Chapter 2: Relevant Literature
2.14 Factors Associated with the Different Commitments Components
2.14.5 Number of Teaching Years
This research looks at the number of years spent at ADEK schools as one probable variable affecting commitment. Furthermore, this research focuses on full- time teachers, rather than the substitute temporary teachers in ADEK education system. This is in line with Mathieu and Zajac’s (1990) meta-analysis where they distinguished between tenure with the organization versus tenure in a particular position; where they emphasized that the two concepts are connected to the existing employees who have not changed jobs within an organization. According to these authors, organizational tenure is likely to be a better surrogate measure of side bets. In general, individuals are likely to acquire greater investments as they accumulate more years with the same organization, for example, a pension plan investment for the UAE national teachers or end of service compensation plan for non- national teachers.
Meyer and Allen (1984) suggest that some costs associated with leaving will increase over time such as non-vested pension plan contributions, seniority privileges,
organization specific training, where other costs may decrease with leaving and with less work experience such as the opening opportunities for work experience elsewhere as new job opportunities. However, once these employees have obtained more experience, alternative employment opportunities may increase for them while decreasing the costs associated with them leaving their current jobs. Stevens et al.
(1978) explained that teaching experience in the same organization should be considered as a double-edged factor, whereby it may bring stability and increased investments; however, it may also lead to decreased opportunities elsewhere and reduce mobility within the organization itself.
Mathieu and Zajac’s (1990) meta-analysis and Meyer and Allen’s (1997) work demonstrated that it has a small effect when the teaching experience variable interacts with and relates to OC. It appears from the meta-analysis that an employee’s psychological attachment to an organization may be built apon the years that they have spent in a particular position. Employees need to obtain a certain amount of experience with an organization to become strongly attached to it. Retrospectively, long service may lead to affective attachment to an employee’s organization. Moreover, these additional years of service are likely to yield greater side-bets, such as a pension plan, and therefore, develop a greater calculative commitment. Thus, those who do not develop strong AC tend to leave the organization, and only highly committed employees remain among the longer serving, experienced group of employees.
Mathieu and Zajac (1990) added that the extent of employees’ satisfaction with their promotional opportunities and pay, and the salience of costs that accumulated from long service to the organization should also be higher with longer service.
Meyer and Allen (1984) suggested using employees’ perceptions regarding the size and importance of their investments directly, as it seems to be more appropriate than using age and tenure as indexes. This type of strategy would be consistent with Becker’s theory (1960), where he suggested that side-bets will not influence commitment unless the employee is aware of the choices that have been made, and these side-bets should be sizeable enough that the employee finds himself unwilling to lose them. Although age and substantial years of experience did not correlate to Meyer and Allen’s (1984) work with CC, they were significantly correlated with the affective measures, suggesting that in a particular organization, employees who are older with longer employment experience may have stronger AC to it.
Stevens et al. (1978) found that years spent in an organization emerge as the best positive predictor for supporting the exchange or side-bet approach to commitment. This contradicts Reyes’ (1992) findings, which uncovered the unexpected finding that the total number of years of experience correlates negatively with OC; where the more years of experience, the lower the levels of OC. It was explained that as the years of employment accumulate for teachers, their idealism becomes eroded by school bureaucracy, therefore, teachers decrease their efforts to innovate and experiment in the classroom, and thus develop other interests away from the workplace.
Rosenholtz and Simpson (1990) contended that particular aspects of the workplace have different impacts on novice and experienced teachers in an organization. Commitment of teachers in the early stages of their careers will be influenced more by organizational support at the level of teaching tasks, whereas commitment in later career stages will be influenced more by organizational conditions
that affect the core instructional tasks in the organization (Rosenholtz & Simpson, 1990). They found that commitment falls after five years of teaching experience in primary schools, and then it will partially return by the late-career stage. This relationship is weak, albeit significantly correlated with commitment (Rosenholtz &
Simpson, 1990).
There is an agreement between Rosenholtz and Simpson (1990), and Reyes (1992) that teachers with limited experience are expected to have high levels of enthusiasm and commitment as it is in their early careers, depends on defining and managing the boundaries within which the teaching tasks are performed that is influenced by organizational support. Veteran teachers already understand the system and have no expectations of advancement as professionals and may complain of monotony, boredom and professional stagnation that is influenced by organizational factors which affects their ability to pursue core teaching tasks. Both researchers recommended that the reformers should develop different strategies to maintain veteran teachers’ engagement in their school, and not to depend solely on recruiting academically talented new teachers because recruitment is not a long-term solution, but school organizational conditions should be conducive to OC.
Rosenholtz and Simpson (1990) attributed falling midcareer commitment levels to the valuing of task discretion and autonomy by teachers to be at a low level, when it is accompanied by the unintended result of creating even greater alienation and poorer performance, whereas more experienced teachers feel autonomous, competent and valued. For that competence, teachers in their midcareer are apt to try even harder to improve their performance (Rosenholtz & Simpson, 1990).
Allen and Meyer (1993) concluded that it is possible that the link between organizational tenure and both AC and NC is because of employee age, and not because of the tenure. This was because when employee age is partialled out of the relationship between organizational tenure and both of these two OCs, the correlations are reduced considerably. They concluded that AC and NC increase with employee age, while CC increases as organizational tenure increases. Although the effects were relatively weak, CC appeared to share more variance with organizational tenure than with employee age.
Abdulla and Shaw (1999) found that years of experience in the same position is a strong predictor of AC, but not of CC. They supported their idea by explaining that employees may have been promoted to better positions and that may prolong their stay with an organization for several years, or they may have stayed on simply because they enjoyed working there. Therefore, they recognize that years of experience is not a suitable proxy for side-bets as it is not related to CC.