Professional-Organizational Commitment: A Study of Canadian Professional Accountants

Abstract

This paper extends the literature on professional and organizational commitment through an online survey of professional accountants that examines the influence of several contextual features, namely, workplace diversification, occupational stress, professional involvement, and culture. The survey was carried out around the end of year 2002 with Canadian Chartered Accountants (CAs) from four Canadian provincial institutes. Three of these provincial institutes are located in English-speaking provinces (Alberta, British Columbia and Nova Scotia) while the fourth CA association is in Québec, a predominantly French-speaking province. In contrast to prior research carried out more than two decades ago, our results indicate that respondents in public practice do not differ from respondents in non-public accounting settings in their level of professional commitment, and in their level of organizational commitment. Our results also suggest that occupational stress and professional involvement are both significantly related to professional commitment. Finally, our survey data indicate that accountants working in Québec had a lower professional commitment than their peers working in English-speaking provinces, thereby suggesting that culture exerts significant influence on professional commitment.

Keywords: accounting profession, culture, occupational stress, organizational commitment, professional commitment, workplace diversification