Human Resources

Personal Consequences of Employee Commitment

University of Maryland Eastern Shore

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Course #xxxx

Title

Professor

Date

Journal: Personal consequences of employee commitment. Academy of Management Journal, 32(3), 649-661.

Date: 1989

Author(s): Romzek, B., S.

Introduction

The purpose of the study was to examine the positive or negative consequences of employee commitment on nonwork and career satisfactions with the central hypotheses as positive. The study analyses used panel data that tested the effects of employee commitment on satisfaction with nonwork and career progress. Findings support that organizational involvement has positive consequences for individuals.

Hypothesis and Research Question:

The author submitted two hypotheses that tested for positive or negative consequences of employee commitment on nonwork and career satisfactions. Controlling for family involvement and age, the author’s first hypotheses tested to determine if employee commitment would have positive consequences for individuals’ nonwork satisfaction. The second hypotheses tested to determine if employee commitment would have positive consequences for individuals’ satisfaction with their career progress and future prospects.

Method/Type of Study

Research Design

The research design was a quantitative cross-sectional two-wave panel study conducted in 1982 and 1984 respectively.

Research Participants

The study surveyed a random sample of 484 respondents in the first wave of the survey which took place in 1982. The same respondents were contacted for the second wave in 1984 and resulted in 368 of the original individuals responding. The original sample was drawn from personnel listings solicited through nine public agencies; three federal offices, three state offices, and three local governments based in the states of Kansas and Missouri. The author noted that the “agencies represented diversity in the level of government, scope of services provided, and size and constituted an availability sample.” Other than collecting data on age as a control variable, the author did not indicate additional demographic information as being collected for study purposes. Without the data, it is very difficult to determine if the findings can be generalized to the population.

Instrumentation

Organizational involvement was the concept used to measure employee commitment. The author employed a customized measurement instrument adapted from separate scales developed by Etzioni (1975) for organizational involvement; Romzek (1985) for organizational alienation; and Hall, Schneider and Nygren (1970) and Buchanan (1974) for positive psychological attachment. The resultant organizational involvement scale had a Cronbach alpha of .77. Nonwork satisfaction was adapted from a scale developed by the National Opinion Research Center. The five-item Likert format measured the extent o which individuals report being satisfied with nonwork, excluding their families (α = .73). Family involvement was measured using a five-item scale developed by Romzek (1985). The scale (α = .71) measured the extent to which individuals report their families are an important focus for their psychological attachments. Age was measured using nine categories of 5 years each; the lowest at 25 years or younger, the highest at 60 years or over. Career satisfaction was measured using a two-item Likert response format ranging from dissatisfied (1) to very satisfied (5). The career satisfaction scale measured to the extent to which employees felt satisfied with their careers to date and prospects for the future. The scale had a Spearman-Brown split-half reliability coefficient of .70. The last variable, job satisfaction, was measured by two dimensions extracted from Smith, Kendall and Hulin’s (1969) Descriptive Index: the job itself and supervision. The Likert format scale had a Spearman-Brown split-half reliability coefficient of .64.

Data Collection

Data was captured using paper and pencil questionnaires. Questionnaires were prestamped, preaddressed and returned directly to the author by direct mail. The first wave of questionnaires consisted of a distribution of 704 surveys with a response rate of 69% (usable surveys). Of the original 484 respondents, 76% were still employed at the same agencies when the second wave was conducted. Of this total, 334 returned completed questionnaires yielding a response rate of 92%.

Data Analysis

Regression analysis was utilized at time one to test the effects of organizational involvement at time one on nonwork satisfaction at time two with controls for the effects of family involvement and age at time two. A second regression analysis was utilized to test the effects of organizational involvement at time one on career satisfaction employees report two years later when the effects of job satisfaction at time two are controlled.

Findings

The both hypotheses were supported by the findings. For the first, the results indicated that organizational involvement had a modest but noteworthy positive effect on nonwork satisfaction. Time two results were very similar to time one. The results support positive consequences even with a two-year lag time and indicated that people with the highest levels of organizational involvement enjoy the highest levels of nonwork satisfaction. To support the second hypothesis, the results showed that when the effects of job satisfaction are controlled, organizational involvement has positive consequences for career satisfaction two years later. In essence, the higher an employee’s level of organizational involvement at time one, the higher the satisfaction with career progress two years later.

Conclusions

The findings were consistent with previous research that suggests employees with higher levels of organizational involvement resulted in higher nonwork and career satisfaction. Just the opposite, employees with lower levels of organizational involvement are less satisfied. Highly involved employees are attitudinally disposed to view the various facets of their lives positively. The study concluded that individuals’ psychological attachment to their work organization does not necessarily mean negative consequences or personal trade-offs for them. The high level of psychological attachment to work organization does not necessarily mean a lack of psychological energy to sustain commitments to family or other aspects of nonwork life. Individuals can sustain several psychological attachments simultaneously; work and personal involvement are not necessarily in conflict. What can be drawn from this study is that the research dispels the notion that individuals who are highly engaged in work activity suffer in their personal lives. Employees can enjoy personal and social lives and experience the same level of psychological attachment to their jobs. Implications of this study support Fielder’s (1995) contingency theory. In essence, if individuals are mismatched in their job and association with supervisor or leader, they are generally ineffective and have negative dispositions. These individuals will not be highly involved in their organization because of their attitudes toward the work environment. Therefore, it is important as a manager or leader to employ the right person for the right job/skill match.

Limitations

As noted by the author, the major limitation of the study was the inability to control for third-variable explanations beyond age, family involvement and job satisfaction because it limits the breadth of the findings. Respondents’ positive predisposition may have affected the results of the study. Another shortcoming is the author’s decision not to use demographic data in the study. It would have been interesting to examine the differences in attitudes of the respondents based on age, race, and gender.

Summary

Examining the central point of this article, this is the belief that employees can have high psychological attachment to both work and home simultaneously. I point to concepts posed by Fielder’s (1995) contingency theory and learning organization theory as interpreted by Senge (1990). Fielder studied different styles of leaders working in different contexts. What he found was that leader effectiveness was contingent upon the leader’s style matching the situation. As noted earlier, it is important that the leader is the right fit to lead the organization based on the context and culture of the organization. Northouse (2007) suggests that “situations that are most favorable are those having good leader-follower relations, defined tasks, and strong leader position power. In learning organization theory, Senge (1990) suggests that new organizations adopt of set of disciplines, where a discipline is described as a “particular theory, translated into a set of practices, which one spends a life time mastering, p. 131). Thus, mastering a discipline becomes a life-long process. The takeaway from this article and applicability to my current practices is the premise that I can help my employees balanced work/life challenges by providing an organizational culture that encourages creativity, employee engagement, life-long learning and achievement of both personal and company goals. If employees achieve work and life satisfaction as the research shows, it becomes a win-win situation for my company because it potentially leads to lower turnover, employee empowerment and also longer term stability of institutional knowledge.