Employees may advance their career by achieving internal job changes (i.e., changes in jobs within an organization) and external job changes (i.e., changes in jobs across organizational boundaries), and both changes may render different implications for the organization and the employee. To fill the gap in prior careers research, this study examines the impact of different stakeholders – organizations and supervisors – on employee external and internal job change intentions. In particular, it focuses on employee well-being human resource (HR) attribution (i.e., employee perceptions that HR practices exist for enhancing employee well-being) to represent organizational practices, and task idiosyncratic deals (I-deals) (i.e., personalized agreements on job contents and work responsibilities between employees and their supervisor) as supervisory practices promoting employee career development. A framework connecting employee perceptions of or experiences with these organizational and supervisory practices to their external and internal job change intentions is put forward in the current research.

The current research is built on three hypotheses. The first one concerns employee well-being HR attribution and job change intentions. It is proposed that employee well-being HR attribution is negatively related to external job change intention, but positively related to internal job change intention. Then, the study puts forward a potential contextual variable that could possibly moderate the relationship between employee well-being HR attribution and external and internal job change intentions, which is the presence of task I-deals. The second hypothesis is that task I-deals moderate the negative relationship between employee well-being HR attribution and external job change intention, such that the relationship becomes weaker as task I-deals increase. Third, it is expected that task I-deals moderate the positive relationship between employee well-being HR attribution and internal job change intention, such that the relationship becomes stronger as task I-deals increase.

Data from a company operating 45 automobile sales service shops located in Northern China is collected for the purpose of this research. The findings are consistent with the aforementioned hypotheses.

This research contributes to careers literature by differentiating internal from external job change intentions based on their differential relationships with the antecedent. Also, the study extends the careers literature by incorporating HR attribution theory to show the impact of employee well-being HR attribution on employee job change intentions, as well as the importance of the role of supervisors in enhancing or mitigating these effects. The research also provides practical implications for organizations, suggesting employee attribution of HR practices in the organization can significantly influence their mindsets toward internal and external job changes. Thus, organizations should be cognizant of how their HR practices are communicated to employees. Since the role of supervisors is recognized, the study also recommends that managers need to understand the specific needs of each employee and utilize their authority to adjust the nature of their job to motivate them. It is hoped that this study will stimulate future research on how the organizational and immediate supervisory practices through the eyes of employees jointly shape different mindsets of job change.