Some antecedents of employee commitment and their influence on job performance: A multi foci study

Abstract

The challenge of using scarce and limited resources to satisfy almost limitless needs will, from a management perspective, be like the proverbial cat: it will never go away. The optimal use of human resources, in particular, remains a daunting task. In an economic environment characterized by increasing global competitiveness, failure to realize this important objective could be organizationally terminal, as inefficient organizations are unlikely to survive over the long term. A variety of different measures could be used to evaluate organizational effectiveness. In this study, the individual job performance level of employees is regarded as an indicator of organizational effectiveness. It is hypothesized that the individual job performance of employees can be improved by enhancing employee commitment (commitment to the organization, job, supervisor, profession). In other words, the general notion is that, if employees perceive a high level of congruence between their individual objectives and those of the organization, job, supervisor, and profession, they are likely to be better performers. The empirical results showed that commitment to the profession has the strongest positive influence (p < 0.01) on job performance. The impact of organizational commitment was also positive, but only at the 5% level. Neither job involvement (commitment to the job) nor commitment to the supervisor had any influence on job performance. All the antecedents modelled exerted some influence on the different types of commitment. Internal locus of control exerts a negative influence on all of them, and career factors exert a positive influence on all of them. Both self-esteem and anticipatory socialization enhance organizational commitment and commitment to the profession, while external locus of control's influence is limited to enhancing job involvement.