MNG82001 Organisational Behaviour - Literature Review on Strategies for Building Organisational Commitment

Introduction to organisational commitment

The rapidly changing environment in the organisations demand commitment from its employees for achieving the goals. Therefore, it is important for the organisations to build up various strategies to ensure organisational commitment from its employees because the employees who are more committed to their work and organisation are more productive, dependable, involved and less likely to quit (Bambacas and Patrickson 2008). The concept of organisational commitment varies widely and, whereas, its conceptualisation has behavioural associations, it is generally interpreted as attitudinal (Lok et al. 2005). Abdul Rashid, Sambasivan and Johari (2003) stressed in their paper that successful implementation of an organisation’s policies and plans is dependent upon organisational commitment and unlike previous studies, their paper shows relationship between corporate culture, organisational commitment and organisational performance. In a paper by Krajcsák and Gyökér (2013), different interpretations of workplace commitment by various authors and researchers have been discussed and how it can be improved. They describe commitment as “the relative strength of organisational involvement or psychological attachment towards the organisation” or it is a three-dimensional model consisting of:

• Affective commitment – willingness to stay part of the organisation,
• Continuance commitment – the perceived costs of other alternatives and personal sacrifice, and 
• Normative commitment. 

Factors affecting Organisational Commitment

The factors that could affect organisational commitment have been studied independently but there has been few studies which clearly explain the strategies that could build commitment.  Bhatnagar (2007) mentioned in his paper that the factors affecting organisational commitment differ in different countries as their national cultures vary. His paper consists of some of the Western organizational commitment research literature which either define commitment or describe the types of commitment, but there is nothing specific that could identify strategies for organisational commitment. Although, there have been studies describing the relationship of employee satisfaction, turnover, conflict management, role stress, HRM practices, etc. to organisational commitment, there is a need to further investigate in order to explain how these variables could be used into strategic planning to ensure commitment. 

It can be seen in a paper by Curtis and Wright (2001) that “in order to get employees committed quickly, they should feel emotionally attached to the organisation, feel that leaving would involve a personal sacrifice and that they have an obligation or responsibility to stay” and that there are factors that can cultivate the three dimensions of commitment in employees if they are fulfilled:

For Affective commitment to be successful group cohesion or cooperative environment rather than a competitive environment in an organisation would welcome a new employee, dissatisfaction and conflict with the managers could discourage an employee and make him leave his job, therefore, there should be certain values and philosophies that could create a friendly environment with the managers and team leaders, fair performance appraisals and positive feedback could also encourage an employee to be more loyal towards the organisation and the involvement of the employees will also build their self-esteem and commitment to the organisation. 

For continuance commitment to be successful, there should be a fair pay which is reviewed and evaluated according to the external and internal labour market conditions, there should be career development opportunities for the employees which provide them with experience, guidance and equitable promotion, and there should be flexible work options and employee benefits. Dockel, Basson and Coertzee (2006
) carried out research to investigate how the retention factors influence the organisational commitment and increased the retention of high technology employees because of their compensation and a competitive salary, supervisor support, job characteristics and work/life policies.