Sustainability in Career Development: The Impact of Career Development Culture and Career Support of Senior Management on Career Satisfaction

The study examined whether career development culture and career support of senior management impact employee career satisfaction. This study validated two new questionnaires: career development culture and career support of senior management. Based on the extended model of social cognitive career theory, the study proposed that these two variables positively impact on employee career satisfaction. Private sector employees (N=196) representing a range of manufacturing and service sector firms from the private sector in Sri Lanka participated in a survey. It is found that, career development culture and the career support of senior management positively impact on career satisfaction. The current findings provide implications to the extended model of social cognitive career theory by testing the hypothesized relationships with a cross sectional study. The current findings propose that an organization should develop a career development culture and the senior management should support employees’ career development in such a way that increases their career satisfaction.  The study is subject to common method and common source bias, since this is a cross sectional study with a survey. Future research could be conducted with the representation of broader category of employees and industries, which promotes the generalizability of findings.