. PF = promotion focus. PE = perceived employability.

provides an overview of the factor loadings, CR, and AVE in our current study. The results demonstrated that all the standardized factor loadings were greater than 0.50. All the CR values were above the suggested cut-off value of 0.70 [69] and all the AVE values were above 0.50 [70], confirming that the constructs showed a sufficient convergent validity.

4.3. Hypothesis Testing

Table 4. Path-modeling results for Model 1 (mediation).

	Career Crafting		Perceived Employability
	Estimate	SE	Estimate	SE
Constant	2.70 ***	0.29	2.30 ***	0.30
Control variables
Gender	−0.11 *	0.05	0.05	0.05
Age	−0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01
Tenure	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01
Education	0.12 **	0.04	−0.06	0.04
Independent variable
Forgone identity dwelling	0.24 ***	0.03	0.07 *	0.03
Mediator
Career crafting			0.52 ***	0.05
R2	0.17 ***		0.30 ***

Note. Unstandardized coefficients are presented. * p < 0.05. ** p < 0.01. *** p < 0.001.

presents the path-modeling results for our hypothesized mediation model. Hypotheses 1 and 2 predicted that FID would have a positive effect on perceived employability and that career crafting would mediate this relationship. To examine these hypotheses, we first set a mediation model (Model 1). As shown in Table 4, the direct effects of FID on perceived employability (β = 0.07; SE = 0.03; p < 0.05) and career crafting (β = 0.24; SE = 0.03; p < 0.001) were positively significant. In addition, career crafting was also positively related to perceived employability (β = 0.52; SE = 0.05; p < 0.001). To address the asymmetric distribution of the indirect effects, we used the bootstrap method to construct confidence intervals for the indirect effects [67]. The results showed that, with 5,000 bootstraps, FID was significantly indirectly related to perceived employability through career crafting (estimate = 0.13, 95% CI [0.09, 0.17]). Thus, Hypotheses 1 and 2 were supported. Since the indirect effect of FID on perceived employability through career crafting was significant, and the direct effect of FID on perceived employability was also significant, career crafting partially mediated the relationship between FID and perceived employability. In addition, it is worth noting that Model 1 had a relatively low explanatory capacity of 17% (R² = 0.17) of the variability in career crafting, implying that there may be possible additional predictors (e.g., potential moderators) in play.

Table 5. Path-modeling results for Model 2 (moderated mediation).

	Career Crafting		Perceived Employability
	Estimate	SE	Estimate	SE
Constant	3.41 ***	0.24	2.83 ***	0.28
Control variables
Gender	−0.10 *	0.05	0.04	0.05
Age	−0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01
Tenure	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01
Education	0.11 *	0.04	−0.05	0.04
Independent variables
Forgone identity dwelling	0.20 ***	0.03	0.05	0.03
Promotion focus	0.21 ***	0.03	0.19 ***	0.03
Forgone identity dwelling × Promotion focus	0.07 *	0.03	−0.01	0.03
Mediator
Career crafting			0.42 ***	0.05
R2	0.27 ***		0.37 ***

Note. Unstandardized coefficients are presented. * p < 0.05. *** p < 0.001.

presents the path-modeling results for the moderated mediation model. Hypothesis 3 predicted that promotion focus would moderate the effect of FID on career crafting. To test this hypothesis, we set Model 2 on the basis of Model 1, wherein we added promotion focus and the interaction term between FID and promotion focus to the model. Table 5 shows that the interaction term between FID and promotion focus was significantly related to career crafting (β = 0.07; SE = 0.03; p < 0.05). As shown in Figure 2, simple slope tests indicated that the relationship between FID and career crafting was stronger when promotion focus was high (1 SD above the mean; β = 0.26; SE = 0.04; p < 0.001) but was significantly weaker when promotion focus was low (1 SD below the mean; β = 0.14; SE = 0.04; p < 0.001), supporting Hypothesis 3.

We then tested the moderated mediation hypothesis (Hypothesis 4) with 5000 bootstraps. The results (see

Table 6. Indirect and conditional indirect effects based on 5,000 bootstraps.

Mediation Effect	Indirect Effect
	Estimate	95% CI
Forgone identity dwelling to perceived employability via career crafting	0.13	[0.09, 0.17]
Moderated Mediation Effect	Conditional Indirect Effect
	Estimate	95% CI
Promotion focus
High (+1 SD)	0.11	[0.07, 0.16]
Low (−1 SD)	0.06	[0.03, 0.10]
Difference (high–low)	0.05	[0.01, 0.09]

Note. CI = confidence interval. Indirect effect is significant if the confidence interval excludes zero.

) showed that promotion focus moderated the indirect effect of FID on perceived employability via career crafting. Specifically, the indirect relationship was stronger when promotion focus was high (estimate = 0.11; 95% CI [0.07, 0.16]) but was significantly weaker when promotion focus was low (estimate = 0.06; 95% CI [0.03, 0.10]). The difference between these indirect relations was also significant (estimate = 0.05; 95% CI [0.01, 0.09]). Thus, Hypothesis 4 was supported.

5. Discussion

Using a self-regulatory perspective, we theorized that forgone identity dwelling (FID) can have a positive indirect effect on employees’ perceived employability through the mediating role of career crafting. In addition, we proposed that the employees’ promotion regulatory focus would function as an important boundary condition. The findings of our study confirmed this theoretical model. First, the results showed that FID increased perceived employability through an increase in career crafting, supporting the proposed proactive career self-regulatory pathway. Moreover, as expected, this effect was contingent on the employees’ promotion focus, such that the effect was stronger for those high in promotion focus.

5.1. Theoretical Implications

This study offers several important contributions to the literature on employability and sustainable careers, FID, and career self-regulation. First, this study extends the literature on employability and sustainable careers by demonstrating that dwelling on past career-related choices and forgone identities affects subsequent perceived employability, which is an important element of career sustainability [4,14]. Previous studies have focused heavily on the role of individuals’ demographic characteristics, human and social capital, and career competencies in influencing their perceived employability [1,9,14]. In addition to these well-established antecedents, a few studies have also identified the impact of identity on employability development. However, this research has only focused on the positive effects of a clear self-concept and identity that individuals have chosen and committed to or envisioned for the future [19,21,44]. Our findings extend this research by showing that thinking about and reflecting on the identity options that individuals have forgone, which is an increasingly prevalent experience in modern careers [23], can serve as an individual cognitive strategy that enhances perceived employability. As scholars have emphasized the need to deepen the understanding of existing concepts in employability research, as well as to explore the potential role of relevant new concepts [14], our study contributes to the employability literature by identifying an important but neglected identity-based antecedent.

Second, we make a further contribution by adopting a self-regulatory perspective [27,28,29,30] to uncover the influence mechanism underlying the relationship between FID and perceived employability. This perspective is underexplored in the literature on the associations between predictors and perceived employability, as most of this research has used theoretical perspectives such as human capital, the conservation of resources, and career construction theory to examine the direct relationships between them [1,13,14]. In the current study, we proposed and found that FID may evoke an adaptive behavioral self-regulatory process characterized by actively reflecting on one’s career motivation and career path and constructing one’s career through various activities (i.e., career crafting), which further contributes to career goal attainment (i.e., perceived employability). By demonstrating effective career self-regulation through the mediating effect of career proactivity, we respond to calls for a fresh and more nuanced understanding of the relationships between potential predictors and perceived employability [14,15]. We also add to the career self-regulation literature by suggesting that dwelling on forgone professional identities may elicit proactive behavioral self-regulatory responses aimed at improving person–career fit, leading to favorable career self-regulatory outcomes [29,32,49].

In doing so, we also contribute to the literature on FID by examining, for the first time, the important consequences of FID in the career domain. As past studies have only examined the effects of FID on a limited set of employees’ work-related attitudes and behaviors (e.g., work engagement, job crafting, withdrawal behaviors, and helping behaviors) [24,25], our study goes beyond focusing on the implications of FID for one’s current job to also look at its role over the course of one’s career. Specifically, our study proposed and found that FID can influence employees’ perceived employability and thus career sustainability through career crafting, thereby extending the nomological network of FID to include long-term and far-reaching career-related outcomes.

Third, our findings imply that the boundary condition—in our case, the employees’ promotion regulatory focus—plays a critical role in influencing how employees respond to FID and further explains when and for whom the benefit of FID on perceived employability is more or less likely to occur. We thus extend the regulatory focus literature into a new realm by showing that employees high in promotion focus are more likely to react to FID in an adaptive manner and then translate FID into positive career outcomes. These results suggest that researchers should consider such individual factors, and perhaps contextual factors as well, to provide a detailed picture of how and when FID may help employees’ work and career outcomes [24].

5.2. Practical Implications

This study also provides several important practical insights. First, our findings suggest that thinking about and dwelling on a professional path that could have been is a powerful mechanism for increasing one’s perceived employability. While previous studies have recognized the role of the formation and enactment of a clear vocational self in enhancing perceived employability [19,21,44], our findings indicate that the identity options that employees have forgone should also be considered when supporting their long-term career development and sustainability. We therefore suggest that employees make appropriate use of the “roads not taken” that are meaningful to them in their pursuit of greater employability. By identifying the unfulfilled values and unrealized potential associated with their forgone identities [23], employees may view such identities as important career-related motivators that encourage them to continuously take proactive approaches throughout their careers (e.g., updating their professional skills, expanding their social networks, and seeking additional career opportunities). This process may help increase their chances of future career success and employment in the internal and external labor market.

Second, we found that career crafting is a functional response to FID that could help employees translate FID to perceived employability. Career proactivity has been widely recognized as a relevant concept for employees to increase their motivation, manage their resources, and improve their career success and perceived employability [2,53,58]. Our study shows that engaging in career crafting, such as proactively reflecting on and constructing one’s career, is an effective approach to responding to FID. As the work environment and supervisors have been shown to influence employees’ proactive behaviors [31], organizations and managers could create supportive work conditions and provide effective career interventions to help employees improve the fit between their jobs or careers and their personal interests and strengths and thrive in their careers. Specifically, managers are advised to communicate with employees to understand their “roads not taken” and use this information to identify potential task and role expansions that are consistent with employees’ forgone identities [24]. Furthermore, managers can empower and support employees to craft their careers by providing a more flexible and autonomous environment and by conducting career development workshops that enhance employees’ self-management skills and abilities [60], which ultimately helps to improve employees’ performance and employability.

Finally, our findings on the moderating role of promotion regulatory focus also provide some practical implications. We found that employees high in promotion focus are more likely to engage in effective career self-regulatory behaviors in response to FID and thus achieve desirable career outcomes. Hence, we suggest that managers and counselors could use practices and interventions to train employees to see the opportunities embedded in adverse circumstances, recognize the benefits of career crafting, and then increase their situational promotion focus and adaptive responses [60]. In addition, HR professionals can identify and hire candidates who demonstrate a high level of promotion focus during the recruitment process.

5.3. Limitations and Future Research Directions

Despite its several contributions, our research has limitations. First, although our collection of data at three time points reduces concerns about common method variance (CMV), and the statistical analyses indicated that CMV was not a serious threat to our results, the self-report nature of our measures is worth noting. The use of self-report measures in this study is partially warranted because all of our study variables are highly correlated with self-perceptions and evaluations that cannot be reliably reported by others. Nevertheless, future studies may seek more objective indicators to measure the variables in order to cross-validate our current findings, for example by examining whether our results can also be replicated when objective employability measures are used [71]. Second, our time-lagged research design is somewhat less effective in inferring causal relationships between variables. Thus, we recommend that future research uses a longitudinal design to capture the dynamic effects of FID on employability over time [14] or use an experimental design to further strengthen the validity of our conclusions. Third, the majority of our respondents were young professionals (with an average age of 26.38 years and an average job tenure of 2.53 years). Given that FID is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon for workers in modern careers [22,23], we encourage future research to examine the generalizability of our findings using diverse samples with more extensive work experience.

Fourth, our study theorized the behavioral self-regulatory process as an explanatory mechanism between FID and perceived employability. Other forms of systems, such as affect and cognition, may also operate to shape people’s experiences of self-regulation [30]. Thus, we encourage future research to examine additional underlying mechanisms between FID and career outcomes, particularly affective processes during self-regulation (e.g., career distress) [49], which have been largely neglected [24]. Moreover, because FID research indicates that the effects of FID can be complicated and calls for exploring both the bright and dark sides of its consequences [24], future studies could examine the positive and negative pathways of FID’s effects on career outcomes by incorporating multiple self-regulatory processes.

Finally, we note that our moderation hypotheses focused on a person’s regulatory focus in goal pursuit (i.e., promotion focus). It is possible that additional personal and contextual factors may influence employees’ proactive responses when experiencing FID, further affecting their perceived employability. In terms of other potential personal moderators, for example, prior research has suggested that a person’s dispositional self-control shapes their self-regulation, and employees with an internal locus of control are more likely to exhibit positive work attitudes and behaviors following FID [24]. In addition, the conceptual model of sustainable careers includes a range of contextual factors [4], such as work-related contexts (e.g., work climate and employer support) and career shocks. These contextual factors may influence employees’ ability and motivation to craft their jobs or careers under certain circumstances and thus potentially serve as boundary conditions for the effects of FID [31]. In short, future studies should continue to examine these potential personal and contextual factors to further our understanding of the boundary conditions that influence the translation of FID into positive career outcomes.

6. Conclusions

To date, little is known about whether and how forgone identity dwelling (FID) can affect employees’ employability and career sustainability. This study addresses these issues by identifying the positive impact of FID on perceived employability, a crucial indicator of career sustainability, in a sample of Chinese employees. Specifically, we draw on a self-regulatory perspective to examine the influence mechanism underlying this relationship and identify the boundary condition by testing a proactive career self-regulation model. Our findings confirmed that FID can induce the behavioral self-regulatory state of career crafting and, subsequently, increase perceived employability. Moreover, the effects were stronger for employees high in promotion focus.

These valuable findings highlight the role of thinking about and dwelling on “the road not taken” in employees’ career behaviors and perceived employability. In doing so, this study makes important contributions to the development of sustainable and successful careers in the modern world of work, suggesting that employees should fully utilize the experience of dwelling on forgone identity options as a meaningful strategy to enhance their future career success and employment potential. More specifically, our research extends the existing literature by adding the recently developed concept of FID to the employability debate, examining for the first time the important career-related consequences of FID, and employing a novel theoretical lens (i.e., self-regulation theory) to uncover a proactive self-regulation mechanism underlying the relationship between FID and perceived employability. The results of this study also enrich the application of self-regulation theory in the areas of career development and employability. Additionally, our findings provide important practical guidance for organizations and managers to help employees proactively advance their careers in response to FID experiences to ensure their long-term employability.

By linking FID to employees’ career sustainability, such as perceived employability, we hope that the current study sparks future research on employability in contemporary career settings. For example, future research could delve into additional mechanisms and boundary conditions through which the nuanced effects of FID on important sustainable career outcomes operate.