Date of Award

1991

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Management (Business Administration)

First Advisor

Arthur G. Bedeian

Abstract

Past career commitment measures have been redundant with other work commitment measures or have been narrowly defined as professionalism. Blau's (1985) definition of career commitment as one's attitude towards one's vocation seems to most closely represent this construct. However, his measure has several problems including construct overlap with career withdrawal intentions. Because of a developmental lag in the career focus domain due to lack of established measures, the reported research constructed and tested a theoretically based measure of career commitment. Development of a new career commitment measure was based on London's (1983) theory of career motivation consisting of three theoretical dimensions: (a) career identification, a close emotional association with one's career; (b) career planning, determining one's developmental needs and establishing a career plan; and (c) career resilience, resisting career disruption in the face of adversity. Developing the measure involved two pilot studies culminating with a field study of 476 employees. Twelve items representing the three theoretical dimensions of career commitment were analyzed. Results indicated that the multidimensional career commitment measure (MCCM) displayed adequate reliability. The overall alpha coefficient was.81 while the dimensions' alpha coefficients ranged from.79 to.84. Construct validity also appeared to be adequate. The correlation between the MCCM and Blau's (1985) measure was.63 suggesting convergent validity. Also, confirmatory factor analysis supported the MCCM's structure and discriminant validity. Further, a series of univariate analyses were conducted to determine if correlations between the MCCM and certain job-related variables were different than correlations between other workplace commitments and these job-related variables. Univariate analyses provided support for the nomological validity of the MCCM. Finally, using ANCOVA and MANCOVA with a follow-up discriminant analysis, it was determined that the new measure detected appropriate differences in career commitment levels across occupational groups.

Pages

213

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_disstheses.5224

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