Background and Significance of the Study

Describe about the Employee Engagement and Organizational Commitment for journal of management?

Introduction to the Study

The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between levels of employee engagement and organizational commitment. It should be noted that the level of organizational commitment directly reflects on the organizational benefits and performance. The study intends to address the factors that affect organizational commitment of employees.

The reason for choosing this topic as research is to study the factors that affect the work-related outcomes. The study can be used to improve the activities of an organization to improve employee attitudes, values and behaviours.

The main research question for this paper is identified as-

How management behaviour affects employee engagement and organizational commitment levels? 

There are other subsidiary questions that are answered in the report-

What are the antecedents of organizational commitment?

To what extent the management behaviours affect employee engagement and organizational commitment?

Hypothesis 1- There is a positive relationship between employee engagement ad organizational commitments.

Hypothesis 2- There is a positive relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Hypothesis 3- There is a positive relation between employee engagement and organizational success.

To identify the factors affecting employee behaviours

To investigate relationship between job performance, employee engagement and organizational commitment.

To study the importance of motivational factors in the organization.

The low-performance standards of some organizations are related to low satisfaction levels of employees. The morale of employee declines if their attitude and behaviour are not moving in a positive direction.

Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is the relationship between an organization and its employees. It is the emotional commitment of an employee towards the organizational goals (Kruse, 2012).

Organizational Commitment

Organizational commitment is the psychological attachment of an employee towards the organization. It is a feeling of responsibility towards attaining the mission of the organization (Leviatan, 2013).

Job Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction or job satisfaction is defined as the satisfaction level of employees towards the different facets of his job (Hülsheger, Alberts, Feinholdt & Lang, 2013).

Organizational commitment, employee behaviour and job satisfaction are related terms. These concepts are backed up by different theories explained as under.

Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) is the behaviour of employees exhibited in an organization. The behaviour normally involves volunteering, helping others, meeting deadlines and innovating. These behaviours are represented by five dimensions of OCB- altruism, sportsmanship, conscientiousness, courtesy and civic virtue (Salehzadeh, Shahin, Kazemi & Shaemi Barzoki, 2015). In simple words, altruism means being helpful. It refers to an employee assisting other employees of the organization in their tasks. Conscientiousness refers to obeying rules, regulations, being punctual and implying a highly responsible nature. Sportsmanship refers to the willingness of tolerating difficulties in the workplace with ease and without complains. Courtesy refers to the gestures that are demonstrated by reducing problems and lessen its effects in the future. The main idea of courtesy revolves around avoiding actions that make employees work harder unnecessarily. Civic virtue refers to the constructive involvement in the political process of the organization (Chiang & Hsieh, 2012).

Research Questions

Attitude is the feelings, emotions or beliefs of an individual. It is the psychological tendency of an employee that relates to job satisfaction, organizational commitment or engagement. Attitude affects individual behaviour. There are three components of attitude: Affective, Behavioural and Cognitive component. The affective component involves the feelings or emotions of employees towards the organization. It is related to the immediate response of an employee towards a particular situation or event. The behavioural or conative component is the attitude that is influenced by or emotions or feelings. It is the reflection of the feelings or beliefs towards a situation. The cognitive component refers to the knowledge or beliefs of the employee towards the situation or event. The actions are mostly guided by cognitive component (Nelson & Quick, 2013).

Every organization has various features or drivers that lead to organizational success. These drivers connect all employees and help in engagement for a healthy corporate culture. A few of them are explained (Tims, Bakker, Derks & van Rhenen, 2013). Trust, fairness and respect among managers, employees and partners drive the organization. Internal and external communication patterns exhibits better business results (Lipman, 2012). The organizational structure facilitating project management and team work reflects on the organizational success. The employee needs to focus on customer satisfaction. The behaviour of leaders and management affects the morale of employees. The reward and recognition system for managing performance in the organization also affects the organizational success. The quality and balance of work-life for managers and employees also affect the work performance outcomes (Bedarkar & Pandita, 2014).

Motivation is a source of energizing, maintaining and controlling behaviour of employees in an organization. Motivation plays an important role as it helps in capturing the employees’ drive for performing better (Kuvaas, Buch, Gagne & Dysvik, 2015). Motivation helps the employees in looking at a better way to complete the task, be quality oriented and work with higher efficiency. Motivation can be in form of monetary benefits such as increase in basic pay, incentives, stock options and bonuses. Motivation can also be in the form of non-cash benefits such as appraisal, recognition and awards. The motivating factors directly relate to needs, emotions and cognition (Robbins & Judge, 2011).

Method Outline  

The method followed to conduct research involves studying and analysing data from secondary sources. The speculative hypotheses made is analysed in the research. The research gives an idea for describing general market characteristics.

Research Hypothesis

A descriptive approach is used for conducting the research. The descriptive research approach helped in providing accurate description for testing hypotheses. It also acts as a basis for decision making. However, the descriptive approach could not establish casual links (Kaliannan & Adjovu, 2015).

For secondary data, three published journals are selected. The three journals individually justify the three hypotheses of research.  A cross-sectional design is followed for conducting research in which the information collected was from a large representative sample. It allows comparing different variables at the same time (Kaliannan & Adjovu, 2015).

The data is collected from primary and secondary sources. Primary data was collected through in-depth interviews that helped in gaining insights, feelings and beliefs of participants.  The secondary data was collected from published journals. The academic journal widens the scope of research with qualitative as well as quantitative data (Kaliannan & Adjovu, 2015).

For primary data, the sample size is chosen to be 25 respondents. In-depth interview was conducted for acquiring qualitative data. For testing the first hypotheses, the population is selected as frontline employees at Jordan for the banking sector. Questionnaires were administered for a sample size of 336 participants, out of which 322 participants responded (Albdour & Altarawneh, 2014). For testing the second hypotheses, survey questionnaires were developed. A sample size of 950 people at university hospitals in Isfahan city was selected, out of 814 people responded (Mosadeghrad & Ferdosi, 2013). For the third hypotheses, a case study of the Mobile Telecommunication Network, Ghana was selected. 137 people responded for carrying out a quantitative analysis (Kaliannan & Adjovu, 2015).

The respondents for primary data collection through in-depth interviews were not forced into participation. Confidentiality of names and contact details are maintained throughout the research process and analysis.

The main limitation was less availability of time. The time constraint limited the primary data research process and major focus is laid on secondary data. The secondary data has a risk of biases and incompleteness. Certain trouble was also faced for encoding the written documents as it lacks standardization.

The profile of respondents from primary data is shown in Table 1.  

Table 1: Profile of Respondents for Primary Research

As per the data collected through in-depth interview, qualitative data was obtained. I looked for four direct answers aimed to engagement such as: I am proud to work at company X; I am extremely satisfied to work at Company X; I would recommend Company X to a friend or family gladly; and I am looking for a new job with another company. It was not possible to get the results as desired but through deductive analysis than 60% of the employees was highly satisfied to work at the respective companies. 20% of the employees had neutral answers and the satisfaction level could not be determined. 12% of the employees would gladly recommend the companies to friends or family. 8% employees were looking to join another organization.

Research Aims and Objectives

For analysing the positive relationship between employee engagement and organizational commitment, the following profile of respondents at Jordan’s banking sector was analysed.

Table 2: Profile of Respondents at Jordan

A multiple regression analysis was performance to determine the relationship between employee engagement and organizational commitment. According to the beta values, the results reveal that organizational commitment (β = 0.305) is followed by job engagement (β = 0.290). The results of this study show that employee engagement is highly related to components of attitude- affective, behavioural and cognitive. The normative commitment in employees was stronger than continuance and affective commitment. The results suggest that the employees with higher engagement level tend to have greater affective commitment. The employees holding positive attitude towards the organization showed higher level of organizational commitment (Albdour & Altarawneh, 2014).

For analysing the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment, stratified random sampling was done by administering questionnaires to 814 people. The respondent profile is shown in Table 3.

Table 3: Profile of Respondents at Isfahan

According to the mean scores of organizational commitment of employees relating to job satisfaction had a moderate score of 6. The organizational commitment score was determined as 3.97 for first line managers, 4.7 for middle and 4.12 for senior managers. The overall employees were satisfied with their jobs as the motivational factors and other characteristics such as salaries, fringe benefits, promotion, working conditions, supervision and nature of job was strong. The mean score of job factors was accounted as 4.39 and organizational factors of 3.05 out of 6 respectively. The study revealed a positive relation between organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The study revealed that satisfied employees had higher level of organizational commitment (Mosadeghrad & Ferdosi, 2013).

For analysing the relationship between employee engagement and organizational success, telecommunication giant at Ghana was analysed. The study measures indicators of effective employment engagement strategies towards organizational success. The survey was conducted for obtaining agreeableness of employees regarding various indicators of employee engagement. The Pearson correlation coefficient in the survey revealed a mean of 1.710 for having a positive relation towards their job (Kaliannan & Adjovu, 2015). The result for agreeableness is shown in Table 4.

Table 4: Findings at Ghana

From the above research and analyses, the hypotheses assumed for the research is justified. There is a positive relation between employee engagement, organizational commitment, performance outcomes and organizational success.

The above study reveals that there is a positive relationship between employee engagement and organizational commitment, employee engagement and organizational success and job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Problem Statement

The overall findings have highlighted the importance of motivational factors such as promotion, nature of work, working conditions and various other factors. It can be inferred that the employees who are not satisfied with their job status or salary, have an intention of turnover. Employee satisfaction is highly influenced by job status (Andrew & Sofian, 2012). It is also inferred that if the employees are loyal to their managers, they would have a psychological attachment and would be willing to stay in the organization. On the contrary, the employees who have less commitment towards the organization are more likely to look for jobs in another organization. The employees must be given growth opportunities so that there is harmony and efficiency in the organization (Truss, Shantz, Soane, Alfes & Delbridge, 2013).

The findings suggest the need for an employee-oriented environment in the organization. The employees prefer a working environment that has a healthy work environment with high motivational factors.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Conclusion          

This study examined the relationship between job satisfaction, employee engagement and organizational commitment. The effect of the above factors is directly linked with work performance outcomes. A satisfied employee is likely to highly engage and volunteer in the organizational activities. The motivational factors keep the morale of the employees high that keeps them involved as well as committed towards the mission of organization. Several recommendations have been proposed related to human resource and management practices (Menguc, Auh, Fisher & Haddad, 2013).

The organizations can consider revising their performance management system by introducing performance or sales based incentives (Mone & London, 2011). This would help them in increasing their purchasing power, reducing burdens and fulfilling their needs. Employees need to be given promotion or growth opportunities so that they can enhance their skills. The organizations must provide encouragement and support to the employees so that their morale is high (Armstrong & Armstrong, 2011).

This paper aims to provide a basis for expertise in employee behaviour and the factors that matter to them. The paper lays emphasis on both individual behaviour as well as superior-subordinate relationship. In the current world, autocracy is not recommended. It is the responsibility of the managers to keep their employees satisfied. The paper serves as a study for managers regarding how to get their work done while a maintaining a positive atmosphere in the organization (Huang et al., 2015).

References

Albdour, A., & Altarawneh, I. (2014). Employee Engagement and Organizational Commitment: Evidence from Jordan. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BUSINESS, 19(2). Retrieved from https://www.craig.csufresno.edu/ijb/Volumes/Volume%2019/V192-5.pdf

Definition of Terms

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Kuvaas, B., Buch, R., Gagne, M., & Dysvik, A. (2015). “Do You Get What You Pay For? Sales Incentives, Motivation, and Employee Outcomes”. Academy Of Management Proceedings,2015(1), 11440-11440. https://dx.doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.2015.11440abstract

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