A study on Organizational Commitment in relation to Job Involvement in the Information Technology Industry

A study on Organizational Commitment in relation to Job Involvement in the Information Technology Industry

The research is entitled A Study on Organizational Commitment in relation to Job Involvement in the Information Technology Industry. Both Job Involvement and Organizational Commitment are areas of much interest to academicians, researchers, HR practitioners and the industry in its entirety. The last few decades has seen an increased interest in the study of both Organizational Commitment and Job Involvement by academicians and practitioners in a variety of work settings in the hope that it improves job performance and organizational effectiveness, and reduces tardiness, absenteeism and turnover. Organizations are realizing that it is critical to not just attract the right kind of talent but also ensure the retention of their key talent by addressing the problem of retention. Hence the increased focus on areas such as Job Satisfaction, Job Involvement, Organizational Commitment, Human Resource Development, Psychological Contract, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour or OCB, Organizational Development or OD initiatives, Retention strategies, Employee Engagement, etc. Each of these HR activities play a key role in achieving an organization??s strategy, goals, vision and mission. Both Job Involvement and Organizational Commitment have been studied because they are believed to affect and impact organizational performance and effectiveness in addition to clearly predicting other important variables such as absenteeism, turnover, organizational citizenship behaviour, etc. Several studies have indicated organizational commitment to be a better predictor of turnover than job satisfaction. This study, however, is intended to examine the impact of Job Involvement on Organizational Commitment specifically in the IT industry, and also understand the influence of several personal, situational, and organizational characteristics pertaining to Job Involvement on Commitment. The sample considered was 250 IT workers across various levels (right from industry freshers with no work experience whatsoever to Senior Managers with 12 to 15 years of IT experience) and functions in various IT organizations in Bangalore, India. It involved all employees working in IT organizations, including employees in functions such as HR & Training, Administration, Quality, Marketing/Sales and Finance in these organizations. The tools used for the study were (a) Organizational Commitment Questionnaire or OCQ developed by Meyer, Allen and Smith (1993); the internal reliability coefficient (Cronbach??s alpha) was found to be 0.95; and (b) the Lodahl and Kejner Job Involvement Scale (1965); Cronbach??s alpha for the 20-item Job Involvement scale was 0.79. Some of the key findings of this study were: 1. There is a significant relation between Job Involvement and Organizational Commitment of employees in the Indian IT industry 2. There is a significant influence of Job Involvement on Organizational Commitment of employees in the IT industry 3. There is a significant influence of Job Involvement on Affective Commitment of employees in the IT Industry. 4. There is a significant influence of Job Involvement on Normative Commitment of employees in the IT industry. 5. There is a significant influence of Job Involvement on Continuance Commitment of employees in the Indian IT industry 6. There is a significant difference between Organizational Commitment across demographics in the Indian IT industry. The researcher has also discussed the limitations and future research areas on the variables of this study.

John Christopher Anand

Management Studies