Impact of Employees’ Protean Career Attitudes on Organizational Commitment of Financial Industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Over the last two decades’ despite of multitude of models looking to explain contemporary careers, protean careers have become widely recognized within the organizational literature. The concept of protean career has been tested as employee commitment form. Consequently, career literature is with contradictory arguments and little empirical evidence. This study attempts to investigate how protean career attitudes impact on organizational commitment of listed financial firms in Sri Lanka. A mixed study method was used. Data were collected through self-administered questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Questionnaires were distributed to 100 managerial level employees and semi-structured interviews were conducted among 20 employees by using a convenient sampling technique. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, regression analysis and thematic analysis, and finally triangulation. The results of the study revealed that protean career attitudes have a significant positive relationship and impact on organizational commitment. Moreover, self-directed career management and value-driven predispositions positively related to organizational commitment, while self-directed career management impacts more on organizational commitment than value-driven predispositions. The findings of the study concluded that being a protean career attitude individual does not result in less organizational commitment. Further, the study recommended that it would be important for the employing organizations to provide development opportunities with better career management.