Occupational Future Time Perspective: A Meta-Analysis of Antecedents and Outcomes

Occupational future time perspective (OFTP) refers to employees’ perceptions of their future in the employment context. Based on lifespan and organizational psychology theories, we review research on OFTP and offer a meta-analysis of antecedents and outcomes of OFTP (K = 40 independent samples, N = 19,112 workers). Results show that OFTP is associated with individual characteristics and personal resources, including age (ρ = -0.55), job tenure (ρ = -0.23), organizational tenure (ρ = -0.25), educational level (ρ = 0.16), and self-rated physical health (ρ = 0.16), as well as job characteristics, like job autonomy (ρ = 0.22). Moreover, OFTP is related to important work outcomes, including job satisfaction (ρ = 0.28), organizational commitment (ρ = 0.41), work engagement (ρ = 0.22), retirement intentions (ρ = -0.37), and work continuance intentions (ρ = 0.16). OFTP is also related to task (ρ = 0.11) and contextual performance (ρ = 0.20). Additional analyses show that OFTP predicts job attitudes and work performance above and beyond the effects of another developmental regulation construct, selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) strategies. Overall, the findings of our meta-analysis suggest that OFTP is an important construct in the context of an aging workforce.