Career jobs, survival jobs, and employee deviance: A social investment model of workplace misconduct

We examine the relationship between career stakes, or the fit between worke rs' current jobs and their long-term career plans, and employee deviance. M ost prior research has focused on the link between job satisfaction and dev iance, but career stakes may be a more salient and theoretically relevant m easure of workers' investments in their present positions, particularly in young adulthood. We hypothesize that people whose current jobs match their long-term career goals have made a social investment with their employers t hat inhibits deviant behavior. We analyze data from the Youth Development S tudy (YDS), a longitudinal community sample of individuals now in their mid -twenties, Our results show that career stakes and job satisfaction exert i ndependent effects on worker misconduct even when prior levels of general d eviance and workplace deviance are statistically controlled.