Determinants of voluntary career development interventions: The influence of personal and contextual factors among Malaysian extension workers

Managing Malaysian agriculture, which generates 7.5% of country GDP to meet rising global demand and to respond to the changes and opportunities, requires highly skilled extension workers. This conceptual lens aims at re-skilling extension workers by investigating determinants of voluntary career development interventions among Malaysian extension agents. The importance of voluntary career development interventions as the focus of this study is supported by key evolutions of extension context that require extension agents take the responsibility for charting and navigating their development path. The frequent emergence of change and evolutions in the extension systems is consistent with the concept of protean career, which success in such a career is highly dependent on the workers’ adaptability, selfmotivation, and willingness to learn new skills. This is in the line with the desire of boundaryless career for employees who navigate their development path when extension environment moves from merely transfer of technology to get involved in human resource development. Based on social cognitive theory, personal and contextual factors have been identified as influential in voluntary career development behavior. The theoretical contribution of this study is on the conceptual framework design that improves our knowledge about voluntary career development interventions. Understanding determinant of voluntary career development could assist in re-skilling the extension worker to perform job effectively which in addition to increasing personal achievement would increase extension organization achievement by providing higher productivity, efficiency, and satisfaction.