Continuous Learning as a Key to Career Sustainability: A Moderated Mediation Model

Contemporary career sustainability increasingly depends on workers’ capacity to continuously develop their competencies and on organizations’ ability to support this process. Drawing on the sustainable career framework and Conservation of Resources theory, this study examines how career commitment translates into outcomes relevant to career sustainability and under which organizational conditions this process is strengthened. Specifically, we test the mediating role of continuous learning in the relationships between career commitment and subjective career success and work-role performance, as well as the moderating role of organizational career management. Data were collected through an online survey from 203 employees. The proposed moderated mediation model was tested through path analysis using robust maximum likelihood estimation and bootstrapping. Results showed that career commitment was both directly and indirectly associated with career success and work-role performance, with continuous learning mediating these relationships. Organizational career management moderated the relationship between career commitment and continuous learning, resulting in stronger conditional indirect effects at higher levels of organizational career management. These findings are consistent with continuous learning representing a potential developmental pathway linking individual career commitment with sustainable career outcomes and highlight organizational career management as an important contextual condition associated with the strength of this pathway. Organizations should therefore complement employees’ career motivation dynamics with formal and informal career-development practices that enable continuous learning and support sustainable career outcomes.