Work commitment across cultures

1
Work commitment across cultures

• Ron Fischer
• Psyc338

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Overview

• Components of commitment
• Culture and commitment Theoretical approaches
• Research on affective commitment
• Different foci of commitment

3
Components of commitment to the organization

• Continuance commitment
• Side-bet theory (Becker)
• Affective commitment
• Identification and affective involvement
• Porter, Mowday, Steers
• Normative commitment
• Normative pressures and socialization
• Allen Meyer

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Affective Commitment and Culture

• Japan versus the West (US)
• Cole (1979) Lincoln Kalleberg (1985, 1990)
  Near (1989) Luthans et al. (1985)
• Lower attitudinal commitment but higher
  behavioural commitment

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Commitment and culture (cont)

• Application of cultural values (e.g., Hofstede,
  1980) e.g., Randall (1993) Cohen (2003)
• Individualism-Collectivism
• Affective ties
• Power Distance
• Decentralisation effects
• Uncertainty Avoidance
• Reduction of uncertainty
• Masculinity-Femininity
• Nurturance versus Assertiveness

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Alternative explanations

• Besser (1993) Neglect of political, economic and
  social context
• Response sets (see Smith, 2004)

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Goal of study

• Explaining affective commitment levels
• Artefact (measurement, response sets)
• Industry, job and employee characteristics
• Economic indicators
• Cultural indicators
• Relationship to turnover intentions
• Relationship to behaviour (intentions)

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Meta-analysis

• Literature search (PsycINFO from 1990 to 2004,
  published meta-analyses reviews, reference
  lists)
• Effect sizes
• Means standardized to common metric (0 lt x lt 1)
• Mean X S xj /n
• SE m sdx / ? n
• After deleting 12 outliers 352 samples with
  105,335 employees, 49 countries
• Mean X .6542 se .000318
• Heterogeneity Q 38911.09, df 351, p lt .001

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Explaining mean levels

• Measurement and artefacts
• Commitment scale used, number of items, number of
  response options, response sets Smith, 2004
  Smith et al., 2002
• Industry, employee and job
• Industry post-hoc coding scheme, 12 dummies
  comparing particular clusters of industries and
  jobs with representative samples
• Blue and white collar, mean age, mean tenure
• Economic
• GNI per Capita GDP per Capita growth (World
  Bank, 2004)
• Culture (Hofstede, 2001)

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Analysis strategy

• Mixed effects model (level 1 random effect
  sizes level 2 fixed study effects)
• Allows generalization of results beyond the
  particular studies involved in the present study
• Variance-known random coefficient regression
  model using HLM2 (Raudenbush et al., 2002
  Raudenbush Bryk, 2002)

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No unexplained Variance left ?2 (319) 187.97,
n.s.

-
.0023

.0111

Power distance

.0006

.0004

Un
certainty Avoidance

.0000

.0002

Masculinity

-
.0006

.0004

Individualism
-
Collectivism

.0005

.0003

GNIpC

-
.000002

.000001

GDPGpC

-
.0067

.0027


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Other commitment forms?

• Abrams et al. (1998) normative pressures versus
  identification

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What are we committed to???The importance of
foci of commitment

• Organization
• Work team
• Supervisors
• Family and important groups (clan, religion,
  etc.)
• Occupation
• Union

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Discussion

• Controlling for response sets, measurement
  artefacts, industry, job and employee
  characteristics
• Commitment higher in poorer economies with slow
  (negative) economic growth
• Availability of job alternatives is crucial
• National culture less important
• Commitment higher in individualistic cultures
• Commitment-turnover intention relationship
  stronger in individualistic cultures
• In collectivist cultures affective commitment
  (identification) less important, normative
  factors might be more important

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Practical Implications

• Organizational interventions more important in
  richer countries and when economic growth is high
• Economic incentives as a way of inducing higher
  commitment
• Identification with organization is linked to
  intention to stay, especially in individualistic
  cultures
• Other forms of commitment might be important in
  collectivistic cultures (normative commitment,
  commitment to supervisor or work team)

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Theoretical Implications

• Affective commitment and Identification with
  organization is tied to the economic situation
• Relationship between affective and continuance
  commitment (Meyer et al., 2002 r .02 vs .13)
• Affective ties weaker in more collectivistic
  cultures
• Conceptualisation of commitment culturally
  appropriate?
• Different commitment foci?
• Normative pressures (but not identification)?
• Exploitation of employees in more collectivistic
  cultures?