An empirical study of PM professionals’ commitment to their profession and employing organizations

Professional commitment (PC) and organizational commitment (OC) are important factors determining professionals’ work behaviors. This study developed a research instrument and mailed it to Australian project management (PM) professionals to investigate their PC and OC. Data were analyzed using SPSS. The results show that PM professionals’ commitment to the profession is significantly higher than that to employing organizations, their PC and OC are positively correlated, PM professionals with a postgraduate PM education more highly commit themselves to the profession than others without such education, and PM professionals at the position of project manager more highly commit themselves to the profession than others appointed to non-project-manager positions. The findings have several important implications for the profession and employing organizations.