LIST OF APPENDICES
3.11 Organisational commitment
Closely linked to the concept of job satisfaction is the concept of organisational commitment. This section shall look at the concept of organisational commitment and attempt will be made to link it to talent management.
This section considers the literature on affective commitment, which is a component of organisational commitment. To achieve this, the section firstly provides a discussion of various definitions of organisational commitment, the approaches to organisational commitment and the dimensionality of organisational commitment.
Secondly, a brief discussion will be provided on the three most popular dimensions of organisational commitment: affective, continuance and normative. Organisational
Organisational commitment has been defined by Mowday, Porter & Steers (1982:27) as “the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organisation, ! characterised by a strong belief in and acceptance of the organisation’s goals and values, a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organisation and a strong desire to maintain membership in the organisation”.
In an endeavour to define and clarify organisational commitment, Mowday et al.
(1982; 1979) identified three components of organisational commitment:
• Identification, which refers to a strong belief in and acceptance of organisational goals and values;
• Involvement, which refers to a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organisation; and
• Loyalty, which refers to a strong desire to maintain membership in the organisation.
Robbins et al. (2009:74) define organisational commitment as a state in which an employee identifies with a particular organisation and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organisation. Zeffane (1993:1-2) adopts a systems perspective of organisational commitment and argues that organisational commitment “refers to the nature of the relationship of the organisation member to the system as a whole”. Parker & Wright, (2001) define organisational commitment as the psychological attachment felt by an employee toward the organisation, and argue that organisational commitment reflects the degree to which the employee internalises or adopts characteristics or perspectives of an organisation. Furthermore the duo also defines organisational commitment as an employee’s perceived intention to stay with that organisation.
These definitions demonstrate that there is no consensus on the definition of organisational commitment (Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002; Mowday, 1998; Suliman &
Iles, 2000). The definitions of organisational commitment depend largely on the approach to commitment, which the researcher advocates.
Organisational commitment has been studied in the field of organisation behaviour as early as the 1950s. Employee commitment is a critical issue for many organisations.
Many researchers have regarded organisational commitment as a factor that promotes an individual’s attachment to the organisation. Previous studies of management and organisational psychology have focused on the relationship between an individual’s attitude to and enjoyment of work as well as their impact upon the operation of the organisation. In the field of human resource management (HRM), managers have been trying to understand the concept of organisation commitment. As a result, HRM managers and professionals have been devising strategies that nurture allegiance to organisational goals and values. Therefore, understanding organisational commitment has become integral and crucial to informing HRM strategies (Meyer & Allen, 1997). The majority of studies in organisational commitment have focused on employees of private sector organisations (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Dawley & Stephens, 2004; Suliman & Iles, 2000). Only a few empirical studies have studied public sector employees (Obeng &
Ugboro, 2003) or both public and private sector employees (Dunham, Grube &
Castaneda, 1994).
Approaches to organisational commitment
Four main approaches to conceptualising and exploring organisation commitment have been identified by Suliman and Iles (2000): attitudinal, behavioural, normative and multidimensional approaches.
In the attitudinal approach, which has been spearheaded by Mowday et al. (1979), commitment is viewed as the way in which employees feel and think about their organisations (Meyer & Allen, 1991). Mowday et al. (1979) found that organisational commitment was related to personal and job characteristics as well as to work experiences. Furthermore, Mowday et al. (1979) found that organisation commitment was positively related to employee performance and negatively related to employee turnover and absenteeism.
The second approach views organisation commitment as behaviour. It emerged from Becker’s (1960) “side-bets” theory or “commitment as behaviour” idea (Suliman and Iles, 2000). Side-bets are sunken costs or investments (e.g., time, effort, rewards,
are perceived as positive elements in an exchange. The individual, according to the behavioural approach, becomes reluctant to lose these benefits and is thus likely to stay with the organisation (Iverson & Buttigieg, 1999).
The behavioural approach focuses on the overt manifestations of commitment and emphasises the view that employees continue their employment with an organisation because of the investment they have made in the organisation (e.g., friendships formed in the organisation, time spent, pension benefits), and it is these investments that bind the employee to the organisation. In other words, employees become committed to the organisation because of the costs associated with leaving the organisation. The major consideration in this approach is, therefore, the investment or the costs associated with leaving an organisation (Scholl, 1981).
According to the third normative perspective to organisational commitment, employees feel obligated to remain with their organisation because of the congruency between their personal goals and values and the organisation’s goals and values (Becker & Randall, 1995; Weiner, 1982). In this approach, employees have internalised normative beliefs about the organisation (1982) and feel more attached to it as they have accepted the values and the operating systems of the organisation. As a result, employees may decide to remain with the organisation because they believe they have made relationships in the organisation and as such are part of the prevailing value system.
Researchers in this field have identified three bases of commitment. Firstly, compliance occurs when employees adopt attitudes and behaviours to get rewards or avoid punishment. Secondly, identification occurs when employees adopt attitudes and behaviours in order to be associated with a certain group. Thirdly, internalisation occurs when employees adopt attitudes and behaviours because they identify with the organisation or group value system. Within the normative approach to organisational commitment, employees also feel indebted to the organisation (Meyer
& Smith, 2000).
The most popular approach to the study of organisational commitment is the fourth, multidimensional approach, which views organisational commitment as a complex
obligation. The multidimensional approach suggests that organisational commitment develops through interaction of these three components (Meyer, Allen & Gellatly, 1990; Meyer, Allen & Smith, 1993; Suliman & Iles, 2000). The next section will discuss briefly the concept of employee engagement as it is allied to organisational commitment and job satisfaction.