Employee Commitment And Organizational Performance

INTRODUCTION

• Background to the Study

In today’s competitive world, every organization is facing new challenges regarding increased performance and creating committed workforce. According to Armstrong-Stassen (2014), Commitment is not only a human relation concept but also involves generating human energy and activating human mind. Without commitment, the implementation of new ideas and initiatives will be compromised (Behery, Abdallah, Parakandi, & Kukunuru, 2016). Dorgan (2014) defines commitment as the enhanced functional and operational performance, including quality as the main principal. Organizations achieve their set objectives when competent and committed employees are engaged (Khan, 2013). Getting committed employees who are competent and ready to give in their best in the pursuit of the objectives of the organization has been one of the problems facing most organizations. Iqra and Yahya (2013) stated that some of the indicators of a committed employee include but not limited to lack of interest in job offers elsewhere, willingness to accept responsibility, expression of job satisfaction, willingness and ability to make useful contributions, eagerness to work with less supervision and not given to unnecessary excuses.

Employee commitment is highly valuable. Several studies have highlighted that commitment has a great impact on the successful performance of the organization. A committed employee has a stronger desire to belong to the organization and is willing to display greater organizational citizenship behavior, that is, a willingness to go over and beyond their required jobs duties. And if human resources are said to be an organizations greatest assets, then committed human resources should be regarded as an organizations competitive advantage. Committed employees who are highly motivated to contribute their time and energy to the pursuit of organizational goals are increasingly acknowledged to be the primary asset available to the organization (Hunjra, Chani, Aslam, Azam, & Rehman, 2018). They provide the intellectual capital, which for many organizations has become their most critical asset. With committed employees, there would be low absenteeism, productivity would be high, and employees are unlikely to leave their jobs.

DeCotiis and Summers (2017) explained that commitment is a belief, which reflects the potency of an employee’s bonding to an organization. It is therefore important for organizations to know the aspects that play important roles or have big impact in boosting the commitment of their employees. The opinion that job satisfaction matters in determining employee’s commitment can be traced to the behavioral scientist such as the Hawthorne plant experiment by Elton, on the influence of social attitude and relationship of work group on performance and the motivation theories that can affect human actions (Mathieu and Zajac, 2020). Liu and Alameda (2011) assert that providing an enabling work environment for employee satisfaction is a component of corporate policies of the organization but domiciled as the function of human resource management. This is because human resource is the most vital assets for the organizational development. Conceptually, job satisfaction refers to positive emotional state resulting from the pleasure a worker derives from the job, and as the effective and cognitive attitudes held by an employee about various aspect of their work (Mercer, 2017).

According to Daigle, (2007) there is lot of pressure on the management of the organization to turn into a friendlier one. Epitropaki, and Martin, (2015) have found that the sense of employees’ obligation to organization become more positive when flexible time scheduling is being adopted by the organization. It is necessary for every organization to have full level of its employee commitment in order to have outstanding performance on long term basis (Gashi, Željko, & Boris, 2017). Contributively, Glazer and Kruse, (2008) showed that job satisfaction influence positively to the employee achievement. Where there is a high level of employee commitment, there will be low turnover and that employee will perform better with less absenteeism (Kidron, 2018). Human resource system can facilitate the development or organizational competencies through eliciting employees’ commitment to the firm (Bipeledei & Dickson, 2018). Hence, organizations with a fit business strategy, structure and practices and policy might perform better. Cohen, (2007) prescribes commitment as a distinctive strategy for HRM whose positive effect will be felt. To improve the performance, organizations are trying to improve the performance of human capital.

Organizational performance technically is the aggregate net performance of the individual employees in the organization. This is because, the organization is the composition of the employees under it. An organization does not achieve anything on its own except the cumulative achievements of the employees that make up the organization. Every organization’s achievement is an expression of the percentage of market share acquired, level of employee retention as well as the extent of recognition within and outside the country amongst other indices. Employee commitment as an individual attitude could be elicited through several factors but how it bears on organizational performance is worrisome. Moreover, low commitment leads to high turnover and higher commitment leads to performance (Meyer, Paunonen, Gellatly, Goffin, & Jackson, 2019).

Employees who are committed to their respective organization are more likely not only to remain with the organization but are also likely to exert more efforts on behalf of the organization and work towards its success and therefore are also likely to exhibit better performance than the uncommitted employees. Employee commitment can benefit organization in a number of ways such as it can improve performance; reduced absenteeism, and turnover thereby resulting in increased performance. Commitment to organization is positively related to such desirable outcomes as motivation and is negatively related to outcome as absenteeism and turnover (Grawitch, 2017). Employees with high level of organizational commitment provide a secure and stable workforce (Lam, & Liu, 2014). Thus, providing competitive advantage to the organization.