Organizational Culture and Employees Commitment in Civil Service

Civil service consists of the individuals (civil servants) employed by the state to run its public service apart from political office holders. It is organized around the twenty ministries. The civil service in India is a bureaucratic structure, formerly created by the imposing administrators to make easy their development of mineral resources and creation of market for finished industrial products. The new Encyclopedia Britannica (2004) defines civil service as a body of government officials who are employed in civil occupations that are neither political nor judicial. It may also be definite as a group of employees selected and promoted on the basis of a merit and superiority system, which may comprise examination. Anazodo (2009) defined civil service in Indian as comprising of workers in various ministries or departments apart from those who hold political appointments. The civil service is the main instrument and institution of public service delivery. Conventionally, the civil service performs three functions: supporting the policy making function of the government, facilitating or regulating the private sector and providing managerial leadership for operating public sector enterprises. The capability of the civil service to perform its statutory functions commendably is to a large extent dependent on its organizational culture and employees’ commitment to its aim and ambitions. The level of employees' commitment to the organization is therefore an important factor in determining their overall job performance. It may also be influenced either positively or negatively by the organizational culture. Thus, civil service is expected to nurture and maintain its culture for the overall achievement of its goals and aspirations. Hence, leaders in dissimilar arms of the state civil service are probable to have an in-depth knowledge of its culture and harness it to bring about high level of employees commitment. It is against these surroundings that it becomes pertinent to examine organizational culture and employees’ commitment in the civil service.

Many researchers, in their individual studies have found that organizational culture was linked to employees' commitment to their organization. In the same vein, Lau and Idris (2001) found that organizational commitment is predisposed by business culture because it reflects the relative Boonand Arumugam (2006) also found out that important relationship exists among corporate culture and the commitment of employees of semi-conductor organizations in India. They concluded that both organizational culture and organizational commitment when implemented successfully will bring about change proposal in an association. Drenth, Thierry and Wolf (1988) observed in their research that a positive relationship exists among a high level of employees ‘organizational commitment and organizational culture. Muthuveloo (2005) in his study also observed that a important correlation exists among organizational culture and employees ‘organizational commitment. Some studies have also found that important relationship exist in some instance among employees’ organizational commitments with some demographic factors such as gender, age and length of service. Olanrewaju and Kanisola (2010) and Irving et al (1997) observed that employees ‘organizational commitment is predisposed by sex and concluded that female employees exhibit superior organizational commitment to their job when compared to the male employees. Akinbayo (2010), however, found that male respondents show higher level of organizational commitment than the female respondents. In relation to the relationship among age and organizational commitment, Irving et al (1997) in their studies found that age was not an important forecaster of organizational commitment. However, Meyer etal., (1991) found that age has power on organizational commitment. They argued that age might be interrelated with commitment in the sense that superiority is associated with the opportunity to improved ones position on the job. In their study, Ell emmer, Gilder and Herval (1998) found that older employees are more committed to their job than younger employees. Organizational commitment has also been found to be linked to the employees' length of service in an organization. Akinbayo (2010) however found that no important difference exist among organizational commitments of respondents with above ten years of knowledge on the job than those with below ten years working experience. Ellemmer, Gilder and Herval (1998) in their studies found that a demographic variable such as employees' length of service is related to organizational commitment. They found out that employees with more length of service are more committed to their job than those with lesser length of service. It appears from the above review that the relationship among organizational culture and employees' commitment on one side and the dissimilarity in the level of commitment of employees of dissimilar sex, age and length of service to their organization on the other hand has been a subject of controversy by researchers. It is based on this background that this

A research instrument tagged `Organizational Culture and Employees Commitment Questionnaire' was used for the generation of primary data. Responses to the items on the questionnaire were on a 4 point Likert scale ranging from Strongly Agree (SA) - 4 points, Agree (A) – 3points, Disagree (D) - 2 points and Strongly Disagree (SD) - 1 point. The validity of the questionnaire was determined through a pilot study using test- retest technique on 30 randomly selected respondents who are not involved in the study. The data collected on the two pilot tests were subjected to Pearson product moment correlation analysis. A computed reliability coefficient of 0.83 was obtained indicating a high degree of reliability of the research instrument. The questionnaire was personally administered by the researcher with the aid two research assistants.

The demographic profile of the sample respondents is as shown in table 1

Table 1 shows that 123 i.e. 61% of the sample respondents are male while the remaining 77 i.e.39% are female. Further, 40 i.e. 20% of the respondents are below 30 years, 82 i.e. 41% are between 30 and 45 years old while 78 i.e.39%of the sample respondents are above 45years old. Lastly, majority of the of the sample respondents comprising of 93 i.e. 46.5% have worked with civil service between 10 and 25 years, 47 i.e.23.5% have worked below 10 years while 60 i.e.30% of the respondents have worked above 25years.

Based on the findings of this research, it can be concluded that organizational culture is related to employees' commitment in civil service. It can further be concluded that there are important differences in the commitment of employees of dissimilar sex, ages and length of service in civil service. In summary, the findings of this study provide some understanding on the significance of organizational culture on

country.

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