Impact of Protean Career Attitude on Employee Engagement: A Study of Audit Professionals in Colombo District of Sri Lanka

Abstract

This research explores the impact of the protean career attitude on employee engagement among audit professionals in the Colombo District, Sri Lanka. A protean career attitude emphasises self-direction and self-value congruity in career choice, which is hypothesised to influence engagement. The research paper focuses on the correlation between personal career management strategies and the degree of engagement within the auditing setting. A quantitative survey was cross-sectional, where individual audit professionals were surveyed using a structured questionnaire. A population of about 3,000 auditors was used as the estimated population in Colombo, where 341 questionnaires were obtained, and 210 responses that were found to be valid were analysed. The data were entered into SPSS version 21, and correlation analysis and descriptive statistics were performed to investigate the relationships between variables, and simple and multiple regression were conducted to test the predictive effects. Each measurement scale indicated a high level of reliability. The result of the correlation analysis revealed that self-directed career behaviour and value-driven career attitude had a positive relationship with employee engagement. Regression analyses revealed that the two dimensions were found to be significant predictors of engagement with value-driven career attitude, exhibiting a larger effect size. That is, audit professionals who made their career choices in line with their values were likely to be more engaged compared to those whose choice was more about autonomy.