Career agility for purposive career exploration: Role of adult learners’ career orientations and digital-era world of work awareness

Background: There is limited empirical research on the role of individuals’ career orientations, digital-era world of work awareness and career agility mindset in purposive career exploration. Objectives: The objective of this study was to assess the extent to which career orientations and awareness of the digital-era world of work contribute to a career agility mindset. Method: The cross-sectional quantitative survey involved a sample of 486 adult learners (65% women; 35% men; 85% black learners; 15% white learners; and mean age 34 years) in the economic and management sciences field. Results: Regression analysis revealed the protean-type career orientations of technical and functional competence, autonomy and independence, and pure challenge career orientations as significant predictors of digital-era world of work awareness. Digital-era world of work awareness and the technical and functional competence, pure challenge and general management career orientations acted as significant antecedents of the career agility mindset. Conclusion: The associations between the study constructs offer promising support for applying principles of career exploration theory in digital-era purposive career exploration counselling.