How Career Calling Reduces Counterproductive Work Behaviour in Hospitality: A Serial Mediation Model of Job Content Plateau and Workplace Boredom Across Organisational Tenure

Abstract

The hospitality industry is characterised by high work intensity, repetitive service tasks, and limited opportunities for role enrichment, rendering employees particularly vulnerable to stagnation, workplace boredom, and counterproductive work behaviour (CWB). Although prior research has demonstrated that career calling promotes positive work attitudes and motivation, far less is known about how, and under what conditions, a calling may reduce negative workplace behaviours in hospitality settings. Addressing this gap, the present study examines the psychological mechanisms through which career calling mitigates CWB among hospitality employees. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this study conceptualises career calling as a personal motivational resource that enables employees to sustain meaning, engagement, and self-regulation in demanding service environments. A moderated serial mediation model is proposed in which job content plateau and workplace boredom sequentially mediate the relationship between career calling and CWB. Organisational tenure is further examined as a boundary condition that shapes the effectiveness of career calling as a protective resource. Survey data were collected from 369 employees working in hospitality organisations. Established and validated measures were used to assess career calling, job content plateau, workplace boredom, and CWB. The proposed moderated serial mediation model was tested using Hayes’ PROCESS Models 6 and 83, with indirect effects estimated using 5,000 bootstrap resamples. Structural equation modelling with 5,000 bootstrapping iterations was additionally conducted as a robustness check. The findings provide strong support for the hypothesised relationships. Career calling was negatively associated with job content plateau, indicating that employees who perceive their work as purposeful and meaningful are less likely to experience stagnation and a lack of challenge in their job content. In turn, lower levels of job content plateau were associated with reduced workplace boredom, which subsequently predicted lower levels of CWB. The serial indirect effect of career calling on CWB through job content plateau and workplace boredom was statistically significant. Notably, the direct effect of career calling on CWB became nonsignificant once the mediators were included, indicating full mediation. This pattern suggests that career calling does not directly suppress deviant behaviour; rather, it operates by shaping employees’ everyday work experiences and affective states. By reducing perceptions of stagnation and preventing boredom, career calling helps preserve employees’ motivational and self-regulatory resources, thereby lowering the likelihood of behavioural deviance in hospitality work. In addition, organisational tenure moderated the first stage of the mediation process. The negative effect of career calling on job content plateau was stronger among long-tenure employees than among short-tenure employees. This finding indicates that accumulated organisational experience enhances employees’ ability to enact their sense of calling and derive meaning from stable or repetitive service roles, thereby strengthening the indirect protective effect of career calling on CWB. Overall, this study advances hospitality and career calling research by demonstrating that career calling functions not only as a positive motivational orientation but also as a behavioural safeguard against stagnation, boredom, and misconduct in service work. The findings offer a process-based explanation of how vocational meaning translates into behavioural regulation in hospitality contexts and provide practical implications for the design of calling-supportive and growth-oriented work environments.