Organizational commitment and human resource management: a study of mangers in cooperatives

Abstract

The purpose of this study was: (a) to find the relationship between Organizational Commitment (OC) and several characteristics of the Human Resource Management (HRM) mechanisms, viz., Recruitment, Selection, Compensation, Performance Appraisal, Career Planning, and Training; (b) to find the relationship between OC and demographic and career variables of individuals; and (c) to explore the differences, if any, in the level of OC across different types of organizations Several definitions of OC are reviewed and these definitions are found to suffer from several problems. A more parsimonious definition of OC is proposed: OC is an affective attitude in which an employee feels emotionally attached to his/her employing organization. The existing measures of OC were of little use to measure OC as defined above. Therefore, a new instrument to measure OC was developed. (1) OC was found to be related to several characteristics of Recruitment, Selection and Compensation mechanisms. But OC was not found to be related to any characteristic of Performance Appraisal, Career Planning and Training. (2) OC was found to be related to Age, Professional Education and Level of Position in the hierarchy. But OC was not found to be related to tenure in the organization, and number of year of employment in the present position. (3) OC was significantly lower in Externally Controlled cooperatives compared to cooperatives controlled by employee managers and elected leaders. OC did not differ significantly in the latter two categories. The HRM mechanisms related to OC were different in these three cooperatives. These findings are discussed from the theoretical perspective and implications for practice are drawn. Several areas of future research are indicated.