تعهد سازمانی و تعامل اجتماعی : رویکرد حوزه های چندگانه

A model of organizational commitment is presented proposing that social interaction influences affective commitment. Employing a multiple constituencies approach, it was hypothesized that work group social interaction would influence work group affective commitment. Further, department social interaction and work group affective commitment would independently influence department affective commitment. Similarly, organizational interaction and department affective commitment would independently influence organizational affective commitment. The model was tested using survey responses from 154 employees. The path analytic results supported the hypothesized relationships between social interaction and affective commitment. Comparative analyses showed the employee's focus of commitment was significantly related to differences between affective and continuance commitment.

These data were collected for the first author’s Master’s thesis conducted at Wright State Universityunder the direction of the second author. The authors thank Maryalice Citera and LawrenceKurdekfor their contributions to this research and John Mathieu for his comments onan earlierversionof this article. The views, opinions, and findings contained in this article are solely those of the authors andshould not be construed as an official U.S. Department of the Army or U.S. Department of Defenseposition, policy, or decision, unless so designated by other documentation.Address correspondence and reprint requests to Tonia Heffner, U.S. Army Research Institute,5001isenhower Ave., Room 6S26G, Alexandria, VA 22333. E-mail: heffnert@ari.army.mil.

The descriptive statistics and scale intercorrelations are presented in Table 1. Unlike previous research, significant positive correlations were obtained between organizational affective and continuance commitment (r D :18; p < :05) and between work group affective and continuance commitment (r D :29; p < :01). Significant correlations were obtained between the social interaction and affective commitment measure within each constituency, and each measurewas significantly correlated across each constituency (e.g., social interaction for all three constituencies). These correlations did not exceed multicollinearity guidelines and were used in further analyses (Kenny, 1979). Before testing the model of social interaction and affective commitment, a factor analysiswas conducted to determine the participant’s ability to distinguish between the three constituencies while using similar measures. The 51 social interaction items (three 17-item measures) were factor analyzed with a maximum likelihood extraction and an oblique rotation. The solutionwas set to three factors to represent the three constituencies (work group, department, and organization). The resulting matrix was significant, Â2(1125) D 2766:81; p < :001, accounted for 54.3% ofthe variance, and each of the items loaded on the hypothesized constituency factor. For example, all of the work group items loaded on one factor. An examination of the individual items revealed that five items loaded across factors. These five items were dropped from all three scales. A second factor analysis was significant, Â2(525) D 1678:25; p < :001, accounted for 63.4% of the variance, and revealed three distinguishable factors representing the three constituencies. Each of the items loaded on the expected factor, e.g., the work group items loaded on the work group factor.2 The Cronbach’s alpha reliability estimates of the work group, department, and organizational subscales remained high, ®’s D :96; :95; and .95, respectively. The three 12-item scales were used in all subsequent analyses. The 24 items from the three affective commitment scales were factor analyzed using a maximum likelihood extraction and an oblique rotation. The solution was set to three factors to reflect the three constituencies. The resulting matrix was significant, Â2(207) D 605:28; p < :001, and accounted for 46.2% of the variance. Although the work group items loaded on one factor, the department and organizational items were less clear. Corresponding items from the department and organizational measures loaded together to form a unique factor. This item was dropped from all three scales and the factor analysis was repeated. The result was 2 Details for the factor analyses can be obtained from the first author.a significant three factor solution, Â2(150) D 463:92; p < :001, that accounted for 46.0% of the variance and had a distinguishable factor for each constituency. Each of the items loaded on the expected factor, e.g., the work group commitment items loaded on the work group factor. The Cronbach’s alpha reliability estimates for the 7-item work group, department, and organizational scales remained high, ®’s D :83; :85; and .84, respectively. The three 7-item scales were used in all subsequent analyses. The strong positive correlations between the social interaction and affective commitment measures suggested the participants might not have distinguished between the two constructs. Therefore, we conducted three factor analyses using a maximum likelihood extraction and an oblique rotation. For the work group, the matrix was significant, Â2(134) D 347:32; p < :001, accounted for 58.0% of the variance, and had a two distinguishable factors representing social interaction and affective commitment. Similarly, the department and organization matrices were significant and had two distinguishable factors representing social interaction and affective commitment, Â2(134) D 320:06; p < :001, which accounted for 57.0% of the variance and Â2(134) D 315:61; p < :001, which accounted for 56.2% of the variance, respectively. These results confirm the participants did indeed distinguish between the social interaction and affective commitment constructs both within and across constituencies.We tested the model using path analysis. Previous research (e.g., Mathieu & Zajac, 1990) has found that age and tenure are significantly, although weakly, correlated with affective commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1997). To control for the influence of these variables on the hypothesized relationships, they were entered first into the regression equations. Organizational affective commitment regressed on the control variables resulted in a significant R; :26; p < :01, with tenure significant, ¯ D :33; p < :01, but age was not significant (see Table 2). In the second step, organizational affective commitment was regressed on the control variables, department affective commitment and organizational social interaction. As hypothesized, department affective commitment, and organizational social interaction were significantly related to organizational affective commitment (see Table 2). The regression of department affective commitment on the control variables was not significant, R D :17; ns, although tenure was significantly related to department affective commitment, ¯ D :20; p < :05. As seen in Table 2, when work group affective commitment and department social interaction were added to the equation, the result was significant. Work group affective commitment and department social interaction were significantly related to department affective commitment, ¯ D :33; p < :001, and ¯ D :55; p < :001, respectively. Similarly, when work group affective commitment was regressed on the control variables, the result was not significant, but tenure was significant ¯ D :24; p < :05. When work group social interaction was added to the equation, the overall result wassignificant, R D :66; p < :001. Work group social interaction was significantly related to work group affective commitment, ¯ D :64; p < :001. For the overall test of the model fit, the chi-square indicated the hypothesized model was an acceptable fit to the data, Â2(13) D 17:39; ns, but Q D :88 indicating a revised model should be considered. For the prediction of organizational affective commitment, the addition of a negative path from department social interaction significantly increased the relationship, R D :77, ¯ D ¡:23; p < :01 (see Table 3). For department affective commitment, the addition of a negative path from work group social interaction significantly increased the relationship, R D :75; ¯ D ¡:18; p < :01. Adding the two negative paths, work group interaction to department affective commitment and department interaction to organizational affective commitment, improved the model fit, Q D:97; Â2(11)D4:20; ns. Overall, there was support for the model (see Fig. 3).The purpose of the next set of analyses was to test the relationships between affective and continuance commitment components. These analyses were conducted by first determining to which constituency the employee was affectivelycommitted. Participants were classified as having attained affective commitment to a constituency if they scored above the cutoff of .5 standard deviation above the mean. Therefore, each participant received a dichotomous classification of either having or not having affective commitment to each of the three constituencies (work group, department, and organization). Based on Lewin’s (1943) theory of psychologically proximal units and Lawler’s (1992; Mueller & Lawler, 1999) assertions regarding nested collectives, participants were assumed to have affective commitment to proximal constituencies prior to developing affective commitment to distal constituencies. Employing this assumption, the following classification scheme was used. Participants classified as lacking affective commitment to any of the constituencies were placed in the “low affective commitment” group (n D 73). Participants above the cutoff score for work group affective commitment, but below the cutoff score on the department and organizational affective commitment were placed in the “work group affective commitment” group (n D 15). Those who scored above the cutoff on work group and department affective commitment, but below the cutoff on organizational affective commitment were placed inthe “department affective commitment” group (n D 15). Participants who scored above the cutoff score on all three affective commitment measures were classified as having “organizational affective commitment” (n D 16). The remaining participants were not classified because their results on the affective commitment measures did not conform to any of the previous patterns. These participants typically worked for the organization far longer than they had worked in the work group and, therefore, would not be expected to exhibit this pattern. Once the commitment constituency was identified, the hypothesized relationships between affective commitment and continuance commitment were examined. These hypotheses suggested affective commitment would be significantly greater than continuance commitment for constituencies to which the employee has attained affective commitment. For those constituencies to which an employee does not have affective commitment, continuance commitment will be significantly greater than affective commitment (see Fig. 2 for specific hypotheses). The differences between the means of the commitment variables were tested using paired one-tailed t tests. To protect against experimentwise error rate, alpha was adjusted using the modified Bonferroni test (Keppel, 1982). The results of these analyses are shown in Table 4. The results are quite similar to the predictions. Eight of the 12 comparisons were significant at p < :0125. As hypothesized for employees classified as having low affective commitment to any constituency, continuance commitment significantly exceeded affective commitment for the department and organization foci. Employees who attained work group affective commitment had work group affective commitment significantly greater than continuance commitment, as hypothesized. For those who attained department affective commitment, affective commitment was significantly greater than continuance commitment for the work group and department foci, as hypothesized. Employees who attained organizational affective commitment, affective commitmentwas significantly greaterthan continuance commitment for all three commitment foci. Of the four remaining pairs, the comparisons of work group commitments for the low affective constituency and organizational commitments for thework group constituency were in the hypothesized direction, but failed to reach significance. Only the comparisons of department commitments for the work group constituency and organizational commitments for the department constituency were in a direction counter to the hypotheses.