The success of a person’s career is influenced by their social environment (Ng et al., 2005), and individuals can obtain resources to promote job performance from social support. According to the conservation of resources theory, empathetic leadership, as a type of supportive leadership, is conducive to individual career adaptability and positive adaptive results. However, career construction theory does not detail how individuals acquire and use various resources. Therefore, this study draws on the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 2011), as it explains how individuals can use the resources they can access to promote the achievement of goals (Ocampo et al., 2018). According to the conservation of resources theory, individuals achieve valuable goals through conditional resources (supportive working relationships) and personal resources (key skills and personal characteristics). This study explains how empathetic leadership promotes innovative behavior based on career construction theory and conservation of resources theory.

We base our research model on career construction theory. In this model, empathetic leadership, as a type of adaptivity, can influence employees’ career adapting (innovative behavior) through their career adaptability. This construction process is influenced by situational factors. This study uses the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 2011) to explain this construction process. As a type of supportive leadership, empathetic leadership provides employees with resources that benefit their individual work through empathy. Specifically, employees can improve their career adaptability and obtain adaptability resources with the help of leaders. Employees with more resources can obtain additional resources through innovative behavior. Meanwhile, career construction theory points out that environmental factors are important factors that influence personal construction (Savickas and Porfeli, 2012). Uncertainty avoidance is a cultural value that individuals display in the environment. When individuals adopt different attitudes to influence individual innovation behavior in an uncertain environment, engaging leaders skilled in adjusting uncertainty in creative work can help overcome the high uncertainty avoidance faced by employees in innovation (Watts et al., 2020). Because empathic leadership can help employees with high uncertainty avoidance access support and resources, employees with high uncertainty avoidance are likely to rely more on empathetic leadership.

In the following hypothesis development, this study will supplement the explanation of the career construction model through conservation of resources theory, describing how empathetic leadership influences innovative behavior through career adaptability, and the moderating role of uncertainty avoidance.

Staff need support, understanding, and empathy in the workplace (Edmondson and Lei, 2014). Article has shown that emotional support can improve employees’ workplace outcomes (Yrie et al., 2003). Empathetic leadership, as exercised by an emotional support leader, means to an ability to recognize and comprehend the experiences of followers while providing emotional support to make others feel safe (Kock et al., 2019). Empathetic leadership proclaims if leaders can manage better when they know the emotional characteristics of their subordinates, express this understanding, and support them in dealing with these emotions. This makes followers will better about their work conditions, thereby improving their performance (Kock et al., 2019). Thus, empathetic leaders in the workplace foster a positive state among followers (Wibowo and Paramita, 2022) and themselves (Boyatzis et al., 2006).

Conservation of resources theory suggests that people have the motivation to strive toward obtaining and preserving resources (Hobfoll, 1998), and they must invest resources to prevent the loss of resources (Hobfoll, 2011). First, in providing employees with instructional support resources (Bani-Melhem et al., 2021), empathetic leaders attach great importance to the personal needs of employees (Kock et al., 2019) and even provide instruction resources when employees encounter problems. After employees receive the resources from the leaders, to obtain more resources and prevent resource loss, employees give full play to their resource advantages and improve their innovativeness through the resources provided by the leaders (Iqbal et al., 2020). In addition, people with more resources are more likely to obtain new resources (Hobfoll, 2011). By encouraging employees to express their ideas, leaders make followers more confident and reduce their fear of innovative behavior (Lee et al., 2020), thereby promoting innovative behaviors.

Second, empathetic leaders provide employees with emotional support resources (Bani-Melhem et al., 2021), and they integrate emotions into the communication process to express concern for employees (Mayfield and Mayfield, 2017a). This results in employees have a good sense about their work situation (Kock et al., 2019) and believing their leader as warm. This increased trust and positive affect among employees results in them developing new ideas and being more innovative to obtain more emotional resources from leaders (Hobfoll, 2011). Accordingly, we propose the hypothesis:

Career construction theory proposes a career construction model that explains the career-building process over a person’s life span through the relationship among adaptivity, adaptability, adapting, and adaptation dimensions. Career adaptivity is defined as a psychological feature, that is, be having the flexibility and willingness to adapt to facilitate proactive attempts to address responsibilities related to professional development as well as job transition and employment issues (Savickas and Porfeli, 2012). The psychological and social framework of career adaptability describes the tools people need to deal with expected and existing demands, changes, and traumas in their professional roles (Savickas, 1997). Career adapting (adapting responses) refers to behaviors involving changing career conditions and making career choices (Sverko and Babarovic, 2019). Career adaptation (adaptation results) is the condition realized through the career construction process, so it refers to career outcomes (Sverko and Babarovic, 2019). With respect to the use of career construction theory, academics categorize under career adaptability cognitive talents, fundamental personality traits, future orientation, dispositional positivity, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and career-related support (Rudolph et al., 2017a; Tokar et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2021). Adaptation preparation is expected to promote the development of career adaptability resources (Sverko and Babarovic, 2019). In turn, career adaptability resources can promote positive career adapting (Hirschi et al., 2015; Peng et al., 2021) and career adaptation (Rudolph et al., 2017b). Career construction theory points out that career adaptability, as a psychological resource, can help individuals cope with and solve unfamiliar and complex problems encountered in their careers. It consists of four main resources: concern (preparation for future careers), control (people’s perceived ability to manage their careers), curiosity (exploration of career opportunities), and confidence (determination to overcome career difficulties) (Savickas, 2002). Based on the career construction model and theory, this study constructs a mediation model for empathetic leadership (career adaptivity), career adaptability, and innovative behavior (career adapting).

In accordance with career construction theory and conservation of resources theory, leaders are regarded by employees through the lens of adaptivity in their search for career adaptability resources (Al-Ghazali, 2020; Lan and Chen, 2020), and employees can complete work tasks (career adapting) by utilizing adaptability resources. First, empathetic leaders support their subordinates by expressing empathy for them (Cornelis et al., 2013), and this active mood relationships makes employees feel that leaders respect them and consider their needs (Kock et al., 2019). This helps subordinates explore future needs and prepare for future career tasks (Al-Ghazali, 2020). Second, empathetic leaders enhance their ability to make career decisions, improve work skills and their sense of responsibility and control over work. Third, when empathetic leaders support subordinates (Kock et al., 2019), the latter use the tools supplied by leaders to adjust to changes in their careers and resolve issues at work (Savickas, 2005). Moreover, to obtain more support from leaders, employees will improve their ability to actively explore the environment and opportunities (Hobfoll, 2011). Fourth, the emotional support leaders offer increases trust between them and their subordinates (Mayfield and Mayfield, 2017c), creates a good working environment for employees (Kock et al., 2019), and boosts the subordinates’ confidence. These factors improve employees’ adaptability.

On the other hand, career adaptability recognized as a type of psychological resource (Savickas and Porfeli, 2012) boosts predict employees’ work behavior (career adapting) (Lan and Chen, 2020). Concern, control, curiosity, and confidence are the four critical resources via which career adaptability fosters innovative behavior. First, employees focus on the future, plan and prepare for their future careers, and develop new ideas and methods for innovation. Second, they do not mind taking chances when innovation fails since they feel in charge of the future. Third, they are curious about the future and dare to take risks and innovate. Fourth, they are full of confidence in their ability to solve innovation-related problems and get over career development challenges (Savickas, 2013). Therefore, career adaptability can help employees in channeling their self-regulation ability toward solving the unclear and complex problems they will encounter in their career (Savickas and Porfeli, 2012), and employees have more resources for implementing innovativeness (Hobfoll, 2011).

Thus, this study considers that empathetic leadership creates a good working environment for employees by providing them with emotional support and helping them obtain more adaptability resources. To obtain more support from leaders, employees will incorporate adaptability resources into their work, thus increasing innovative behavior. The following hypotheses are formulated:

Uncertainty avoidance is of the opinion that the degree to which a society perceived menace by non-determinacy and equivocal circumstances, and attempts to prevent these circumstances by providing greater professional steadiness, setting up more official provision, not enduring distinctive thoughts and actions, having faith in complete truth, and acquiring professional knowledge (Hofstede, 1980c). To avoid uncertain situations, people will try to establish official rules and reject deviant thoughts and behaviors (Hofstede, 1980b). Although Hofstede (1980a) later defined uncertainty avoidance based on social level, many scholars have stated that opinion about cultural values (uncertainty avoidance) can occur at the individual level (Afsar and Masood, 2018; Cai et al., 2020) and have a great impact on personal attitudes and behaviors (Afsar and Masood, 2018). This study suggests that different standards of personal uncertainty avoidance influence the research of empathetic leadership and career adaptability.

Conservation of resources theory suggests that individuals have a motivation to protect resources and prevent resource loss, that is, they will participate in behaviors to avoid resource loss (Halbesleben et al., 2014). Compare with people with low uncertainty avoidance, people with high uncertainty avoidance tend to experience more pressure in the presence of ambiguity and uncertainty (Hofstede, 2001). As a result, these people might be more driven to gather and wisely employ different work resources (Jang et al., 2018) in order to prevent resource loss and increase resource availability. High uncertainty avoidance employees are more inclined to look on the organization’s leaders for guidance (Cai et al., 2020). Accordingly, due to the motivation to obtain resources and prevent resource loss (Hobfoll, 2011), employees require empathetic support to obtain adaptability resources. Empathetic leadership is an effective channel and source for employees to obtain emotional support, trust, and feelings of safety (Kock et al., 2019), which can lead to higher career adaptability. Employees rely more on the support of empathetic leaders to help them constantly seek new opportunities to develop new career goals (concern); Enabling individuals to take decisive action to overcome unexpected difficulties (control); Exploring future career roles (curiosity); Enables individuals to set challenging goals and work toward them consistently (confidence) (Savickas, 2013; Yang et al., 2015). In contrast, employees with low uncertainty avoidance are not restricted by rules and dare to take risks and explore. They have strong internal motivation and are willing to obtain resources for themselves through risk-taking and initiative. Therefore, these employees are less sensitive to the support provided by empathetic leadership and are less likely to obtain career adaptability from leaders. In summary, we assume the following:

Our paper concludes that uncertainty avoidance moderates the indirect relationship between empathetic leadership and employee innovative behavior through career adaptability by taking into account the analytical structure of moderated mediation (Preacher et al., 2007), combining H2 and H3a. Loss aversion and the resulting motivation for resource conservation are two key processes in conservation of resources theory (Halbesleben et al., 2014). According to career construction theory and conservation of resources theory, employees with uncertainty avoidance emphasize predictability and clear instructions (Triandis, 1990) and feel that the threat of uncertainty and ambiguity is high (Hofstede, 2001). They are afraid of failure and resource loss and focus on security. To reduce this threat, employees will take action. Because of the motivation to protect resources, employees with high uncertainty avoidance are more receptive to leadership support (Cai et al., 2020). They focus on obtaining adaptability resources through the support of sympathetic leaders. Employees can seriously consider and prepare for future career possibilities (concern), make decisions and take serious action (control), explore future career scenarios (curiosity) and have a positive perception of their ability to solve problems (confidence) (Savickas and Porfeli, 2012). People with this greater career adaptability are more willing to participate in innovative behaviors that try to alter work features, which can lead to the acquisition of additional resources (Federici et al., 2021). Employees can also direct their attention, motivation, and behavioral engagement through professional resilience, updating their professional self-concept to meet the adaptive requirements of career development (Ramos and Lopez, 2018), thereby increasing their innovative behavior. Employees with low uncertainty avoidance do not need specific resources from leaders to reduce uncertainty in their work but are less sensitive to the support of sympathetic leaders. Therefore, they cannot improve their professional adaptability and increase their innovative behavior.

Our paper considered Chinese employees and recruited participants from different firms in various industries (financial, manufacturing, IT, services, and real estate industries) in Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Henan, in China, aiming to improve innovative activities in the workplace. Specifically, these companies and their employees face a constant need for product, technology, and service innovation (Odoardi et al., 2015). For example, employees in the finance, real estate and service industries need to provide customized services to different customers according to their needs. Employees in manufacturing and technology industries need to design and implement engineering or software products tailored to customer needs. In all industries, managers are also required to support the innovative behavior of their subordinates. Therefore, this study selected data from financial, manufacturing, IT, services, and real estate industries to investigate leadership and innovative behavior.

To avoid the potential common method biases, we utilized a supervisor–employee pairing format and collected data in three stages (with a one-month interval between each stage). After the researchers and HR managers contacted the direct supervisor, the supervisor and employees were informed of the purpose of this study, the questionnaire filling process, and confidentiality agreements. Afterward, on-site questionnaires were distributed. Once these were completed, they were handed over to the researchers. The 500 questionnaires distributed at time 1 were filled by employees and collected information on empathetic leadership and uncertainty avoidance. Career adaptability questionnaires were administered at time 2 to employees who received 462 questionnaires in time 1. The 423 employees were named after the questionnaire was collected at time 2, and the innovative behavior data of these 423 employees evaluated by their supervisors were collected in time 3. Three-stage data matching was conducted according to the last four digits of the employee phone number reserved by the employee and the supervisor. Finally, 301 valid questionnaires were obtained after the invalid questionnaires were eliminated, with an effective recovery rate of 60.2%.

Among the 301 valid paired samples, the IT industry accounted for the largest proportion, accounting for 44.5% (134 respondents); 59.5% (179 respondents) were males. In terms of education level, 130 respondents had a high school degree or below, and 171 respondents had a bachelor’s degree or above. In terms of marital status, the majority (277 respondents) were married. In terms of work experience, 104 respondents worked less than 5 years, and 142 respondents worked for 6–10 years.

In this study, the mature scale was selected to measure the variables. To ensure accurate and precise translation, the scale followed the back-translation procedure recommended by Brislin (1980), and the translated Chinese version was proofread. Except for the control variables, the variables considered in this study all used the Likert 5-point scale, with 1–5 ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”

As the hypothesis of this study involves four dimensions of career adaptability, the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) includes seven factors. The results obtained through Mplus 8.3 are listed in Table 1. The seven-factor model has good model fit (RMSEA = 0.038, SRMR = 0.037, CFI = 0.963, TLI = 0.960). Moreover, the model fit index is better than that of other competitive models. Noticeably, the variables measured in this study have good discriminant validity. This study also adopted the unmeasured latent market construct (ULMC) approach suggested by Bagozzi and Yi (1988) to test common method variance. As shown in Table 1, the model fit indexes between the two models did not show a large difference (∆CFI = 0.005, ∆TLI = 0.006, ∆RMSEA = 0.002, ∆SRMR = 0.04), no more than the threshold of 0.050 (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988).

We tested convergent validities (CR and AVE). The results in Table 2 reveal that the AVE of all constructs exceeded the benchmark of 0.50, and CR exceeded 0.70 (Hair et al., 2010). These results indicate that the study has good convergent validities.

The descriptive statistics and correlations of variables are listed in Table 3. Empathetic leadership was positively correlated with career adaptability (r = 0.44, p < 0.01), concern (r = 0.39, p < 0.01), control (r = 0.38, p < 0.01), curiosity (r = 0.43, p < 0.01), confidence (r = 0.42, p < 0.01), and innovative behavior (r = 0.48, p < 0.01). Career adaptability (r = 0.69, p < 0.01), concern (r = 0.62, p < 0.01), control (r = 0.65, p < 0.01), curiosity (r = 0.65, p < 0.01), and confidence (r = 0.62, p < 0.01) were positively correlated with innovative behavior. These results provide preliminary support for hypothesis testing.

We tested hypothesis 1, 2, and 3 via multiple regression analyses. Tables 4, 5 present the results obtained from SPSS23 and bootstrap methods (PROCESS). We used 5,000 bootstrap samples to estimate indirect effects to create bias-corrected confidence intervals (CIs) (Hayes, 2017). As listed in M17 of Table 5, empathetic leadership was positively and significantly related to employee’s innovative behavior (r = 0.38, p < 0.001), which supports hypothesis 1.

Hypothesis 2 proposes concern (H2a), control (H2b), curiosity (H2c), and confidence (H2d) as mediators of the relationship between empathetic leadership and employees’ innovative behavior. The research results are listed in Table 6, which reveals that career adaptability mediates the relationship between empathetic leadership and innovative behavior (B = 0.21, SE = 0.03, CI = [0.16, 0.27]). Meanwhile, in Table 5, M23 regressed both empathetic leadership (r = 0.17, p < 0.01) and career adaptability (r = 0.54, p < 0.001) for innovative behavior, thus weakening the positive relationship between empathetic leadership and innovative behavior. This confirms that career adaptability partially mediated the relationship between empathetic leadership and innovative behavior. Similarly, concern (Table 6, B = 0.16, SE = 0.03, CI = [0.11, 0.21]), control (Table 6, B = 0.17, SE = 0.03, CI = [0.12, 0.22]), curiosity (Table 6, B = 0.19, SE = 0.03, CI = [0.14, 0.24]), and confidence (Table 6, B = 0.17, SE = 0.02, CI = [0.13, 0.22]) play a mediating role between empathetic leadership and innovative behavior. According to Table 5 (M24, M25, M26, and M27), concern (r = 0.42, p < 0.001), control (r = 0.47, p < 0.001), curiosity (r = 0.45, p < 0.001) and confidence (r = 0.39, p < 0.001) partially mediated the relationship between empathetic leadership and innovative behavior, thereby supporting hypothesis 2a, 2b, 2c, and 2d.

To test hypothesis 3, we followed the suggestion by Cohen et al. (2003), for which the variables need to be mean-centered before simple slope calculation. We followed the PROCESS procedure outlined by Hayes (2013) to test the conditional indirect effect at different levels. As reported in Table 4 (M3, M6, M9, M12, and M15), the interaction between empathetic leadership and uncertainty avoidance was positively correlated with career adaptability (concern, control, curiosity, and confidence). This indicates that uncertainty avoidance moderated the relationship between empathetic leadership and career adaptability (r = 0.11, p < 0.05), concern (r = 0.11, p < 0.05), control (r = 0.11, p < 0.05), curiosity (r = 0.11, p < 0.05), and confidence (r = 0.10, p < 0.05). For intuitiveness, we plot the moderation effect of uncertainty avoidance. As shown in Figures 1–4, hypothesis 3a, 3b, 3c, 3d were supported.

Hypothesis 4 predicts that the indirect effect of empathetic leadership on innovative behavior via career adaptability (concern, concern, control, and confidence) is moderated by uncertainty avoidance. Our study adopted Mplus8.3, and the data revealed the indirect effect in moderated mediation model (Table 7). Table 7 reveals that at a high uncertainty avoidance (one standard deviation more than the mean level), the indirect effect of empathetic leadership on innovative behavior via career adaptability (B = 0.26, SE = 0.04, CI = [0.18, 0.34]), concern (B = 0.21, SE = 0.04, CI = [0.13, 0.29]), control (B = 0.20, SE = 0.04, CI = [0.13, 0.28]), curiosity (B = 0.22, SE = 0.04, CI = [0.15, 0.31]), and confidence (B = 0.19, SE = 0.03, CI = [0.13, 0.26]) is significant. Although this indirect effect was significant because uncertainty avoidance was low (one standard deviation less than mean level), the coefficient of indirect effect was lower. Moreover, the indirect effect of empathetic leadership on innovative behavior via career adaptability (B = 0.11, SE = 0.04, CI = [0.03, 0.20]), concern (B = 0.09, SE = 0.04, CI = [0.01, 0.17]), control (B = 0.07, SE = 0.04, CI = [0.01, 0.15]), curiosity (B = 0.10, SE = 0.04, CI = [0.03, 0.19]), and confidence (B = 0.09, SE = 0.03, CI = [0.03, 0.16]) is significant. Thus, hypothesis 4a, 4b, 4c, 4d were supported. We also tested index of moderated-mediation: concern (index = 0.05, SE = 0.02, CI = [0.01, 0.10]), control (index = 0.05, SE = 0.02, CI = [0.01, 0.10]), curiosity (index = 0.05, SE = 0.02, CI = [0.01, 0.09]), confidence (index = 0.04, SE = 0.02, CI = [0.001, 0.08]). And we tested the difference between the two effects (high moderator-low moderator) were significant. Figure 5 summarizes the model results of these analyses.

The research results support hypothesis 1, which propounds that empathetic leadership promotes employees’ innovative behavior. The role of positive leadership in promoting innovative behavior has been discussed in the literature (Iqbal et al., 2022; AlMulhim and Mohammed, 2023). Empathetic leadership, as a new type of positive leadership, mainly involves expressing empathy to employees, provides them with ways and means to obtain resources, and then promotes their innovative behavior. The findings of this study are consistent with those of Kock et al. (2019), which confirmed that empathetic leadership can promote job innovation. However, relevant literature on empathetic leadership is scant. Specifically, the advantages of empathetic leadership have not been discussed. Our results not only corroborate the literature but also enrich the research result variables of empathetic leadership (Bani-Melhem et al., 2021). This study also enriches the impact of different types of leadership styles on employee behavior.

Moreover, career construction is regarded as a series of attempts to integrate self-concept into work roles while adapting to the repeated transitions from school to work and from job to job while meeting the challenges these pose. However, most scholars have focused on college students when discussing the future career construction of student groups (Zhang et al., 2021). However, research on the career construction for in-service staff is still lacking. This study took enterprise employees as the research object, and the results confirmed that empathetic leadership positively predicts innovative behavior. This indicates that in enterprises, leaders can also adopt empathetic behaviors to make employees perceive the support of leaders and promote positive behaviors among them.

The research results also support hypothesis 2, which states that the four career adaptability resources have a mediating effect between empathetic leadership and innovative behavior. Kock et al. (2019) revealed that attitude and emotion are important mediating mechanisms for empathetic leadership to influence employee behavior, but they ignored the importance of resources. The four types of adaptation resources can mediate between adaptivity and adapting (Sverko and Babarovic, 2019). Empathetic leadership can increase innovative behavior by providing support to employees and helping them obtain resources conducive to work according to career construction theory and conservation of resources theory. For example, empathetic leadership can inspire employees to explore new things and increase their confidence in solving problems. These resources will make employees more adaptable to their current jobs or tasks and improve their innovative behaviors. This study also found that the mediating effect of curiosity slightly exceeds that of the other three resources. This may be because it is important to remain curious about work and other things and to constantly explore new things when undertaking innovative activities. Our study can elucidate models and adaptability.

Consistent with hypotheses 3 and 4, the data results reveal that uncertainty avoidance moderates the relationship between empathetic leadership and career adaptability, as well as the impact of empathetic leadership on innovative behavior through career adaptability. Previous studies suggested that the positive relationship between positive leadership and employees’ behavior would be weakened under high uncertainty avoidance (Wang, 2020), as some scholars have suggested that employees with high uncertainty avoidance tend to abide by rules, regulations, and organizational policies while seeking help and guidance from their superiors to avoid uncertain situations (Afsar and Masood, 2018). Therefore, these individuals tend to be insensitive to authorization, preferring to rely on deterministic strategies and behaviors to achieve deterministic outcomes. In contrast, people with low levels of uncertainty avoidance are very happy to accept delegation and open organizational environments, and work more flexibly because they are more sensitive to authorization (Su et al., 2022). For example, Sheikh et al. (2013) proposed that uncertainty avoidance by subordinates moderates the relationship between transformational leadership and employee’s job involvement, making this relationship more robust for those with lower levels of uncertainty avoidance.

However, some scholars have suggested that employees tend to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity, but this does not prevent employees from preferring creative ideas (Zhang and Zhou, 2014). Uncertainty avoidance should not be confused with risk avoidance because uncertainty avoidance does not refer to an individual’s willingness to take or avoid risks. Rather, it indicates the extent to which individuals are more willing to understand the views and expectations of their supervisors (Hofstede, 2001; Taras et al., 2010). Therefore, when expectations are clear, high uncertainty avoidance individuals may have more mental resources to experience cognitive flexibility and creativity than when expectations and boundaries are not clear (Inkson et al., 1970). For example, Watts et al. (2020) proposed that compared to low uncertainty avoidance countries, high uncertainty avoidance countries will exhibit a stronger relationship between managerial transformational leadership and individual innovation.

Consistent with Watts et al. (2020)‘s findings, the results of this study confirmed that high uncertainty avoidance instead strengthened the impact of empathetic leadership on innovative behavior. This result is mainly due to the psychological factors of resource protection and fear of resource damage. Therefore, employees with high uncertainty avoidance will rely more on the support and help provided by empathetic leaders because they believe that leaders will help them reduce the loss of resources and provide them with new resources to make up for the loss of other resources. This study enriches the research on uncertainty avoidance and positive leadership (Watts et al., 2020). It also addresses Kock et al.’s (2019) recommendation to consider the moderating effect of cultural factors on empathetic leadership in the future. Meanwhile, Al-Ghazali’s (2020) research examined the career construction model but did not consider different cultural backgrounds. Our research also addresses Al-Ghazali’s (2020) recommendation to verify the applicability of the career construction model under different cultural dimensions.