Abstract:
Career plateau, a common situation faced by many employees, has a range of negative
consequences both on individual employee performances and organizational outcomes.
Career plateau studies about the administrative officers in Sri Lankan Universities are
lacking. Objectives of this study was to understand the prevelance of three types
(content, hierarchical and personal) of career plateau among the administrative officers
of Sri Lankan Universities. Data were collected from 108 administrative officers in 13
Universities and University Grant Commission. Subjective career plateau scales were
determined based on the responses (either strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree or
strongly disagree) given to a set of statements. In the computation of plateau scales,
responses were arranged into five point Likert scale ranging from -2 for ‘ strongly
disagree’" to +2 for strongly agree. Higher the scales higher the severity of plateau.
Mean plateau scales <-0.5 were considered non plateaued while scales >0.5 were
considered plateaued. According to the subjective scales, the university administrative
officers could best be classified as personally plateaued (scale=0.83) but of having no
idea (no plateaued nor un plateaued) in terms of content (scale = -0.25) and hierarchical
(scale=0.37) plateau. The content plateau scale of male administrative officers was
significantly higher than that of female counterparts. Though junior(-0.09) and middle
(0 41) level officer could be classified as having no idea about their content plateau
siaius. senior officers (-0.77) were not plateaued with respect to job content.
Hierarchical plateau scale was not affected by the gender and the level of administrative
position. Above 40 years old respondents were hierarchically plateaued (0.54) and those
below 40 could be classified having no idea (0.20). Personal plateau scale was not
affected eitehr by the gender, the level of administrative position and the age. It was
concluded that the career plateauing is highly prevelent among the administrative
officers of the Sri Lankan University system. Personal followed by hierarchical were
the most dominant types of plateau. Further research are needed to determine to extent
career plateau affect the job performance and satisfaction.
