Drawing on Career Construction Theory, the authors tested whether emotional intelligence operates as an internal resource that fuels later career outcomes. Using path analysis within a cross-lagged panel design, they examined directional relationships while statistically controlling for the temporal stability of each variable and for demographic factors, a design choice intended to address the possibility that associations merely reflect pre-existing differences.

The results showed that emotional intelligence measured at the first wave significantly predicted career adaptability at the second wave. Career adaptability, in turn, was positively associated with proactive career behaviors, which ultimately predicted higher subjective career success at the third wave. In other words, the data fit a serial sequence rather than a simple direct link.

The hypothesized serial mediation pathway was statistically significant (β = 0.010, p < .01), indicating a small but reliable indirect effect that persisted after the stability and demographic controls were taken into account. The authors interpret this as longitudinal evidence that internal emotional resources form a foundation for adaptive capacities and proactive actions that are essential for long-term career satisfaction.

Because subjective career success was measured by self-report, the findings concern perceived career satisfaction rather than objective indicators such as salary or promotion. The three-month intervals support the proposed temporal ordering, but the study cannot establish causation with certainty, and the indirect effect size was modest. The sample consisted of working professionals, so generalization to other populations remains an open question. Even so, the study adds unusually rigorous longitudinal support for a chain long proposed in career theory, linking how people understand and manage emotions to how flexibly and actively they steer their working lives.

Subject of Research: A longitudinal three-wave study of the serial mediation pathway from emotional intelligence to subjective career success via career adaptability and proactive behaviors

Article Title: A three-wave serial mediation model: linking emotional intelligence to subjective career success via career adaptability and proactive behaviors

Article References: Doğanülkü, H. A., & Duru, H. (2026). A three-wave serial mediation model: linking emotional intelligence to subjective career success via career adaptability and proactive behaviors. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05770-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05770-1

Keywords: emotional intelligence, career adaptability, proactive behaviors, subjective career success, Career Construction Theory, serial mediation, longitudinal study, cross-lagged panel design, BMC Psychology, occupational psychology, three-wave, serial

The proportion of the total association accounted for by career adaptability, approximately 51.3%, is a substantively meaningful figure rather than merely a statistical one. It suggests that roughly half of the reason students who perceive stronger career guidance also report stronger transition readiness can be traced to the way guidance appears to cultivate adaptability itself. The remaining half operates through other channels that were not modelled, which could include practical mechanisms such as exposure to employer networks, access to labour-market information, development of job-search skills, or simply the reassurance students derive from knowing their institution takes their futures seriously. The authors are careful not to overclaim about these unmeasured channels, and their restraint is appropriate given the cross-sectional design, which captures a single point in time and cannot establish the direction of influence between variables.

The choice of Career Construction Theory as the primary interpretive lens deserves attention from readers unfamiliar with the framework. Developed by Mark Savickas, the theory proposes that individuals build their careers through a lifelong process of imposing meaning on vocational experiences, and that this process depends on a set of psychological resources known collectively as career adaptability. These resources are typically described as comprising four dimensions: concern about the future, control over one’s vocational situation, curiosity about possible paths, and confidence in pursuing chosen goals. Although the published abstract does not detail how the adaptability measure was subdivided, the theory’s application in a Nigerian vocational-education context is notable because most prior tests of the framework have been conducted in North America, Europe, and East Asia, where institutional structures for career support differ considerably from those in Sub-Saharan African public universities. Finding associations consistent with the theory in South-East Nigeria therefore extends the geographic and cultural reach of the evidence base, though the authors appropriately frame this as consistency rather than proof.

The complementary discussion of Social Cognitive Career Theory introduces an important conceptual distinction. That framework, associated with Robert Lent and Steven Brown, emphasises self-efficacy, the belief in one’s capability to perform specific vocational tasks, and outcome expectations, the anticipated consequences of performing those tasks, as the principal drivers of career-related behaviour. The authors acknowledge that these mechanisms were not directly measured in their study, which is an honest limitation. It means that while the data are compatible with a social-cognitive interpretation, in which career guidance might boost students’ efficacy beliefs and thereby their readiness, the study cannot confirm that such a pathway exists. Readers should therefore treat the two theoretical frameworks as offering different but potentially compatible accounts of the same observed pattern, with the mediation through adaptability being the only pathway actually tested.

The sample of 178 final-year students drawn from four public universities represents a multi-institutional design, which the authors identify as a strength given the scarcity of such evidence in Nigerian and Sub-Saharan African contexts. Multi-site sampling reduces the risk that findings reflect the peculiarities of a single institution, such as an unusually well-funded counselling centre or a particularly engaged faculty. At the same time, the sample size imposes practical limits on the complexity of the statistical models that can be estimated with stability, and the authors’ use of adapted multi-item questionnaire measures suggests an effort to balance contextual relevance with psychometric rigour. The reporting of effect sizes, including the R-squared value of 0.260 for the adaptability model, indicates that perceived career guidance accounts for roughly a quarter of the variability in students’ adaptability, leaving the majority attributable to other influences such as personal experiences, family background, peer networks, or individual differences in personality.

The direct association between perceived career guidance and transition readiness, while statistically significant, is notably smaller than the association between adaptability and readiness. The standardised coefficient of 0.19 for guidance contrasts with 0.38 for adaptability, suggesting that students’ internal psychological resources may be more tightly bound to their sense of readiness than the external support they receive. This pattern carries a practical implication: institutional career services may be most effective not merely by providing information directly, but by fostering the adaptive capacities that students then carry into their job search. However, the cross-sectional design means this interpretation remains provisional, since it is equally plausible that students who already feel ready for employment perceive their university’s guidance more favourably, or that some unmeasured third factor influences both perceptions and readiness.

The ethical procedures described in the study reflect standard expectations for human-subjects research. Approval was obtained from the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, serving as lead-institution clearance for the multi-site study, and written informed consent was secured from all participants. The voluntary nature of participation and the right to withdraw without penalty are consistent with the principles of the Helsinki Declaration. These procedural details, while administrative, matter for the credibility of findings in educational research, where surveys of students by their own instructors or institutions can raise subtle concerns about coercion or social desirability in responses.

The publication of this work as open access under a Creative Commons Attribution licence means that the full text, including the supplementary material, is freely available to practitioners, policymakers, and researchers across the region and beyond. This accessibility is particularly relevant for the study’s stated audiences of educational psychologists, career counsellors, higher education institutions, and policymakers interested in graduate employability within Nigerian vocational programmes. Open licensing permits adaptation of the findings into local guidance documents, training materials, or policy briefs without permission barriers, provided appropriate credit is given.

The timing of the research within the Nigerian higher-education landscape is worth considering. Final-year vocational and technical education students in public universities have in recent years experienced disruptions to academic calendars, including industrial action affecting lecturers, which has been documented in related Nigerian research on student readiness. Such disruptions can compress the time available for career preparation activities and may heighten the importance of whatever guidance students do receive. Although the present study does not examine strike effects directly, its focus on final-year students captures a population whose transition window is inherently narrow and whose perceptions of institutional support are formed under these conditions.

Vocational and technical education occupies a distinctive position within Nigerian higher education because it is explicitly oriented toward practical skills and employment outcomes, in contrast to more academically oriented degree programmes. This orientation makes the school-to-work transition a central rather than peripheral concern for VTE students and their institutions. The finding that perceived career guidance is associated with readiness in this population suggests that even within programmes already designed for employability, the quality of career support as students experience it remains consequential. It also implies that the psychological resources measured by career adaptability are relevant even for students whose technical training might be assumed to speak for itself in the labour market.

The authors’ declaration of no competing interests and no specific funding indicates that the research was conducted without commercial or financial pressures that might shape the framing of results. The corresponding authorship arrangement, with correspondence directed to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, reflects the collaborative structure of the team, which spans two institutions in Ebonyi and Enugu States. The early-release status of the article, shared to provide faster access to peer-reviewed accepted research, means that the version available is citable with a permanent DOI but remains subject to further editorial refinement before the final Version of Record replaces it.

For readers seeking to situate this study within the wider literature, the related content highlighted by the publisher includes work on artificial intelligence-driven career guidance comparing Nigerian undergraduate and postgraduate perceptions, retrospective assessment of academic and psychological readiness of final-year technical and vocational education students after the 2022 Academic Staff Union of Universities strike, and research linking career construction styles to career adaptability among university students through canonical correlation analysis. Together, these publications indicate a growing body of Nigerian scholarship examining how institutional support, psychological resources, and external disruptions interact to shape student outcomes, within which the present study adds multi-institutional structural evidence on the guidance-adaptability-readiness pathway.

The keywords attached to the article, including perceived university career guidance, career adaptability, school-to-work transition readiness, vocational and technical education, graduate employability, and career construction theory, signal its intended discoverability across both psychological and educational audiences. For practitioners, the most actionable reading of the findings is that career guidance provision appears associated with student outcomes both directly and through the cultivation of adaptability, implying that guidance programmes might be evaluated not only by the services they deliver but by the adaptive capacities they develop in students. For researchers, the study offers a template for testing theoretical mediation pathways in contexts where such evidence has been scarce, while its limitations regarding cross-sectional inference and unmeasured social-cognitive mechanisms mark clear directions for future longitudinal and multi-method work.

Subject of Research: Perceived university career guidance, career adaptability, and school-to-work transition readiness among vocational and technical education students in South-East Nigeria

Article Title: Perceived university career guidance, career adaptability, and school-to-work transition readiness among vocational and technical education students in South-East Nigeria

Article References: Okpara, C. M., Okonkwo, C. C., Igu, O. F., Mong, I. K., Ojemuyide, C. C., & Onwumere, M. (2026). Perceived university career guidance, career adaptability, and school-to-work transition readiness among vocational and technical education students in South-East Nigeria. Discover Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-026-00917-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44202-026-00917-y

Keywords: career guidance, career adaptability, school-to-work transition, vocational education, Nigeria, graduate employability, structural equation modelling, career construction theory, higher education, psychology, Perceived, university

The study was grounded in an integrated theoretical framework that combines transition shock theory with career construction theory. Transition shock describes the disorientation that occurs when nursing students cross the boundary into independent practice, a period in which academic knowledge collides with the raw demands of clinical reality. Career construction theory, developed within vocational psychology, frames individuals as active authors of their own working lives, building identity and meaning through the stories they tell about their roles. By fusing these two perspectives, the researchers were able to examine adaptation as a dual process: novices must simultaneously endure the stress of transition and actively construct a professional identity that fits the operating room’s distinctive culture.

Methodologically, the team chose a descriptive phenomenological design, an approach specifically engineered to capture lived experience in its own terms. Between May and November 2024, the researchers conducted semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with 15 newly graduated nurses working in the operating rooms of a tertiary hospital in Northeast China. Participants were recruited through purposive sampling, a technique in which researchers deliberately select individuals who have direct experience of the phenomenon under investigation, and recruitment continued until data saturation was reached, meaning that additional interviews no longer produced new themes. The interview transcripts were then analyzed using Colaizzi’s seven-step method, a rigorous qualitative procedure that moves from reading the raw accounts to extracting significant statements, formulating meanings, clustering themes, and finally validating the resulting structure with participants themselves.

What emerged from the analysis was a six-factor map of the forces acting on these young professionals. The first factor, individual characteristics, encompasses the psychological resources each nurse brings through the door: resilience, self-efficacy, and the capacity for emotional regulation. The second, professional competence development, reflects the steep technical learning curve of perioperative practice, from instrument handling and sterile technique to anticipating the needs of surgeons mid-procedure. The third factor, professional identity and role perception, captures how novices understand what it means to be an operating room nurse rather than a general ward nurse, a distinction that carries real consequences for motivation and belonging.

The remaining three factors are largely environmental, and this is where the study makes its most distinctive contribution. Workplace-specific stressors and risks include the high stakes of surgical care, the demand for absolute precision, and the exposure to occupational hazards ranging from sharps injuries to radiation. Workplace interpersonal relationships describe the dense web of surgeons, anesthesiologists, senior nurses, and technicians on whom novices depend, and whose approval often determines whether a newcomer feels welcomed or invisible. Finally, the organizational environment, including staffing, scheduling, and institutional culture, forms the backdrop against which all other factors play out. The authors describe the operating room through three evocative properties: its material density, the sheer concentration of instruments, equipment, and technology; its authority visibility, the way surgical hierarchies are on open display; and its spatial confinement, the physical isolation of a sealed suite cut off from the wider hospital.

These properties matter because they change the adaptation trajectory itself. A new nurse on a general medical ward can retreat to a corridor, consult a colleague on another unit, or gradually build confidence across a diffuse set of tasks. In the operating room, the novice is embedded in a tightly choreographed team from the first day, where errors are immediately visible and where the emotional temperature is set by the surgeon at the table. The study suggests that this combination of density, hierarchy, and confinement amplifies transition shock, making the operating room a qualitatively different adaptation challenge rather than simply a harder version of ward nursing.

Yet the research is not merely a catalogue of difficulties. Alongside the six influencing factors, the analysis identified four key categories of improvement measures that nurses deploy to build adaptability. The first is self-adjustment, the internal work of reframing setbacks, managing anxiety, and setting incremental goals. The second is proactive communication and skill enhancement, in which novices deliberately seek feedback, ask questions despite the risk of appearing inexperienced, and invest extra hours in mastering technical routines. The third and fourth categories involve building support networks, both informal peer relationships and mentoring bonds, and perceiving organizational support through structured training programs that signal the institution’s investment in their growth.

The interplay between these individual strategies and organizational structures is the study’s central practical lesson. Adaptation, the authors conclude, relies not only on personal psychological resources and proactive identity construction but also on a multi-layered, healthy work ecosystem. Systematic training gives novices a scaffold for competence; supportive interpersonal relationships buffer the emotional shocks of early practice; and an inclusive organizational culture legitimizes the act of asking for help. Where any of these layers is missing, the burden falls disproportionately on the individual nurse, and the risk of burnout, dissatisfaction, and eventual attrition rises sharply.

The findings arrive at a moment when nursing workforce stability has become a global concern. Health systems worldwide are contending with shortages and high turnover among early-career nurses, and the first years of practice are consistently identified as the period of greatest vulnerability. Most existing research on transition shock has focused on general ward settings, leaving specialty environments like the operating room understudied despite their demanding nature. By systematically identifying the specific challenges and coping mechanisms of newly recruited operating room nurses, the Shengjing Hospital team provides an empirical foundation for designing targeted interventions, from structured orientation curricula to mentorship schemes tailored to the surgical suite’s unique social dynamics.

For nursing administrators, the message is direct: cultivating supportive environments is not a soft perk but a strategic necessity for retaining the next generation of perioperative staff. For the nurses themselves, the study offers a validating insight, that the struggle of the first year in the operating room is a shared, describable, and manageable experience rather than a private failure. The transition from student to independent practitioner will always be demanding, but with the right ecosystem of training, relationships, and culture, the operating room can become a place where new nurses do not merely endure their adaptation but actively construct the professional identities that will carry them through long careers.

Subject of Research: Career adaptability and transition experiences of newly graduated nurses in operating room settings

Article Title: Career adaptability of newly graduated nurses in operating room: a qualitative study

Article References: Wen, L., Liu, Z., Lu, C., Shang, Y., Ma, C., Fu, J., Shi, R., & Wu, H. (2026). Career adaptability of newly graduated nurses in operating room: a qualitative study. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-026-05499-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12912-026-05499-7

Keywords: career adaptability, newly graduated nurses, operating room, qualitative study, transition shock, professional identity, nursing workforce, phenomenology, healthy work environment, nursing education, perioperative nursing, organizational support

The study, published open access in Discover Psychology, is grounded in positive psychology rather than in the deficit-focused tradition that has long dominated occupational research. Instead of asking what breaks accountants under pressure, the team asked what builds them up. Their framework drew on four candidate strengths: proactivity, the dispositional tendency to anticipate change and act on it before being forced to; self-esteem, the overall evaluative judgment a person makes of their own worth; goal orientation, the motivational pattern that directs effort toward learning and mastery; and occupational prestige, the social standing attached to the profession itself. Career adaptability, the outcome variable, is a construct from career construction theory describing the resources people use to face occupational transitions, encompassing concern about the future, control over one’s path, curiosity about possibilities, and confidence in one’s abilities.

Methodologically, the researchers employed a quantitative cross-sectional survey design, distributing validated questionnaires to professional accountants in Indonesia and analyzing the resulting data with Structural Equation Modeling using partial least squares, commonly abbreviated as PLS-SEM. This technique is well suited to studies that test theoretically derived relationships among latent psychological constructs, because it estimates measurement models and structural paths simultaneously while tolerating moderately complex models. The sample of 149 respondents, though modest by big-data standards, is appropriate for PLS-SEM, which performs reliably with samples of this size when construct reliability and validity criteria are met. The research protocol received ethical approval from the Health Research Ethics Committee of Hasanuddin University’s Faculty of Dentistry in December 2023, and all participants gave informed consent before taking part.

The headline finding is strikingly clean: proactive personality and goal orientation significantly predict career adaptability, and they do so both directly and indirectly through self-esteem. In other words, accountants who habitually scan the horizon for change and take initiative tend to be more adaptable, and part of that advantage flows through a stronger sense of self-worth. Goal-oriented professionals, those motivated to learn, master new skills, and pursue objectives, show the same pattern. The indirect pathway matters because it reveals a psychological mechanism: proactivity and goal pursuit do not merely generate more adaptive behavior; they also nourish the self-esteem that gives professionals the confidence to confront uncertainty in the first place.

Not every candidate strength earned its place in the final model. Occupational prestige, the external social status of the accounting profession, did not emerge as a significant predictor of career adaptability in the way the internal psychological dispositions did. This null result carries its own message for the era of Society 5.0. It suggests that adaptability is not something conferred from outside by a prestigious title or a respected professional designation. It is built from within, from the dispositions and motivational habits that individuals carry into their work. For a profession whose identity has historically been anchored in certification, regulation, and social standing, the finding is a quiet but pointed challenge: the credentials that once guaranteed relevance cannot substitute for the psychological resources that digital transformation now demands.

Why should this matter to anyone outside Indonesian accounting? Because the accounting profession functions as a kind of canary in the coal mine for knowledge work generally. Accountants were among the first professionals to see routine cognitive tasks, bookkeeping, reconciliation, basic compliance, automated at scale, and their experience previews what is coming for lawyers, engineers, analysts, and administrators worldwide. Society 5.0, a concept originating in Japan’s national science and technology policy, envisions a human-centered society that merges cyberspace and physical space through technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and the Internet of Things. In such a society, the professionals who thrive will not be those who compete with machines at machine tasks, but those who can continuously redefine their human contribution. Career adaptability is, in this sense, the psychological currency of the coming decades.

The theoretical contribution of the study lies in extending positive psychology into professional contexts undergoing digital disruption. Much of the existing literature on technological change in workplaces has emphasized stress, job insecurity, and technophobia, framing automation as a threat to be mitigated. By demonstrating that psychological strengths foster resilience, adaptability, and flourishing under precisely these conditions, the Indonesian team reframes the narrative. Disruption, on this reading, is not inherently corrosive; it is an opportunity structure, and the individuals best positioned to exploit it are those with proactive dispositions, learning-oriented motivation, and healthy self-esteem. This aligns with the broader career construction literature, in which adaptability resources are understood as psychological capacities that can be assessed, and crucially, cultivated.

The practical implications reach two audiences at once. For organizations, the findings argue for strength-based interventions rather than deficit-based training. Instead of merely teaching accountants to operate new software, firms could design development programs that reward initiative, set stretch goals, and provide experiences that build genuine self-esteem through mastery. Mentoring schemes, rotational assignments, and innovation projects all offer venues in which proactivity and goal orientation can be exercised and strengthened. For accounting education, the message is equally direct. Curricula built solely on technical standards risk producing graduates who are technically competent but psychologically fragile in the face of change. Embedding adaptability training, goal-setting practice, and self-efficacy development into professional education could produce a generation of accountants who treat each new wave of automation as a career opportunity rather than an existential threat.

The study also carries implications for lifelong adaptability as a policy concern. Indonesia, like many emerging economies, is investing heavily in digital infrastructure and aspires to position its workforce for the Society 5.0 economy. If adaptability depends on internal psychological strengths, then national upskilling programs that focus exclusively on digital literacy may miss half the equation. Complementing technical training with psychological capacity building, fostering proactivity, mastery motivation, and self-worth, could yield workforces that are not only skilled but genuinely resilient. The finding that self-esteem mediates the relationship between strengths and adaptability suggests a concrete lever: interventions that successfully raise authentic self-esteem among professionals may amplify the adaptive benefits of their existing proactivity and goal orientation.

Certain caveats frame the scope of these conclusions. The data are cross-sectional, drawn from a single national professional context, and self-reported, so causal claims and generalizations to other professions and cultures must be made cautiously. The authors themselves position the work as an extension of psychological theory into professional settings, and future longitudinal designs could track how adaptability develops as automation deepens. Yet even with those limits, the study’s core insight travels well. In an era when machines absorb the routine and humans are left with the ambiguous, the creative, and the relational, the decisive professional asset is not what you know at any given moment but how readily you can change what you know. For 149 Indonesian accountants at least, the capacity to change begins with a proactive spirit, a goal-directed mind, and the quiet confidence that comes from believing you are capable of meeting whatever comes next.

Subject of Research: Psychological strengths predicting career adaptability among professional accountants undergoing digital transformation

Article Title: Psychological strengths and career adaptability among Indonesian professional accountants in the era of Society 5.0

Article References: Pontoh, G. T., Mediaty, Ferdiansah, M. I., Baja, H. K., Mardiana, Y. R., Nurtanio, I., Jermias, J., Halim, L. V., Christian, F., Ibrahim, E. C., Upa, V. A., & Hamzah, H. (2026). Psychological strengths and career adaptability among Indonesian professional accountants in the era of Society 5.0. Discover Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-026-00902-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44202-026-00902-5

Keywords: career adaptability, psychological strengths, proactive personality, self-esteem, goal orientation, Society 5.0, accounting profession, positive psychology, digital transformation, PLS-SEM, Indonesia, occupational psychology