Individual Assignment

“The effect of personal characteristics and personal

circumstances on organizational commitment”

Word Count: 1479

I Hypotheses and Research Question
The research looks at specific personal characteristics and circumstances influencing an
employees’ organizational commitment. The research question is based on the assumption that
an organizational member’s psychological attachment to the organization will be influenced by
his or her personal and situational circumstances (i.e. ambition, stress level, personal-
organizational fit, and work-family conflict).
Ambitious employees aim continuously to find new opportunities to advance in their careers.
In order to obtain a faster promotion they would be likely to change workplace. It is expected
that the more ambitious an employee is, the more does the need to improve the career quickly
prevails over the organizational commitment.

H1: The more ambitious an employee is, the less he or she is committed to the
organization.

Work/Job stress is identified by some features that disturb employee on their mental, physical
or societal levels. Job stress is an unavoidable outcome in any organization as a result of the
life difficulties. It can be assumed that a high level of job stress negatively impacts the
employees’ organizational commitment.

H2: A higher level of job stress of an employee will have a negative impact on
organizational commitment.

Person-Organization fit (P-O fit) is defined as the “compatibility between people and
organizations that occurs when at least one entity provides what the other needs or they share
similar fundamental characteristics or both” (Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman and Johnson, 2005,
p.285). Employees prefer organizations where their personal characteristics are aligned with
organizational attributes. Therefore, it is expected P-O fit to be a key determinant of employees’
level of organizational commitment.

H3: A higher level of Personal-Organization fit of an employee will have a positive

impact on organizational commitment.

Family represents a major factor in people’s life. A work-family conflict will negatively impact
the organizational commitment. In particular female employees are more easily affected by it.
Therefore, it can be proposed that the negative relationship will be moderated by the gender of
an employee.

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 H4: A work-family conflict’s negative impact on organizational commitment is
moderated by the gender of employees. The relationship is assumed to be more negative
if the employee is female than when he is male.

H1 Ambition

Organizational
H2 Job Stress Commitment
Person-
Organization
Fit
H3

Gender

Work-Family Organizational
H4 Conflict Commitment

II Analytical Strategy
Missing Value
All variables under investigation were checked for missing data. A frequency test was run for
all variables. The amount of missing data was < 10% for all variables except gender and,
therefore, a hotdeck imputation was processed in order to complete the data sets of
organizational commitment, work-family conflict, age, education and ambition.
Recoding
The recoding of counter-indicative items applied to some items of ambition, stress, and
organizational commitment. Additionally, in order to enable use of gender as a moderator, we
needed to adapt the scale of it from 1 (Male), 2 (Female) to 0 (Male), 1 (Female).
Reliability
Reliability enables to examine the consistency of measurements. Reliability checks were run
for ambition, job stress, person-organization fit, organizational commitment, and work-family
conflict. The Cronbach’s alpha, which represents the estimator of the internal consistency, has
been tested to verify if all the items in one scale measure the same, or if some questions should

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not be used for analysis. As exhibited in table 1, all four variables have a Cronbachs alpha > .7,
which indicates high level of internal consistency.

Table 1: Cronbachs Alpha

Variable Cronbachs Alpha
Ambition 0.758
Job Stress 0.834
Person-organization fit 0.890
Organizational Commitment 0.782
Work-Family Conflict 0.899

Computing Scale Means

As the final preliminary step, new variables as a function of existing variables were created for
hypothesis testing. We calculated the mean of all items that was used to describe a variable.
Means and standard deviations of all variables are exhibited in table 2.
Correlations
SPSS provided us with a table of correlation coefficients, called correlation matrix, for all of
the combinations of variables. From the correlation carried on, person-organization fit is the
stronger predictor of organizational commitment with a Pearson correlation coefficient of
r=0.418 and the significance value less than 0.01. Work-Family Conflict follows with a r=-
0.204, p <0.01.

Table 2: Means, Standard Deviations, Correlations

Means, Standard Deviations, Correlations

Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Work-Family Conflict 2.56 0.78 (0.899)
2. Ambition 3.64 0.62 0.099 (0.76)
3. Job Stress 3.00 0.86 0.604** 0.031 (0.83)
4. Organizational Commitment 3.02 0.42 -0.204** 0.27 0.142* (0.78)

5. Person-Organization-Fit 3.44 0.85 -0.244** 0.086 -0.163* 0.418** (0.89)

6. Gender 1.57 0.496 -0.01 -0,069 0.03 -0.07 0.007 1

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed)

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III Results and Conclusions
In order to test the four hypotheses a regression analysis was conducted. It examined the linear
relation between the independent variables ambition, job-stress, person-organization fit, and
work-family conflict and the dependent variable organizational commitment. Table 3 provides
an overview over the regression analysis.
The ANOVA tests whether the model is significantly good at predicting the outcome. From the
ANOVA’s table we observe that the model is significant with F (4,219)=12.487, p=0.001.
The independent variable work-family conflict is not significantly correlated with
organizational commitment. It reveals significance of p=0.217 with b*=-0.097 and t=-1.238.
Ambition and job-stress level are also not significant with, respectively, a p=0.952, b*=0.004,
t=0.060, and p=0.793, b*=-0.020, t=-0.263. Finally, the coefficients’ results showed that
person-organizational fit is significantly correlated with p=0.000, b*=0.390, and t=6.165.
Therefore, significant correlation exists between person-organizational fit and organizational
commitment. If the person-organizational fit measure increases by one point, organizational
commitment increased by 0.197. Consequently, person-organizational fit has a positive impact
on organizational commitment when controlling for job-stress, ambition, and work-family
conflict, like suggested in hypothesis 3. Hypothesis 1, 2, and the first part of hypothesis 4 are
rejected, because no significant correlation between organizational commitment and ambition,
job-stress level and work-family conflict could be found, when controlling in each case for all
other independent variables.

Table 3: Regression Results

Testing of independent variables against organizational commitment
Variable B Std. Error b* t p
Work-family conflict -0.053 0.043 -0.097 -1.238 0.217
Ambition 0.003 0.042 0.004 0.060 0.952
Job-Stress -0.010 0.038 -0.020 -0.263 0.793
Person-Organization-Fit 0.197 0.032 0.390 6.165 0.000

**Significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)

* Significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed)

Then, the research proceeded toward a moderation analysis to determine whether the size of
the effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable interact with a moderator. Even

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thought the effect of work-family conflict on organizational commitment is not significant, we
aim to test the moderating effect of gender on the relationship, as suggested by hypothesis 4. In
order to test this moderating effect, the Process macro written by Andrew F. Hayes for SPSS
was used.
The conceptual and statistical Process model for simple moderation, which were used in the
analysis are represented in figure 1. M represents the moderator, X the independent variable, Y
the dependent variable, and XM the product of X and M.

Figure 1: PROCESS Model 1

X Y

X c1

c2
M Y
c3
XM

As stated by the model summary of our moderation analysis the model of hypothesis 4 is
significant with F (3,216)=3,8412, p=0.01. Then, we looked at is the significance of interaction
effect. In other words, we first needed to check the evidence of moderation. If this effect is
significant the research can confirm the hypothesis 4 regardless of the significance of the main
effect. However, reading the interaction outline, obtained from the analysis, we observe that
the interaction effect is not < 0.05, but p=0.5709. Therefore, since the interaction effect is not
significant, we can conclude that there is no evidence of moderation. Hypothesis 4 is totally
rejected. The following table gives an overview over the results from the moderation analysis
conducted for hypothesis 4.

Table 4: Moderator Analysis for hypothesis 4

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Variable Coeff Std. Error t p LLCI ULCI
Constant 3.28 0.16 21.01 0.000 2.97 3.59
Gender 0.05 0.20 0.24 0.81 -0.35 0.44
WFConflict -0.09 0.06 -1.54 0.12 -0.21 0.03
Int_1 -0.04 0.07 -0.57 0.57 -0.19 0.11

Discussion
The hypothesis testing provides evidence that organizational commitment is positively
influenced by an increasing person-organizational fit. Furthermore, it shows that work-family
conflict, ambition and job-stress level have no significant effect on organizational commitment.
Furthermore, the research revealed that gender does not provide any alterations in the
relationship between work-family conflict and organizational commitment significantly.
From a managerial perspective, the study provides many important implications. In particular
the human resource managers, while recruiting, should focus on the personal characteristics of
the applicants and evaluate deeply whether those personal features can fit with organization’s
value and way of conduct. Companies should be aware of the power of person-organization fit
and its impact on organizational commitment. They should consider it as an essential value that,
when characterizing employees, provides the firms with plenty of advantages. Workers’
organizational commitment occurs when employees perceive an emotional attachment to the
organization or identify themselves with it. Consequentially, the affective commitment toward
the firm, due to the P-O fit, will lead companies to achieve more efficient and effective
performances and positive results.

Grade is Passed
• Discuss the implication of your findings

References

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