Higher education faculty and job embeddedness: validation of the occupational embeddedness scale

Occupational embeddedness is defined as what keeps people in their current occupation and is believed to have three dimensions: Fit (perceived compatibility), Links (ties to others), and Sacrifice (material or psychological losses upon career change). Occupational embeddedness is highly relevant for academic faculty in higher education, who have a large investment to earn an advanced degree only to enter a highly competitive job market. However, there is currently not a validated measure of occupational embeddedness. This study seeks to validate the Occupational Embeddedness Scale (OES; Ng and Feldman 2009) using a sample of 91 higher education faculty members in the United States. The participants had been in higher education for an average of 21.28 years (SD = 13.53). A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed using maximum likelihood estimation and internal consistency was examined. Results indicated that due to the open-ended nature of the items comprising the Links dimension, that entire dimension necessitated deletion despite its theoretical importance. After Links was removed, a revised OES including just Fit and Sacrifice is proposed; this revised scale demonstrated acceptable-to-good model fit, factor loadings, and internal consistency. It is highly recommended that future research reintroduce the Links dimension to the OES with closed-ended Likert-type items.