Abstract:
Sri Lankan apparel industry has been playing a significant role in the country's growth and development. However, one of the considerable problems faced by the apparel industry is poor job engagement among employees. Additionally, organizational culture can change the level of job engagement of co-workers and self-construal of individuals has been identified as one of the significant factor which reflects the culture in work places. The two types of Self¬Construal were empirically evaluated namely independent and interdependent self- construal. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between Self-construal and job engagement of apparel sector employees of Katunayaka export processing zone. Further, study aimed to identify the variations of self-construal and job engagement base on the age, gender, and experiences level of employees. The simple random sampling method was adopted to collect data from 100 operational level employees in apparel sector from Katunayaka export processing zone. Self-administrated questionnaire was used to collect primary data. Besides, Descriptive analysis, Correlation, hierarchical regression and One-way ANOVA methods were used to analyze the data. The results of Pearson correlation analysis revealed that there is a strong positive relationship between interdependent self-construal and job engagement while there is a strong negative relationship between independent self-construal and job engagement. Further, One — way ANOVA test and hierarchical multiple regression analysis investigation proved that there is a significant difference in self-construal and job engagement of employees in terms of their age and experience level. But there is no any significant difference found in self-construal and job engagement in terms of gender variations. Accordingly, study suggested that paying more attention on self-construal of employees will help to change the level of job engagement in apparel sector organizations.
