Effect of HR practices on employee attitudes and behavior

Question:

Discuss About The Antecedents Of Organizational Commitment?

The employment relationships are changing rapidly and most of the organizations are facing challenges to manage these relationships. According to Ghalamkari et al., (2015), HR practices shape the employee attitudes and behavior and in turn influences the organizational outcomes. Thus, it is clear that HR practices affect conception of employment relationships due to its manipulative effect on the employee’s attitude and behavior. Recently the study of Schleicher et al., (2015) has shown that overall job attitude of the employee act as the powerful predictor of their integrative behavior in the organization. The present essay provides an insight into the attitude-behavior relationship in an organizational setting. It further discusses the factors significantly affecting the organizational commitment of the worker and why it is important for the manager to ensure that the employees carry a long term commitment towards organization.

An attitude is defined as the way an individual responds to his/her environment; it can be a positive or negative response. The important thing about employees’ attitude is that it can influence the people working around them. For example, people with a positive attitude are found to lift the spirits of their colleagues. The attitude of a person can have a noteworthy impact on employee’s own performance as well as the performance of his or her colleague. So, the question comes that are employees themselves responsible for their attitude? Or managers at work can influence the attitude of the employees? The answer is attitude is a confluence of both external stimuli as well as individual characteristics (Pratkanis et al., 2014). Employee attitude gets affected by working conditions or the environment. For a instance, employees develop a negative attitude when they have relationship issues with managers or working for long hours. Thus, the effective work environment can be a key aspect to enhance positive attitude among employees.

The attitude of a person can be infectious and it can influence their behavior. It is imperative for an organization to be familiar with the influence of attitude on behavior. Past studies have shown that positive work environment, reward system, code of conduct and job satisfaction influences the employee attitude and can help to reinforce certain employee behaviors. The theory of planned behavior confirms that behavioral objective of an individual can be predicted based on three factors namely attitude, subjective norms and perceived control ((Pratkanis et al., 2014). The attitude here is determined based on individual’s belief and evaluation about the possible consequences of the behavior. According to ABC model of the component of attitude, it consists of three elements namely affect, cognition and behavior. The affect is related to the feelings of individual about the attitude object; behavior is linked with the individual’s intention which cognitive refers to the beliefs of that person about the attitude object (Proctor, 2014). The widely researched attitude in the organizational context is commitment. Organizational commitment is one of the important aspects which represent the attachment which is psychological in nature of the employee with the organization.

Factors affecting attitude-behavior relationship

The past research has provided the various types of commitment and stated that affective type of commitment is a result of emotional affection and association in the organization while continuance type of commitment is a result of cost associated with discontinuing the employment from the organization, while normative commitment is the obligation the employee feels to remain in the organization (Meyer et al., 2012). As stated by Fornes et al., (2008) in a comprehensive review organizational commitment is highly influenced by backgrounds such as interesting work, equity, and fairness, clarity of purpose, feedback and recognition, autonomy and empowerment.

The factors which can predict the organizational commitment of the employee are divided into three categories personal, job-related and organizational factors. The personal factors of the employees consist of the demographic variables such as age, marital status, gender, length of service and level of education which can be predictors of commitment. The role and exchange theory along with the side-bet theory explains the linkage between demographic factors and organizational commitment (Lam and Rahma, 2014). The theory suggests that factors like increase in age, role characteristics, gender and longer tenure increase the individual’s investment and participation in the organization which make it difficult for the employee to depart from the organization. As per Meyer et al., (2012), there is a positive correlation between demographic variables (age and tenure) and employee’s organizational commitment.

The study by Cho and Mor Barak (2008) has shown that age positively influences the organizational commitment, thus older employees have a higher intensity of commitment as compared to the employee who are younger. Some past research has also shown that as older employees have relatively fewer job alternatives available they are more committed to their present organization as compared to the younger employees. Mowday et al., (2013) stated that gender also has an influence on organizational commitment; female employees are more committed to the organization than male counterparts. However, the meta-analysis by Aydin et al. (2011) found that men are more committed to the organization than women. The level of education is found to be negatively related with the organizational commitment (Trivellas and Santouridis, 2016.). According to Iqbal et al., (2011) the high education provides more opportunity to the individual and thus it negatively affects their commitment to the current organization. The study of Salami (2008) revealed that tenure has a positive impact on organizational commitment.

When the employer assists the employee in order to understand their job well, it influences the organizational commitment. The job-related characteristic which has an impact on employee organizational commitment includes role clarity, access to resources and interesting work. Also, as the supervisor and co-workers are a part of the team which works on the assigned task, the supervisor support and co-workers support has a positive effect on organizational commitment. Eisenberger et al., (2010) stated that employees feel obligated to return the supportive behavior of supervisor and co-worker which results in organizational commitment. An impressive amount of past studies has shown that leadership style can make significant changes in employee’s organizational commitment. A similar study conducted by Yiing and Ahmad (2009) provides that positive, inspiring, transformation and supportive leadership behavior enhances the organizational commitment among employees. On the similar ground, Pierro et al., (2013) stated that leadership styles are significant antecedents of employee’s organizational commitment.

Types of organizational commitment

The environment in which the individual works is equally important to strive commitment. Some of the researchers in the past have considered the relationship with supervisor and co-workers as a part of the work environment. People prefer to have friendly employment relations which excel their commitment towards organization (Kirmizi and Deniz, 2009). Job security and pay satisfaction are some organizational related factors which can influence the organizational commitment. The individual feels more commitment to the organization when they find themselves secure on financial and career track (Kirmizi and Deniz, 2009). The pay satisfaction covers the satisfaction about salary, bonus and other facilities provided by the company. The degree of employee commitment depends on the extent to which they are satisfied with the financial and personal rewards and the extent to which they feel that reward system is fair (Jackson et al., 2012).

The link of organizational commitment with the desirable work outcomes is the main reason behind the interest of researchers and industrial individuals in this construct. The vast literature of organizational commitment and the empirical studies on this topic provide an important output. As per Griffin and Moorhead (2011) organizational commitment can have positive effect on the work behaviors of the employees. It influences the effectiveness of the organization by enhancing the performance of the employees and making them stay in the organization for long term (Schrock et. al, 2016). It also stimulates the employees to put extra efforts to accomplish the shared goals of the organization. Organizational commitment is linked with various work related behaviors and employee attitudes such as job involvement, job satisfaction and work motivation (Markovits, Davis and Vandick, 2007).

The literature of organizational commitment revealed that it enhances the knowledge sharing behavior of the employees (Mallett and Wapshott, 2012), and also has a positive impact on organizational citizenship behaviors (Meyer et al., 2012). The study by Soltani et al., (2016) provided that organizational commitment can effectively reduce the absenteeism, and improve the organizational performance (Supriyanto, 2013). As employee turnover is a costly affair, organizations are constantly taking efforts to reduce employee turnover, the study by Weng and McElroy (2012) shown that high organizational commitment drastically reduces the turnover in the organization. As precisely suggested by Bergmann et al., (2011), organizations should take efforts to keep the employees committed which will help the organization to survive and improve the competitive advantage. Based on the effect of organizational commitment on various employees’ outcomes, it is clear that managers should behave in a supportive manner, create a healthy working environment and keep the employees committed to the organization. There is no doubt that the organizational commitment is a key aspect manager should look after to improve organizational performance and retain the employees in the organization. 

Personal factors affecting organizational commitment

References

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