Redefining Workplace Integration: Socio-Economic Synergies in Adaptive Career Ecosystems and Stress Resilience – Institutional Innovation for Empowering Newcomers Through Social Capital and Human-Centric Automation

2.1 Career Construction Theory

The career construction theory responds to today’s rapidly changing and uncertain career development issues. Closely related to the characteristics of self-oriented and flexible strain, this theory emphasizes that the essence of individual career development is the dynamic process of pursuing the mutual adaptation between the individual self and the external world (Savickas, 2013). Since it was proposed, it has attracted keen attention and shown its strong academic vitality (Rudolph et al., 2017).

According to the theory of career construction, emphasizing the interaction and integration of people and the environment in their surroundings, adaptation is the optimal path for individual career development. Career environment differs from individual to individual, so does their perception of the external situation. Therefore, one’s career development is more like an interpretive story with the nature of personal biography, and different people have completely different specific construction content and construction results. The career adaptation model proposed by Savickas (2013) reveals that the individual achieves a career adaptation cross four factors: to prepare with internal motivation (adaptivity), to self-adjustment using psychological capital (adaptability), the implementation of active coping behavior (adapting), and finally realize the individual interaction with the environment (adaptation). Among these above, career adaptability is the core variable that links the orientation, behavior, and outcome of the adaptation process, and simultaneously, it is affected by external situational factors.

When new employees come up against work stress, they will be in a state of psychological tension (Strauss et al., 2012). Whether they can properly understand and resolve this stress is the most critical career development problem for these young rookies in the career transition stage (Chui et al., 2022).

2.2 Resource Conservation Theory

Resource conservation is one of the most cited theories in organizational behavior research for the past decades. It offers a reasonable and sufficient framework for individuals in the workplace, explaining cognitive behavior under the mechanism between stress and stressors correspondence (Halbesleben et al., 2014). The generation of stress is the result of individual cognition under the situational interaction. Stressor perception reflects the dynamic process of resource loss or gain. People’s coping behavior with stressors can be divided into defensive and preventive behavior (Hobfoll et al., 2018), which corresponds to the resource loss and resource gain mechanisms, respectively.

The conservation of resources suggests that individuals aim to acquire, protect, and maximize resources to reduce psychological distress and prevent burnout (Demerouti, 2025). Employees under the resource loss mechanism attributed work stress from work requirements or difficulty to resource consumption. Stress-driven people tend to protect their own resources and limit further loss by reducing positive behavior. However, the relation between loss and gain of the individual resource is a dynamic conversion, rather than a contradictory competition. The early resource gain or loss in work experience may affect people’s subsequent behavioral tendencies (Childs et al., 2024). Obviously, positive behavior requires additional resources, such as allocating energy and time to seek better solutions and solve problems (Liu & Yu, 2019). Individuals under the resource gain mechanism maintain an effective way of resource investment and accumulation, by searching for extra resources. On the one hand, it can make up for the current work demand-supply, preventing greater resource loss; on the other hand, it can buffer the future uncertainty, which may cause more stressors, and then build a more favorable future. The resource gain motivates people to implement more positive behaviors (Hobfoll et al., 2018). Therefore, the complex relationship between stress and positive behavior in the workplace still needs to be further tested by the dynamic diversification.

3.1 Work Stress and Career Adaptation of New Employees

Some scholars have carefully reviewed past studies and found that there are three relationships between work stress and performance: negative linear, positive linear, and inverted U nonlinear (Muse et al., 2003). The theoretical premise for the negative effect is that stress of any level leading to consumption of an individual’s time, energy and attention further hinders the actual work performance (Hon, 2013; Nurcholidah et al., 2023). A positive linear relation is exactly the opposite. Individuals have extra power to take the challenge and achieve better work performance (Hatton et al., 1995). The inverted U curve resembles the integration of the above two interpretations, because some stress is relatively “good” (positive linear), and the other stress is relatively “bad” (negative linear). Stress in the workplace will cause both physical and mental results (Deng et al., 2019; Podsakoff et al., 2007). Stressful work tasks are beneficial to personal value realization and ability improvement. But it varied across the strength and intensity level of the stressors (Demerouti, 2025). Some individuals may suffer from a certain critical stress (such as the performance criteria over the optimal incentive), and be defeated, ending up by inferior job performance (Liu & Yu, 2019). Some scholars have found that in the situation of Chinese enterprises, the stress caused by role ambiguity is negatively correlated with work performance, while the stress of role conflict has no significant impact on work performance (Wu et al., 2019).

Stressful individual in the workplace usually leads to anxiety, tension, fatigue and other feelings induced by the physical and mental stressors. Hindrance stressors such as role ambiguity and role conflict predict a range of negative attitudinal outcomes in the workplace, which is quite common in the context of young and new employees (Raub et al., 2021). According to the causal relationship of stressors-tension, there are challenge-related stressors and hindrance-related stressors on the basis of stressors attribute (Podsakoff et al., 2007). Challenge stressors may refer to high-intensity workload, time limit, work range, and responsibilities, which tend to be treated as development opportunities; hindering stressors are concerns about role ambiguity, organizational politics, and work safety, which tend to be viewed as barriers to personal growth and task completion (Wu et al., 2019). These two stressors significantly correlated with each other, but their effects are not equal. A study of public hospitals in China found that challenge stress was positively correlated with the performance of healthcare workers, and hindering stress was negatively correlated with performance (Deng et al., 2019).

However, successfully dealing with work stress is good for career growth momentum, such as effective treatment towards resource disposal, achieving the transition from the “outsider” to “insider” (Demerouti, 2025; Zhang & Li, 2016). To have a recognized performance is the first adaptation problem for each young rookie, so does human resource managers' general concerning topic (Ellis et al., 2017). The work stress that new employees face is complex, including both challenges and obstacles for personal growth (Deng et al., 2019), which may disturb for quite some time (Wu et al., 2019). Based on the conclusions of the existing literature and the characteristics of the stressors, the hypothesis is proposed as follows:

H1: Work stress is negatively predicted by the performance of the new employees.

3.2 Career Adaptability of New Rookies

Up to now, career adaptability has been fully verified as an indirect integrating mechanism of psycho-social capital acting on the interaction between individuals and the environment (Chen et al., 2020). From the initial theoretical constructs, there are three main explanations of career adaptability: the ability to deal with the difficulties caused by work changes (Savickas, 2013), the process of self-adjustment to solve new problems (Creed et al., 2009), and the self-orientation of career development problems in different scenarios (Lent & Brown, 2013). Kusyadi (2020) summarized the definition of career adaptability in different career scenes, which can help individuals to cope with various tasks, role changes, traumas, and commitment, predicting all possibilities of the future of the career.

Career adaptability, as one of the most important psychological resilience to adapt, recover, and maintain their power in the face of adversity or duress (Feng et al., 2024), is the core variable that connects individual’s motivation, behavior and behavioral outcomes, which revealing the process of career construction in various career stages and situations (Rudolph et al., 2017). This construct has some universal explanatory power across different cultural backgrounds and socio-occupational attributes (Rudolph et al., 2019). For example, career adaptability mediated Germans’ optimism and income level (Haenggli & Hirschi, 2020) and their proactive behavior and quit intention (Spurk et al., 2020). Adaptability resource mediated the relationship between active personality and career sustainability of full-time workers in India (Talluri, Schreurs & Uppal, 2022), and the relationship between the optimistic future orientation of Afghans during the COVID-19 pandemic (Green, Yıldırım & Jalal, 2023), and the relationship between work–family conflict, work stress and innovative work behavior among married female nurses in Indonesia (Nurcholidah et al., 2023), and the relationship between the proactivity of American employees, work involvement and their performance evaluation by supervisors (Haynie et al., 2020).

Similarly, in the Chinese context, the indirect mechanism of career adaptability in the work site has also received wide attention. Chang et al. (2023), using survey data from MBA and DBA, found that career adaptability partly mediated the positive orientation and subjective career success of these working students. In Hong Kong enterprises, working values of young employees indirectly affect their level of professional optimism through the intermediary mechanism of career adaptability (Chui et al., 2022). Career adaptability directly delivered the negative impact of work stress, further escalating into counterproductive behavior harmful to the organization (Yu et al., 2019). As the core element of individual career construction, the generation and accumulation of adaptability will be significantly influenced by specific personality or goal-achieving orientation. Individuals equipped with strong adaptability will tend to adopt positive coping behavior or decision-making style, so as to achieve better career development results (Rudolph et al., 2017; Savickas, 2013). It is career adaptability that plays an important intermediate role in the individual career construction of new employees.

3.3 The Role of the Future Work Self in the Process of New Employees’ Career Construction

The continuous upgrading of the economy and technology makes the social-professional world full of uncertainties, and people’s work values and career development patterns have changed accordingly. Compliance-related change and self-growth orientation become a prominent feature of individual career construction (Chui et al. 2022). Understanding your own needs, identifying possible opportunities, and predicting future developments are all critical to shaping the competitiveness of the job market (Guan et al., 2014) and career success (Chang et al., 2023). The self-concept of future orientation reflects a person’s expectations and aspirations for work (Strauss et al., 2012). Future work self represents a strong self-exploration motivation, in the individual's behavior for future expectations. Its clarity can be viewed as a reasonable expectation of future work degree, can significantly predict related career planning, vocational skills in development, and professional networking construction (Strauss et al., 2012).

A meta-analysis study reviews that future work self-predicted an individual’s career fitness level (Rudolph et al., 2017). A clear future direction can lead individuals to participate more actively in external environment interaction, so as to gain a more comprehensive and possible understanding of career development. According to career construction theory (Savickas, 2013), it is a cognitive and behavioral motivation that actively embraces adaptation, which helps individuals understand and eliminate adverse factors, to analyze and solve problems by actively accepting challenges (Guan et al., 2014; Strauss et al., 2012). In the study of Taber and Blankemeyer (2015), future work-self clarity positively predicted the career adaptability level and a series of active career development behaviors of college students.

General self-efficacy and proactivity will indirectly affect the career adaptability level of Chinese undergraduates through future work self (Chan & Chan, 2021). Guan et al. (2014) used an over-lag survey to investigate the job-searching behavior of college students, and found that the interaction between future work self and career adaptability predicted the job-searching efficiency, which further affected the results of job hunting. As for the workplace, Siu (2003) found that Confucian work values can regulate the negative stress effect of working people in Hong Kong, indicating that the stress-performance relationship is driven by internal motivation or value orientation. It is clear that positive coping strategies can reduce or cushion the negative effects of stress and help improve work performance (Haynie et al., 2020; Lu et al., 2010), while negative coping strategies can further aggravate the negative effects (Siu, 2003).

Future work self can be seen as an incentive to actively invest in resources to strive for additional valuable outcomes, which is quite in line with the logic of resource conservation theory (Hobfoll et al., 2018). For young people with a clear vision for the future, they will choose positive responses to stress, such as taking the initiative to explore various conditions related to the work site, seeking more useful resources or external support, adjusting to stress losses, pursuing a new work balance point (Ellis et al., 2017). On the contrary, those new members with cognitive ambiguity can only adopt a relatively conservative stress response, reducing blind waste of resources by stopping positive behavior and negative response to the cultivation of adaptability (Deng et al., 2019). What is more, fuzzy role identification may further lead to more physical and mental tension, which is likely to cause worse work performance (Wu et al., 2019). The hypothesis is proposed as:

H2: Future work self moderates the relationship between work stress and career adaptability of new employees.

As a combination of the first and second hypotheses, it finally put up a moderated mediation model among the study variables:

H3: Future work self moderates the mediating effect of career adaptability in the relationship between work stress and the performance of new employees.

In conclusion, the research framework of this article is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

The study framework diagram of this article.

4.1 Sample Selection and Data Collection

The study collected data using standardized measurements. The respondents came from a trainee project of a private company in southern China in August 2021. The research group contacted the Human Resource Management Center of the company in advance. After getting the consent of the responsible leader, purpose and data requirements of the research topic are all explained to the project managers. Some basic data of these trainees, including the basic information of overall new employees involved in this project, detailed arrangement schedule, regulation and rule in managing trainees and their evaluation system, etc. A total of 164 new employees as trainees were recruited, and the project lasted for 7 months. During this period, the trainees need to experience three weeks of lecturing study in the classroom and observation at sites, one week of group building activities and expected position application, and then enter the internship position for half a year by double selection. After the end of the project, the trainees who pass the performance appraisal will formally be assigned to their working departments and positions.

In the process of questionnaire design, the research group indicated in the instructions that “the survey data is only for academic use” and “the questionnaire filling results will be strictly confidential,” which were used to ease the participants’ concerns about the disclosure of personal information. The questionnaire was distributed by the members of the research group and guided to fill out and collect immediately. All participants provided informed consent prior to their participation in this study.

The data were collected in three stages: the first stage questionnaire included new employees’ self-reported gender, education level, first job or not and clarity of future work self, arranging in the concentrated learning at the initial stage of the project (mid-August 2021); The second stage questionnaire conducted information collection including the trainees’ self-reported job stress level and career adaptability, on a working day at the end of the first month (at the end of September 2021); The third stage information is collected after the project completion, getting the interns’ performance evaluation rating provided by the human resource management center (March 2022). Since the research group had gotten the roster of trainees in advance, the first two stages of the questionnaire were filled in with a small program on a smartphone, hiding the personal information. The trainees entered the sequence program through the WeChat group by the “working ID Number” to match the questionnaire link.

The survey lasted for more than half a year, and a total of 164 questionnaires were collected. According to the number of trainee ID, the research group matched the sample data of the three stages, and finally obtained 151 valid data, with a recovery rate of 92.1%. The basic statistics of the trainees are shown in Table 1.

1. Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

2. Ethical approval: This study was exempted from ethical approval by the Institutional Ethics Committee because it involved minimal risk and did not collect identifiable private information.

4.2 Measurement

All variables measured in this study used a mature scale suitable for the Chinese context, and a small range of pre-testing was conducted to ensure the effective preparation.

Future Work Self: A scale developed by Guan et al. (2014) is adapted from Strauss et al. (2012). The scale consists of four items, using a 5-point Likert rating, 1 representing “strongly disagree,” while 5 represents “strongly agree.” A sample is “in my mind, the work future I want to engage is very clear,” Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of 0.835.

Work stress: a Chinese translation from Motowidlo et al. (1986). The scale has 3 items, using 5-point Likert rating, 1 representing “strongly disagree,” while 5 representing “strongly agree.” A sample is “my work is extremely stressful,” Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of 0.896.

Career adaptability: A short form of the career adaptability scale by Maggiori et al. (2015) revised from Savickas (2013), using Hou et al. (2012). There are 12 questions in the scale, 5 points, 1 means “very no advantage,” 5 means “very advantage,” “I know the career choice I have to make,” Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of 0.869.

Performance evaluation: The standardized performance score provided by the company’s human resource management center is obtained, including both bonus points and deduction points. The former includes work ability, work attitude, group-think, and creative problem solving, while the latter includes attendance, discipline violations, and working errors. The maximum score was 98, and the minimum score was 62. The average performance score of all students was 82.6, and the standard deviation was 8.14.

4.3 Analytical Technique

Variables’ descriptive, correlation, and multiple linear regression were first used in SPSS22.0 to test the proposed hypothesis of the relationship among variables. The test of mediation and moderation effects using the Process program plugin developed by Hayes (2013), setting the confidence interval of the estimated effect size at the 95% level by random-sampling bootstrap up to 5,000 times.

4.4 Data Analysis

4.4.3 Hypothesis Test

As shown in Table 3, the regression model represents, respectively, explaining the direct effect and moderating effect and conditioned mediation effects of new employees.

Table 3

Pathway analysis of new employee performance

DV: Performance	M1	M2	M3
	B(SE)	B(SE)	CA-B(SE)	B(SE)	95%CI
Gender	−0.95 (1.33)	−0.15 (0.91)	−0.04 (0.73)	−0.15 (0.91)	−1.95 to 1.64
Educational level	−0.10 (0.93)	−0.22 (0.63)	−0.01 (0.05)	−0.22 (0.63)	−1.47 to 1.03
First job	−1.41 (1.58)	0.92 (1.09)	−0.16 (0.09)	0.92 (1.09)	−1.24 to 3.07
Work stress	−2.66**(0.76)	−1.09*(0.53)	−0.47*(0.18)	−1.09*(0.53)	−2.15 to −0.04
CA		11.15**(0.85)		11.15**(0.85)	9.46 to 12.83
FWS			−0.01 (0.19)
FWS × work stress			0.11**(0.05)
Low FWS			−0.18**(0.06)
High FWS			−0.02 (0.05)
CA with low FWS				−1.20**(0.60)	−3.13 to −0.69
CA with high FWS				−0.19 (0.82)	−1.79 to 1.43
R 2	0.08	0.58	0.38	0.57
F	3.20*	39.57**	14.65**	39.57**

Note: N = 151; Bootstraping = 5,000; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01.

In the direct effect model M1, work stress negatively predicted the performance rating score (B = −2.66, SE = 0.76, p < 0.01) when controlling the gender, education and previous work experience, supporting H1.

Next, the mediating effect model M2 is tested by the data. Career adaptability deliver some indirect effect from stress to work performance (ΔR ² = 0.50, F = 39.57, p < 0.01), supporting H2.

This was followed by examining the first-stage moderated mediation model M3. First, look at the moderating effect of self-clarity on future work stress and career adaptability. The interaction term product (FWS × work stress) has a significant positive impact on career adaptability (B = 0.11, SE = 0.05, p < 0.05, 95%CI = [0.01, 0.20], R ² = 0.38).

Furthermore, when the clarity level of future work self of new employees is low (less than 1 times standard deviation), there was a negative correlation between work stress and career adaptability (B = −0.18, SE = 0.06, p < 0.01, 95%CI = [−0.30, −0.06]), When the clarity level of future work self is high (above 1 times the standard deviation), there is no significant effect on the career adaptability (B = −0.02, SE = 0.05, p > 0.05 ns, 95%CI = [−0.12, 0.09]), The moderating effects are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

The moderating effect of future career self on career adaptability.

Finally, a first-stage conditioned mediating effect on performance rating score. Samples with lower clarity in future work self was a significant negative effect (B = −1.20, SE = 0.60, p < 0.01, 95%CI = [−3.13, −0.69]), while the higher group’s indirect effect was not significant (B = −0.19, SE = 0.82, p > 0.05, 95%CI = [−1.79, 1.43]). The career adaptability conveyed the effect between work stress and future work self interaction on performance ratings, with the indirect effect point estimated at 1.19 (SE = 0.64, R ² = 0.57). Results from 5,000 random sampling bootstrapping returned with a moderated mediation effect in 95% confidence interval estimates [0.03, 2.53] significantly excluding 0 point. At this point, hypothesis H3 is testified to be acceptable.

5.1 Study Summary

5.2 Management Insights

The organization should pay full attention to the work stress of new rookies. Performance has always been the main concern of human resource management, and results of the study show that the job performance level of new employees will be significantly affected by the initial stress of career adaptation (Ellis et al., 2017). The stress in the workplace is almost everywhere, especially for new rookies, and the organization’s mindset is critical. On the one hand, organizations should understand and tolerate the underperformance of new rookies. On the other hand, organizations also need to guide the attitudes and behaviors of new rookies in resolving the negative effects of stressors, helping them to deal with stress management at work by creating a warm climate (Yu et al., 2019) and a mutual interpersonal environment (Hon, 2013; Lee et al., 2021).

New employee orientation is typically a process that happens in a very limited time frame, but really effective way to impact work attitudes and performance over a long period. It has been testified that this favorable ratio between a short-term input and potentially much longer-term pay-offs that organizations to invest more resources into this crucial process (Raub et al., 2021). In terms of specific stress intervention, employers should help new rookies get familiar with the workplace as soon as possible, establish scientific and reasonable career planning, and encourage them to adopt positive coping to resolve difficulties in work (Deng et al., 2019). New rookies face prominent problems such as a lack of experience and vague roles. At this right moment, it would be a very strong support to the newcomers’ socialization, providing them with feedback information and encouragement(Lee & Jacobs, 2024). Only by caring for and supporting their growth from the perspective of young individuals’ needs, the organizations can effectively stabilize their pace and successfully overcome career adaptation (Silva et al., 2025; Zhang & Li, 2016). For example, some targeted projects of career growth counseling courses, senior mentor support, special stress monitoring and adjustment training, etc., these activities will help new rookies to resolve the stress encountered at work. These new people, by accepting this support, can more clearly control their future career development, and at the same time also will generate more commitment to the organization. It is a bilateral benefit, pursuing the “win–win” results between the individual and the organization.

5.3 Limitations

First, there are limitations in the variable measurement. The stress sources of new employees are complex, which may be a combination of challenging stress and hindering stress. This article adopts a relatively simple treatment and collects data with only a single dimension of the work stress scale. The future study can further examine the problems of career adaptation of new employees caused by stressors of different attributes. Secondly, the study did not consider the influence of organizational scenario factors on individual career construction. It is possible that some very critical explanations for effects will be neglected. Finally, personality types and different coping styles, such as positive or negative behaviors, can be considered to extend the research topic of new employees’ resolving stress, which may further refine the organizational intervention and help the career adaptation for new employees.