ABSTRACT
Vocational psychology is the basic science that supports career counseling—the applied practice of assisting individuals to choose and adjust to occupations and jobs. Historically, vocational psychology has focused on the adjustment of the individual to work, whereas industrial–organizational (I/O) psychology has focused on solving workplace problems to achieve efficient operations and profitability. However, I/O and vocational psychology and career counseling have overlapping interests in work satisfaction and success or performance. In the extant literature, satisfaction is assessed broadly (e.g., career satisfaction) or with specificity (e.g., satisfaction with pay). Research examining satisfaction also often includes related constructs such as well-being or even physical and psychological health. Performance or success is also a multifaceted outcome variable and is assessed in the literature both subjectively (e.g., supervisor ratings) and objectively (e.g., billable hours) and includes a range of behaviors from employee turnover intentions to salary increases. Satisfaction often lines up as the individual outcome variable and performance as the organizational outcome variable, as is the case in the Theory of Work Adjustment’s (TWA; Dawis & Lofquist, 1984) outcome variables of satisfaction (the individual) and satisfactoriness (the job or organization). Thus, articulating individual goals and organizational goals, and then translating those into congruent outcome behaviors, is essential for studying both satisfaction and performance. Three approaches—person–environment (P-E) fit, developmental, and social learning—have dominated the theoretical literature of vocational psychology. The P-E fit approach is the one that most clearly incorporates personality.
