A Comparative Study on Organizational Culture and Employee Commitment

Organizational culture has been expansively studied and has been recurrently acknowledged with the study of individuals and groups within an association. The interaction of people within an organization describes the cultural orientation of that organization. Culture is greatly predisposed by the regulation of psychology, sociology, politics and economics, yet it is mostly attributed to the discipline of psychology. Psychologically, persons be different from one another, but it is the leader or top management that plays a vital role in determining the culture of organizations (Steyrer, et. al., 2008. Anshu and Arpana, 2012). The question of why culture is significant for the organizations has been answered by researchers and a vast theory is obtainable on it. Many researchers propose that an organization's culture develops to help it cope with its environment. Nowadays, organizational leaders are confronted with many compound issues during their challenge to generate organizational achievement in the changing global environment. An organization's achievement will depend, to a great extent, upon understanding organizational culture. Culture is now viewed as an intangible strength having widespread consequences and leadership today has to be applied keeping in view the cultural context rather than taking it as a personal technique of leading an organization. Organizational culture has been studied from various aspects like levels (visible, expressed values, and underlying assumptions), strength (strong or weak), and addictiveness (adaptive or unadaptive). Organizational culture is definite as a system comprising of shared values that put importance on the significance of things and norms that result in attitudes corresponding to the values (Cameron and Quinn, 2006). The success of any association depends on its distinct culture that is developed either by its founder, or is a result of overcoming challenges or a conscious effort on the part of management to progress presentation and competence (Yiing and Ahmad, 2009). This culture, in whichever way developed, is identifiable through its employees and supersedes even corporate strategy, technological advancements and market presence.

Corporate culture is a significant lever in enhancing key ability of individuals and organizations to make them bloodthirsty in ever changing business environment (Williams, et. al., 2007). A unique company culture helps to

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reduce the uncertainties, generate social order, create continuity, create collective identity and commitment, and clarify a vision for future (Yiing and Ahmad, 2009). The pressure of organizational culture is substantial and has been discussed in diverse formats. Some authors are of the view that culture is depicted in the slogans and symbols of any organizations. Others have extracted deeper in terms of underlying norms and values that succeed in a culture (Nasiripour, et. al., 2012). Closely associated with the organizational culture is the concept of commitment. It is also highlighted that culture improves commitment of employees (Yiing and Ahmad, 2009). Commitment refers to employee’s belief in the organizational goals and objectives and the desire to remain a loyal member of an organization (Satish and Sunil, 2012. Taylor, et. al., 2008). Dynamic nature of the employee–organization relationship makes the human resource management a challenging task. The practices then results develop through discussions, review development and decision making (Noor, 2009). The present day business environment is changing incessantly and with the speed of change, management also seeks ways of improving the commitment and faithfulness of employees with the organization. Moreover, today in order to be successful, organizations need to react timely to the changing requirements of the market. Improving employee commitment not only improves the overall effectiveness of the organization but also generate satisfaction between employees with reduced absenteeism and turnover purpose of the employees. Organizational commitment has been associated with the trust employees have on the management and the way they perceive the dealing of the organization as fair. It can be enhanced when employees are taken into account while decision making. Commitment is highly attractive for any organization but has remained somewhat a vague concept in organizational cultures. Many researchers agree that commitment helps in reducing absenteeism, turnover and increase performance, but many associate it with the attitude of employees towards their organization and the issues they perceive as important to their wellbeing. Different organizational cultures tend to grow dissimilar kinds of commitment of the employees towards their organization. Most of the research concludes that culture has a positive bearing on employee commitment. Moreover, it helps to elevate satisfaction levels and encourages citizenship behavior between. The primary objective of the present study is to find out how employees perceive commitment in Indian context and what commitment levels are being exhibited by the employees of public and private sector organizations. Secondly, do different types of culture bring out different type of commitment responses between employees and does gender play any role in commitment of employees towards the organization.

Culture is one of the vastly studied phenomenons in management studies. Numerous researchers have tried to describe the concept of culture. For many researchers, culture is a set of values, belief systems and norms that are inherent in an organization and to which the members of the organizations remain to and taught to new members (Taylor, et. al., 2008). Culture is definite as a pattern of shared supposition and values which have been modified by the organization through its learning experience and are deemed valid to be taught to new members of the organization. The values that are thus inculcated in the organization’s members do enhance not only the performance of the organization but also help in enhancing the commitment of the members towards their organization. In the organizational cultural studies, Cameron and Quinn model of competing values have also played an important part in determining the organizational cultural values. In this regard, a study using the competing values structure found that the employees preferred clan culture over the hierarchy, market and adhocracy cultural types mainly because of its positive and behavioral attitude towards organizational employees. Numerous studies have shown that clan culture is one of the most preferred cultures of the employees. The reason is its orientation towards employee wellbeing. It acts like an extensive family. Leaders are considered to be mentors or even parental figures. Group loyalty and sense of tradition are strong. There is an emphasis on the long-term benefits of human resources development and great significance is given to group consistency. There is a strong concern for people. The organization places worth to teamwork, involvement, and consensus. Clan emphasizes flexibility rather than immovability and control of hierarchy. Clan culture operates more like families, as its name suggests, places value on cohesion and humane working environment, group commitment and loyalty.

The study used correlation and t-test for analysis of the data. Industry was the focus of the study. The main reason behind targeting this industry was twofold: firstly, with the deregulation of the Industry there has been a surge of private national and international in the market; secondly, with the increased competition there has been retention problems faced by the banks which ultimately affects the overall performance of the Industry. The sample size of 475 respondents covering all cadres of staff was selected for the study. No probability convenient sampling was found to be more appropriate method of sample selection. Survey method was found to be more suitable for such a study; therefore, self-administered questionnaire was developed that consisted of 56 items. Commitment was

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measured through three dimensions namely, affective, continuance and normative. The items regarding commitment were organizational commitment questionnaire (OCQ). Organizational culture was measured through Organizational Culture Profile and consisted of four cultural types namely clan, adhocracy, hierarchy and market. 5-point Likert Scale using degree of agreement was used to measure the responses. The self-administered questionnaire was distributed through personal visits as well as through referrals. Out of 475 administered questionnaires, completed and useable questionnaires received were 371 which makes response rate of 78 percent. The Cranach alpha reliability for scale was also computed to check for the internal consistency of the items. The values obtained were found to be within acceptable range, for example, for cultural dimensions the values were: clan culture 0.829, adhocracy culture 0.829, hierarchy culture 0.891, and market culture 0.900; for commitment dimensions the values were: affective 0.831, continuance 0.847 and normative commitment 0.869.

The descriptive analysis of the data was performed for age, gender, education, marital status, public and private organizations, and length of service with the current organization. The results showed that majority of the respondents (47.8 %) belonged to the age group 20-29 years, followed by 40.7 % in 30-39 years age group. While only 8.7 % were from the age group of 40-49 and 2.8% from age group 50 and above. Gender distribution was found to be in favor of males (69.1 %). The data regarding education showed that majority of the respondents had master's degree (68 %) and only 8.2 % held bachelor’s degree, while the remaining 23.8% had other qualifications. Marital demographic showed that 83.6% respondents were married. The length of service of the employees in their current organization revealed that majority of the respondents were working in their present organization for more or less than 5 years (51.1 %), whereas 3.6 % had been working for less than one year. While 22.4% respondents have been with their organization for less than 3 years and 22.9 % had been working for their current organization for more than 10 years. The results regarding whether the respondent belonged to public sector organization or private sector showed that majority of the respondents belonged to private sector organizations (77.8 %). After the descriptive analysis, independent sample t-test (table 1) was applied to find out the differences between gender, marital status and the sector of respondent’s organization with the organizational commitment. Table 1 illustrates that females were more inclined towards affective commitment within their organization as compared to their male counterparts. There was no difference for the continuance commitment whereas; males were highly inclined towards normative commitment as compared to females. Regarding marital status and organizational commitment, it was found that married employees were less inclined towards affective commitment as compared to unmarried employees. Similarly, married people had lesser continuance commitment level as compared to unmarried ones. Whereas, normative commitment was found to is more in unmarried employees as compared to married employees. For sector of organization and commitment, no statistical difference was found between the two groups. Pearson correlation was applied to validate the relationships between cultural dimensions and commitment dimensions. The results are shown in table 2. The results indicate that there exist a statistically significant relationship between Clan Culture and all the dimensions of commitment. Adhocracy and market dimensions of culture were found to have a weak but statistically significant relationship with normative commitment only. Hierarchy culture was found to be statistically insignificant in relation to all dimensions of commitment. The study was carried out to investigate the relationship between culture and commitment and secondly to find out how gender perceives the organizational commitment. The industry since its deregulation and with the entry of new local and foreign multinational industry has shown tremendous growth in the past two decades. With this growth and competitive environment, there has been an issue of employee commitment and a subsequent turnover of employees. The results of the study do indicate that there is difference between males and females regarding perception of commitment with their organization. Female employees are more prone to have affective commitment with their organizations whereas, male employees follow normative commitment path. Perception regarding continuance commitment for both male and female employees is more or less the same. The results of the study are relevant for the organizations as they can improve upon the level of commitment of their employees. This is also a food of thought for organizations following hierarchy, market or adhocracy cultures to develop a culture that would help them become more competitive through employee commitment. Committed employees are an asset to the organization and work for the betterment of the organization. Empirical evidence proves that the clan culture is the most sought after culture within organizational environment by the employees. In clan culture, employees are viewed as family members, where employees feel more comfortable and develop a sense of belonging to their organization. In the process, they develop strong commitment ties with their organization. Thus, people find better alternatives to their organizations and avail the opportunity, which ultimately effects the organization negatively.

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The present study indicates that out of all cultural types, clan culture is most favored by the employees, mainly because of the family orientation of the organization. With the prevalent competitive environment around the world, it is imperative for the organizations to have policies that are most suitable for its employees so as to create a strong commitment among them. The study was conducted only in the organizational sector of India, it is therefore suggested that further studies should include other sectors as well as a cross comparison of sectors to have an in-depth analysis of the roles gender play in understanding the commitment levels of the employees towards their organization. Similarly, other demographic variables such as education, age etc can be taken into account when investigating commitment. As the sample size of the study has been limited to banks located in a particular city, therefore, cannot be generalized.

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