An Empirical Examination of a Three-Component Model of Professional Commitment among Public Accountants

Abstract

Professional commitment (PC) refers to the attachments that individuals form to their profession. While prior accounting literature has examined only one dimension of PC, research outside accounting has established that there are three distinct dimensions to PC (Hall et al. 2005). In this paper we test the validity of Meyer et al.'s (1993) three-component model of PC among a sample of public accountants. Given that the majority of studies of accountants' PC have used the Professional Commitment Questionnaire (PCQ), we also assess whether the PCQ is a measure of a specific dimension of PC, affective PC. The results of our confirmatory factor analyses and tests of reliability and validity provide support for three separate dimensions of public accountants' PC. Our tests also indicate that the PCQ scale is a measure of affective PC. The implications of our results on interpreting prior research and for considering future research on accountants' PC are presented.