Abstract:

As a frontier topic, calling has received extensive attention from scholars and practitioners in recent years. According to the flow of information through the different phases of a systematic review recommended by preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses statement, we used four steps including identification, screening, eligibility, and included, so as to search and filter the literature sample relevant to calling. First, using the keyword “calling”, we identified literature through Chinese databases of CNKI, VIP and Wanfang Database, and through English databases of Web of Science, ProQuest and EBSCO/host. Second, with respect to the literature identified from the initial search through database searching, we removed the duplicate literature between Chinese and English databases. Third, regarding the literature after duplicates removed, we assessed the obtained literature and excluded articles irrelevant to the fields of psychology and management for eligibility. Last, after reading the full text articles, we eliminated the literature unrelated to calling and deleted the literature irrelevant to its consequences, and fifty seven full text articles are included in quantitative synthesis as a sample of literature review on the theme of calling. We used VOSviewer to visual analyze the retained literature sample about the consequences of calling, and yielded two resultant views including network visualization and density visualization. Results of the network visualization reveal a four-cluster network. Cluster one is the “intra-occupational career processes and outcomes” and “career psychology and states” approach, and the crucial constructs are job performance, job satisfaction, and career commitment. Cluster two is the “career skills and capabilities” and “intra-occupational career processes and outcomes” approach, which contains the core constructs such as self-efficacy, outcome expectation, and career satisfaction. Cluster three is the “extra-occupational career processes and outcomes” approach, and the representative concepts are life meaning and life satisfaction. Cluster four is the “career psychology and states” and “intra-occupational career processes and outcomes” approach to calling, and the crucial constructs of this cluster are motivation and work engagement. In addition, the results of the density visualization demonstrate that the density of item "calling" is high compared with other items, indicating that it occupies a central position in the field of research related to its consequences. Integrating a calling model of career success and work as a calling model, with the results of literature visualization, we summarized three types of the calling consequences, including career psychology and states, career skills and capabilities, as well as career processes and outcomes. Our work also offers several limitations, which may help future researchers to extend this line of research. First, future research could concentrate on the potential negative impact of calling and focus on its double-edged sword effect, in order to provide a more comprehensive and dialectical explanation of the mechanism of calling, as well as reveal the potential costs of its negative effects. Second, it is interesting to analyze the cultural differences of calling and discuss its cross-cultural comparisons, so as to break the limitations of cultural backgrounds, and expand the study of calling in Chinese organizational contexts. Third, future studies should develop a team model of calling and extend the research level, and explore the team-level calling model according to the perspective of team pro-social motivation and social information processing theory. Fourth, the variations of calling and its dynamic model has not yet been sufficiently investigated, it is thus worth suggesting that future research should use the daily dairy study as an analytical tool to conduct in-depth analysis of perceived calling on a daily basis, in order to break the limitations of the static perspective of calling in previous studies and explore the daily changes brought about by daily perceived calling on its consequences.

Key words: career, calling, consequences, PRISMA statement