Professionalism, rewards, job satisfaction and organizational commitment amongst accounting professionals in Uganda

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which the constructs of professionalism (Hall, 1968), rewards (Bartol, 1979) and job satisfaction (Stamps and Piedmonte, 1986; Hampton and Hampton, 2004) can be used as valid predictors of organizational commitment (Porter et al. , 1974) in an emerging economy context. Design/methodology/approach – Using pre-existing scales for these constructs, the authors collected data from 277 ICPAU licensees’ and carried out a factor analysis to examine their validity. Given the relevance of the organizational-professional conflict (OPC) debate to performance in public and private sector organizations, the authors use ANOVA to assess whether there are significant differences between CPAs in the private and public sectors. We also develop a structural equation model to assess the extent to which organizational commitment can be explained by professionalism, rewards and job satisfaction. Findings – The findings show that the four scales can be used as valid measures in an emerging market environment, albeit with some modifications. The correlations between the study variables are significant ( p <0.01) but weak. There are also no significant differences between the scores of private and public sector Certified Public Accountant (CPAs) on professionalism, rewards and organizational commitment. However, there is significantly lower job satisfaction amongst CPAs employed in the public sector. The authors also find that job satisfaction is the best predictor of organizational commitment. Professionalism and rewards are weak predictors of organizational commitment. The fitted model shows that there is a weak fit between organizational commitment and professionalism, rewards and job satisfaction (GFI=0.86, RMSEA=0.086). Originality/value – The authors modify the extant measurement scales for use in emerging market conditions and show that with some adjustment, they are robust measures of the study variables. The paper also extends the organizational commitment (OC) debate to emerging market conditions and shows that rewards on their own are not enough to ensure organizational commitment amongst professionals. It is important to improve job satisfaction through more enriching work experience.