Magisterarbeit, 2006
56 Seiten, Note: 72
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Declaration
Introduction
Literature Review
Organisational Commitment
Emotional Exhaustion
Behaviour at work
Hypotheses
Organizational Commitment and Exhaustion..
Organizational Commitment and OCB
Organizational Commitment and CWB
Organizational Commitment and Turnover Intentions
Exhaustion and Turnover intentions
Exhaustion and OCB and CWB
Exhaustion as a mediator
Organizational Context
Method
Participants
Measures
Organizational Commitment
Exhaustion
Extra-role behaviours
Turnover intentions
Procedure
Ethical Considerations
Analytical technique
Results
Descriptive statistics
Correlational analysis (hypotheses 1-7)
Mediation analyses
Organizational commitment and Exhaustion
Organizational commitment and OCB
Organizational commitment and CWB
Organizational commitment and turnover intentions
Mediation analyses (hypothesis 8)
AC/NC and OCB mediated by exhaustion
AC/NC and CWB mediated by exhaustion
AC/NC and TI mediated by exhaustion
Discussion
References
Table 1. Means, Standard Deviations, Internal Reliabilities, and Intercorrelations
Table 2. AC Regression results for Hypotheses 1-4
Table 3. NC Regression results for Hypotheses 1-4
Table 4. Mediator results for predictor AOC
Table 5. Mediation results for predictor NC.
I am very grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Ann Davies, who is a great teacher and an extraordinary person with an inexhaustible wise and patience topped up with a great sense of humour.
I am indebted to the people in the ‘organization’, as without their help, this project would have never seen the light (and the obscurity of the store room, where it will rest on peace).
I am also grateful to my family and friend for their support, with special mention to M.H. de la Sienra y de la Fuente.
I declare that I have personally prepared this report and that it has not in whole or in part been submitted for any other degree or qualification. Nor has it appeared in whole or in part in any textbook, journal or any other document previously published or produced for any purpose. The work described here is my own, carried out personally unless otherwise stated. All sources of information, including quotations, are acknowledged by means of reference, both in the final reference section, and at the point where they occur in the text
Abstract
This study examines the relationship between organizational commitment and citizenship behaviours, counterproductive work behaviours and turnover intentions. It also investigates the mediation effect of exhaustion on these relationships. Data were obtained from 87 workers of a health care Charity Trust based in the UK. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that organizational commitment was related to counterproductive work behaviours and turnover intentions but not to citizenship behaviours. Moreover, exhaustion partially mediated the organizational commitment and turnover intentions relationship. However it is discussed that this mediation is not critical as the effects of exhaustion are overshadow by those of commitment.
In the recent years the world of work has changed. On the one hand organizations have available a global, diverse, well-prepared, and highly productive workforce (Hitt, 2000) while on the other hand they are facing continuous unprecedented changes such as shift in workforce demographics (Howard, 1995) and global competition (Davis, 1995). However the binding force that links employees with organizations, that is commitment, has not been subject to major changes in great extent. In this era of global competition, organizations are in great need of committed employees for several reasons (see Meyer & Allen, 1997). For example, organizations are giving high levels of autonomy to many employees and reducing organizational hierarchies in order to cut costs. Therefore, it is essential for the companies to trust their employees, and undoubtedly having committed employees helps to achieve this point.
In addition, some of the changes that have taken place in the workplace such as ongoing restructuring and increased flexibility of contracts and tenure have had an impact on stress and consequently on the employees’ well-being (Sparks, Faragher, & Cooper, 2001). The most chronic form of workplace stress is known as burnout. This syndrome, typically found amongst people working in human service profession (e.g. support workers), is considered to be a threat not only to the individual health but also to the organizational functioning (Schulz, Greenly & Brown, 1995; Jackson, Schwab, & Schuler, 1986) as its deleterious consequences impact on a broad array of attitudinal and behavioural factors such as organizational commitment, turnover intention, and performance (Baba, Jamal, & Tourigny, 1988).
The present study examines the mediating role of a component of the burnout syndrome in the relationship between organizational commitment and turnover intentions and extra-role behaviours.
Commitment is a very difficult construct to define clearly, in part because it is a concept studied from different disciplines which have ascribed different meanings to the topic (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979). Nonetheless, Meyer and Allen (1991, 1997; Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001) analyzed the similarities and differences of several definitions in order to propose the “core essence” of commitment: “Commitment is a force [mindset] that binds an individual to a course of action that is of relevance to a particular target” (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001, p.301). This definition acknowledges that a) an individual may become psychologically linked to different targets (e.g. organization, work groups, union), and even it has been found (Becker, 1992) that individuals may become committed at the same time to several foci within the main target; b) the particular bond that binds an individual to a particular target, influences the individual to act in accordance to that target’s benefit (Meyer, Becker, & Van Dick, in press), that is, commitment can be seen as an attitude that ties the individual to its target (Gautam, Van Dick, Wagner, 2004). In addition, it is important to note that nowadays it is recognized that the nature of that mind-set can adopt different forms and can vary in degree (Meyer & Allen, 1997; Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001), although once it is established it is relatively constant and lasting (Gautam et al., 2004).
Several multi-dimensional models of commitment have been proposed (e.g. Meyer & Allen, 1991; O’Reilly & Chatman, 1986; see Meyer & Allen, 1997 for a review). For the purposes of this study, the three-component model developed by Meyer and Allen (1991, 1997) will be used. This model has arguably been the most influential in recent years and has continuously received empirical support (see Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002, for a recent meta-analysis).
Meyer and Allen (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Meyer & Allen, 1984, 1991) synthesized the similarities and differences in previous unidimensional conceptualizations of organizational commitment (e.g. Hrebiniak & Alutto, 1972; Wiener, 1982, Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982) resulting into affective, continuance, and normative components of a multidimensional organizational commitment construct. Each component refers to a unique and distinguishable psychological state (Meyer et al., 2002; Wasti, 2005) that binds the individual to the organization with the consequence of decreasing the likelihood of turnover. The three components were labelled affective, continuance, and normative. Affective commitment alludes to “the employee’s emotional attachment to, identification, and involvement in the organization” (Meyer & Allen, 1991, p. 67). Employees high in this component remain in the organization because they want to do so. Continuance commitment refers to “an awareness of the costs associated with leaving the organization” (Meyer & Allen, 1991, p. 67). Employees with a high level of continuance commitment continue being attached to the organization because they believe they ‘need to’ due to the perception that the “cons” of leaving the organization outweigh the “pros” (e.g. reduction in pay, benefits) and/or due to a perceived lack of alternative employment offers (Gautam et al., 2004). Finally, normative commitment refers to “a feeling of obligation to continue employment” (Meyer & Allen, 1991, p. 67). Employees with a strong normative commitment consider that they have a moral obligation to remain in the organization due to the organization’s culture or other socially accepted norms (Gautam et al., 2004). As noted above, each component is independent from each other, although the affective and the normative components typically correlate highly (Meyer et al., 2002), thus an individual may have different psychological states reflecting desire, perceived cost, and felt obligations about his/her attachment to the organization, being each mindset experienced in a different strength (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001).
The three components of commitment are negatively related with withdrawal cognitions and with actual turnover, having affective commitment the strongest correlation, followed by normative and continuance commitment (Meyer et al., 2002). However this uniformity is not revealed for other job-related and employee-related outcomes such as extra-role behaviours or well-being. Regarding extra-role behaviours (e.g. organizational citizenship behaviours, OCB, Organ & Ryan, 1995), both affective and normative commitment have been found to be positively correlated, while the correlation between OCB and continuance commitment was reported to be close to zero (Meyer et al., 2002). As a result of well-being being measured by self-reported stress, affective commitment was found to be negatively correlated while continuance commitment was reported to be positively correlated. There were not enough studies to establish the correlation between normative commitment and stress (Meyer et al., 2002).
Unfortunately few papers have studied the combinations of the three components of commitment (Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002; Gellatly, Meyer, & Luchak, 2004; Wasti, 2005). Although Gellatly et al. (2004) and Wasti (2005) differed in the number of commitment profile groups, both papers agreed to indicate that a combination of high affective and normative commitment is the most beneficial for the organizations in terms of OCB. In particular, Wasti (2005) pointed out that non-committed individuals exerted more detrimental work behaviours and had the highest levels of turnover intentions in comparison to all other profiles. On the contrary, the group formed by individuals with high levels of commitment in the three components (High Committed), and the group formed by individuals with high levels of affective and normative commitment (AC-NC) showed more OCB and had lower levels of turnover intentions than all other groups. Finally, the group comprised with individuals only high in affective commitment and the AC-NC group had lower stress than the group form by individuals with high continuance commitment and the group formed by non-committed individuals.
Emotional exhaustion (EE) is a persistent condition of physical, creative, and emotional depletion caused by excessive demands and continuous hassles (Cropanzano, Rupp, & Byrne, 2003; Wright & Cropanzano, 1998). The concept of EE is similar to distress reactions such as fatigue, job-related depression, psychosomatic complaints, and anxiety (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001). High levels of EE can affect the individual’s well-being and subsequently it can have a negative impact on the optimal functioning of any organization (see Cordes & Dougherty, 1993; Cropanzano et al., 2003).
Traditionally, EE has been studied under Maslach’s (1982) model of burnout. According to Maslach and Jackson (1986, p. 1) “burnout is a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and reduced personal accomplishment”. Consequently, the most utilized self-report measure of Burnout, the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI; Maslach, Jackson, Leiter, 1996) consists of three interrelated subscales measuring these three facets of Maslach’s (1982) conceptualization of Burnout. Amongst them, EE is considered to be the core component of the Burnout syndrome (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2000; Zohar, 1997; Baba, Jamal, & Tourigny, 1998) and it correlates with several work attitudes and behaviours such as turnover intentions (Lee & Ashforth, 1996), work attitudes (Wolpin, Burke, & Greenglass, 1991), counterproductive work behavior (Quattrochi-Turbin, Jones, & Breedlove, 1983), and job performance (Wright & Bonett, 1997). This evidence has prompted some authors (Koeske & Koeske, 1989; Reilly, 1994) to state that EE is the quintessence of this syndrome and others to question the factorial validity of the syndrome and its measurement. They have proposed (Koeske & Koeske, 1989; Reilly, 1994) that a two-factor model comprising EE and depersonalization might be more appropriate as personal accomplishment shows less consistent relationship with other organizational outcomes (e.g. job satisfaction) and it may be a detach variable that develops in parallel with EE which reflects a personality feature similar to self-efficacy (Cordes & Dougherty, 1993; Lee & Ashorth, 1993, Kalliath, 2000; Shirom, 2003; Kristensen, Borritz, Villadsen, & Christensen, 2005). In addition, several psychometric limitations of the MBI, such as the wording of the items, have been put forward (Lee & Ashforth, 1990). As a result, new measurements of Burnout have been recently proposed (Demerouti, Bakker, Vardakou, & Kantas, 2003; Kristensen et al., 2005). An interesting aspect of both measures is that they extended the concept of EE, in line with other definitions of exhaustion (e.g. Lee & Ashforth, 1993; Shirom, 1989) in order to include not only the affective aspects of exhaustion but also the physical and cognitive ones. This different conceptualization of exhaustion is important since it allows to compare different occupations using the same instrument.
Social exchange theory (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959), the norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960), and the theory of psychological contracts (e.g., Rousseau, 1989) predict that when employees are satisfied with their workplace they will tend to behave in ways that are beneficial for the firm and/or colleagues, and by being committed to the organization. On the contrary, when employees perceive their situation as unfair and are unsatisfied with their conditions, they might engage in behaviours that are harmful to the organization and/or other employees.
Organizational citizenship behaviours (OCB) refer to those behaviours that are performed by employees and which increase the functioning of the organization although they are not usually recognized and/or rewarded (Dalal, 2005). In contrast, counterproductive work behaviours (CBW) are those intentional behaviours which are detrimental to the organizations (Dalal, 2005). Although at first glance one might suppose that one employee would either engage in OCB or in CBW, this is not the case. That is, an employee can engage in both types of behaviour. This apparent contradiction stems from (a) the different categories of OCB and CWB, (b) the employee’s personal reasons, and (c) the variables that moderate the OCB-CWB relationship (see Dalal, 2005).
The most stable models of OCB (Organ & Paine, 1999) and CWB (Robinson & Bennet, 1995) comprises two dimensions; one refers to the behaviour directed towards colleagues, and the other to the behaviour directed towards the firm as a whole. Specifically, OCB and CWB are divided into an interpersonal dimension (OCB-I/CWB-I, respectively) and an organizational dimension (OCB-O/CWB-O). Nonetheless, the precise importance of the foci of behaviour has not been categorically established (Dalal, 2005). LePine, Erez, and Johnson (2002) stated that there is still not enough empirical evidence to justify a division of OCB into more specific dimensions. In similar vein, Lee and Allen (2002) concluded that the CWB factors (CWB-I and CWB-O) were not empirically distinguishable. In addition, LePine et al. (2002) concluded their meta-analysis on the nature and dimensionality of OCB recommending the usage of OCB as a global dimension when OCB is the focal construct of interest in order to avoid interpretation problems.
Therefore, several academics have opted to describe OCB and CWB as global factors (Sackett, 2002; Marcus, Schuler, Quell, & Hümpfner, 2002; Sackett & DeVore, 2001; LePine et al., 2002). For these reasons, the present research assesses OCB and CWB at a global level.
Cropanzano et al. (2003) have suggested that individuals only engage in socio-emotional exchange relationships with their company as long as they perceive that they obtain valuable and fair benefits. They go further to state that when the perceived benefits are outweighed by exhaustion employees lessen their OC and display behaviours which are not beneficial to the organization. Therefore, they proposed that OC mediates the relationship between exhaustion and work behaviours. However results failed to fully support this mediation effect. In addition they neglected the normative and continuance dimensions of commitment. Therefore taking into account new research carried out in the field of organizational commitment, it seems fundamental to approach this construct with its full components as the different combinations affect the work-related and employee-related outcomes. Furthermore, as seen above, it seems more appropriate to conceptualize organizational commitment as antecedent of extra-role behaviours and turnover intentions, and to posit that this relationship may be mediated by exhaustion. This theoretical model is displayed in Figure 1.
illustration not visible in this excerpt
Figure 1. Theoretical model linking organizational commitment to extra-role behaviours and turnover intentions by means of exhaustion.
Exhaustion is a variable that might affect the degree of the beneficial outcomes of organizational commitment. There is well-established evidence (see below) supporting the beneficial outcomes of highly (affectively and normatively) committed individuals regarding extra-role behaviours and especially regarding employee retention, which as seen above, is the central tenet of organizational commitment. In similar vein, there is equal evidence (see below) supporting the negative effects of exhaustion on employee retention, while there is an apparent gap in the literature regarding the outcomes of exhaustion on extra-role behaviours.
However these two antagonistic psychological processes are likely to be found simultaneously in the workforce. Therefore it is a priority to explore the effects of burnout on the relationship between organizational commitment and extra-role behaviours and turnover intentions.
The practical implications are several although they can be summarized into one; if the deleterious effects of exhaustion inhibit the beneficial effects of highly (affectively and normatively) committed employees in relation to extra-role behaviours and turnover intentions, fomenting organizational commitment will be futile unless that exhaustion is also addressed.
This study aims to clarify the gaps in the literature regarding the effects of exhaustion on extra-role behaviours while proposing that burnout mediates the relationship between organizational commitment and the aforementioned behaviours and attitudes at work.
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