The purpose of this research was to study the relationship between psychological aspects and behavioral aspects of career self-reliance and further to study the effect of career self-reliance on career fulfillment and organizational commitment among adult corporate employees. A questionnaire was administered on a website to 335 business persons working in multiple companies mainly in the Tokyo metropolitan area. A path model was proposed for demonstrating the relationships among variables of career self-reliance, career fulfillment and organizational commitment. The following variables was constructed; three psychological variables and four behavioral variables composing career self-reliance, three variables composing career fulfillment and two variables comprising organizational commitment. The model was best fit by covariance structure analysis.
Major findings were as follows: (1) psychological variables of career self-reliance such as clarity of career self-concept, career development motivation, and career self-efficacy promoted career self-reliance behavior; (2) career self-reliance influenced career fulfillment; (3) career self-reliance had indirect effects on organizational commitment through career fulfillment.