CORRELATES OF PERSONAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS ON ORGANISATIONAL COMMITMENT OF WORKERS OF PRIVATE SECTORS (EDUCATION PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- Background to the Study
Organizational commitment (OC) has been in existence for many years and had been identified as a central construct in understanding the relationship between the employee and the employer (Allen & Meyer 1996). Definitions of the construct indicate its significance in binding the individual both to the organization and to courses of action which are relevant to the target of the commitment (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001). With regard to the former, analyses consistently indicate significant correlations between OC and job satisfaction as well as emotional intelligent, motivation coupled with highly esteemed personnel that will reflect the banner of the organisation (Randall 1990). With regard to the latter, further relationships have been identified between components of OC and a range of discretionary and extra-role positive behaviours of employees (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001). As used here, organizational commitment is a psychological state that categorizes the employees’ relationship with the organization or as viewed to be the aggregate internalized normative demands to perform in a manner which meets organizational objectives and interests, it is understood as a commitment to the entire organization.
However, three components of commitment have been identified, each of which ties the employee to their organization but the nature of the “psychological-bonding” is different. Affective commitment (AC) ties people through their emotional attachment, involvement, and identification with the organization. Continuance commitment (CC) depends on employees’ awareness of the costs of leaving the organization. Normative commitment (NC) rests on employees’ obligatory feelings towards co-workers or management. Each component might have different antecedents and, while all lead to a reduced intention to leave the organization, result in different outcomes for employees’ discretionary extra-role behaviour (Gautam, van Dick & Wagner, 2001).
Researchers believed that Nigerian workers are not committed to their organizations (Olugbile, 1996). Others believed that they are committed to organizational goals but it is the organizations that do not show commitment to the plight of the workers (Alarape & Akinlabi,2000). They believed that organizational commitment reflects one side of the reciprocal relationship between the employer and the employee and as such each party has to play its role. Organizations need committed workers in order to face the world wide economic competition. Indeed, some researchers found that organizational commitment is a function of several variables such as job satisfaction, motivation, participative decision making, organizational support, financial reward, communication, promotion prospect and leadership style (Alarape & Akinlabi, 2000; Brown,2003; Salami & Omole, 2005).
The management of people at work is an integral part of the management process. To understand the critical importance of people in the organization is to recognize that the human element and the organization are synonymous. The thought of organizational commitment is an important point in management. The thought is one of basic values on which organizing depend upon, and the staff is evaluated regarding to commitment criteria (Angle, & Perry, 1983.)
Organizational commitment is an attitude towards employee’s loyalty to organization and a consistent process in which people’s cooperation with organizational decisions depicts their attention to organization and its success. The concept of organizational commitment has attracted considerable attention over recent years and has become a central objective of human resource management. Commitment can be described as attachment and loyalty which individual can display at a variety of levels: their job, profession, department, boss or organization. More specifically, organizational commitment has been defined by Mowdray,(1992 as consisting of three components: an identification with the goals and values of the organization, a desire to belong to the organization and a willingness to display effort on behalf of the organization.
