Career Plateauing: Is It Still A Matter of Concern?

Abstract

Hierarchical plateauing has been an issue and a challenge for most organizations in almost all sectors. The volatile global market conditions and the limited availability of higher positions has made the competition for openings much more intense. Many researchers have associated plateauing with negative consequences such as lower levels of job satisfaction, poor commitment, high absenteeism, greater stress, low motivation and high employee turnover. The literature also indicates that in most organizations, plateauing is often considered as one of the contributing factors to employee’s intention to leave in most organizations. However, very few realize that plateaued employees can actually be turned into the most valuable assets and can enhance an organization’s competitiveness if the employers are able to manage this group effectively. This paper investigates the relationship between hierarchical plateauing and intention to leave among nurses in public hospitals. Questionnaires were distributed to 700 nurses in 11 public hospitals in Peninsular Malaysia to examine the current perception of employees towards hierarchical plateauing in their career . The results showed that hierarchical plateauing was not significantly related to the intention to leave. The results provide some new insight in the sense that they support the recent notion that the plateauing phenomenon has become unavoidable and that many employees have no choices but to experience it sooner or later in their career and sometimes even earlier than they anticipate. The implications of the study and future research suggestions are also discussed.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n7p224