Transcript Sources of Organizational Commitment

Sources of
Organizational
Commitment
Yang, Song, Steven Worden, and
George Wilson 2004 Sociological
Spectrum 24:667-688
Theoretical motivations
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Organizational commitment is so
consequential to employees and
employers
Loyal and happy workers are productive!
Loyal and happy workers are steady and
countable!
Loyal and happy workers are also mentally
healthy at home.
Sources of Commitment
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We also know a lot about what contributes
to great organizational commitment.
Individual variables: Race, and Marital
Status.
Job characteristics: income, tenure, union,
and position/occupation.
Workplace features: democratic
workplaces, bureaucratic type, internal
labor market, and workplace size.
Internal labor market
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Internal labor market (ILM) supposedly
increases workers commitment by
providing high job security and steady
promotion based on seniority
However, workers in post-industrial society
such as US embrace a wide variety of job
expectations, many of which are
incongruous with what the ILM has to
offer.
Interplay
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Thus, a critical issue that awaits answer is how
worker valuation/job expectation interplay with
ILM to have an impact on workers organizational
commitment.
In particular, one may reasonably hypothesize
that workers whose job valuation matches with
the ILM offerings would come to appreciate the
ILM by showing great loyalty to their
employers/organizations. Conversely those
whose expectations are incongruence with the
ILM offerings are largely indifferent to what the
ILM has to offer.
An Elaboration Modeling
Organizational
Commitment
ILM
Job
Expectation
(Kalleberg and Mastekaasa 1994)
Employer offers through
ILM: job security and
steady promotion along
internal ladder
Employees:
Are those what you
want?
Organizational
Commitment
YES
NO
(Yang et al., 2004)
Why understudy?
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Plenty of theoretical discussions on interplay
between workers’ job expectations and
employers’ offering, so called matching theory.
Why so few empirical analyses?
Reason 1: statistical issue – interaction terms in
multivariate regression is not widely known and
used by Sociologists until recently.
Reason 2: Methodological issue – cross-level
dataset that captures employer-employee
variables is not readily available until NOS 1991
No more excuse!
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With a unique employer-employee dataset
from the 1991 NOS, and an advancement
of interaction analyses in multiple
regression by Aiken and West 1991, we
are set to re-analyze organizational
commitment.
Interaction term
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Y    1 X 1   2 X 2   3 ( X 1  X 2 )  ......   K X K
Centering method to curb multicollinearity
Our study has two interaction terms
One is ILM * worker job security expectation
One is ILM * worker job promotion expectation
GSS 1991
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Organizational commitment scale
1) I am willing to work harder than I have to in order to help this
organization succeed
2) I feel very little loyalty to this organization
3) I would take almost any job to keep working for this organization
4) I find that my values and the organization’s values are quite similar
5) I am proud to be working for this organization
6) I would turn down another job for more pay in order to stay with
this organization
Coding are strongly agree (4), agree (3), disagree (2), and strongly
disagree (1). Question 2 is reverse coded
The results are summed up and divided by 6, producing a commitment
scale from 0 to 4
Internal consistency reliability (0.74)
N = 688 + 39 = 727, because the outcome variable is the individual
worker attributes (GSS-NOS), not an organization variable (NOS).
GSS 1991
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Valuation of job security is measured by a
single item: “How important is ‘not being
in danger of being fired’ to you?” Answers
range from “most important” (5), “the
second most important” (4), “the third
most important” (3), “the fourth most
important” (2), and “the fifth most
important” (1).
GSS 1991
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Valuation of job promotion is measured by
a single item: “how important are
“chances for job advancement to you?”
Answers range from “the most important
(5)”, “the second most important (4)”, “the
third most important (3)”, “the fourth most
important (2)”, and “the fifth most
important (1).”
NOS 1991
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Firm Internal Labor Market is an additive index
consisting of three items: “Do you sometimes fill
(occupation) vacancies with people already employed at
your establishment?”(yes = 1; no = 0);
“Does your establishment have occupational levels? (yes
= 1, no =0)”
“Is it possible for an occupation to be promoted to a
level above?
How often does this happen? (Not very often = 0),
(often = 1) (very often = 2)”.
The results of the three measuring items are summed
up, producing an index that ranges in value from 0 to 4.
Table 1: Descriptive Statistics on Key Variables: GSS and NOS Samples
Variable
Mean
St. Dev
Organizational Commitment
2.88
.56
Internal Labor Market
2.52
.93
Valuation of Promotion
3.30
1.17
Valuation of Job Security
2.39
1.20
FIG. 1: FILM AND ORG. COMMITMENT
LEVELS OF JOB SECURITY VALUATION VARY
2.9
2.8
2.7
HIGHSEC
2.6
LOWSEC
2.5
Low FILM
MIDSEC
Median FILM
Firm Internal Labor Market (FILM)
High FILM
FIG. 2: FILM AND ORG. COMMITMENT
LEVELS OF PROMOTION VALUATION VARY
3.0
2.9
2.8
2.7
2.6
HIGHPROMOTION
2.5
LOWPROMOTION
2.4
Low FILM
MIDPROMOTION
Mid FILM
High FILM
Firm Internal Labor Market (FILM)
Findings
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ILM does not automatically increase workers
organizational commitment.
The extent to which ILM is conducive to great
commitment is contingent on whether ILM produces the
substances that are desired by workers.
Standing-alone model with either solo workers
characteristics or solo workplace feature is not sufficient
to account for variations in organizational commitment.
Interplay model that incorporates both workers valuation
and their employers’ programs offers unique contribution
to extend our understanding of organizational
commitment
Future studies
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A bit out-dated dataset: whether relations reported
here hold with new empirical dataset?
We focus only on affective commitment: questions
abound whether our findings hold when we study
other types of commitment as outcome variables:
continuance commitment, calculative commitment,
and normative commitment?
Workers valuation is constantly changing and it can
be indoctrinated by their employers. This study
portrays a snap-shot, one time cross-sectional
analysis. A longitudinal study can describe such
dynamic process better than our static modeling.