Thierry Wils

Determinants of career path preferences among Canadian engineers

Abstract This study explores five career paths available to engineers, and aims at understanding the factors that lead them to prefer the management path to other career paths (i.e. the technical path, the project-based path, the entrepreneurial path and the hybrid path). A questionnaire survey was conducted on a sample of 900 male and female engineers from a large Canadian province. The results show that several determinants under study (mainly individual-related factors such as actual experience path, desire for promotion, work–time investment) effectively distinguish the career path groups for engineers who have a clear career preference. However, the model is far less effective in predicting mitigated career preferences.