INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Commitment refers to an employee’s willingness to work positively in an organization

and his continuance to work for it. Organizational commitment is a core issue for the
management of the organizations. Organizational commitment is directly related to the
performance of employees and is therefore treated as an issue of great importance.
Organizational commitment, as conceptualized by Allen and Meyer, has a three component
structure; where affective, continuance and normative commitment form the three facets of
organizational commitment.

A lot of work has been done on measuring Organizational commitment of employees in

various parts of the world. However, it remains an issue not highlighted accordingly CAA
Elementary School. Various studies have tried to get an insight into the commitment of CAA
Elementary School workforce, but there has not been a significant attempt to evaluate the
basic scale through which organizational commitment is judged. Employees exhibit features
that are important to be studied in the context of their commitment towards the organization
they are working for. Long working hours, below-average remuneration, inefficient use of
technology, autocratic culture, bribery and corruption are some of the challenging issues that
an organization has to face. Keeping in view, these problems, commitment seems to be an
important factor to be studied in relation to an employee working in CAA Elementary School.
Normally, the researcher apply Meyer and Allen’s organizational commitment scale to evaluate
the commitment of the employees. As a preliminary check, the scale needs to be check for
consistency, validity and reliability before being applied for further research. The study attempts
to fulfill this purpose.

The organizational commitment scale of Allen and Meyer has been applied
worldwide and evaluated for validity and reliability. An attempt is made, through this study, to
evaluate and validate Allen and Meyer’s Organizational Commitment Scale in the CAA
Elementary culture. This study is the first of its kind in CAA Elementary School. The
construct, “organizational commitment” has been a subject of interest for those studying the
organizational psychology. Organizational commitment involves the loyalty of employees’ to
the organization, their readiness to put exertion on organization’s behalf, the level of
coincidence of personal goals with the organization, and an aspiration to continue employment
with the organization. However, there is a disagreement on the definition and the way of
measurement of the construct. Since commitment involves a psychological state, which is a
main source of disagreement on the definition of commitment. Further differences stem from
the antecedents causing the commitment and by the behaviors depicting the commitment.
Despite the differences in definitions of organizational commitment; the one given Modway is
considered to be most acceptable which defines organizational commitment as the might of an
individual’s identification with, and involvement with an organization.
Organizational commitment has three basic components; (a) identification, a strong faith
and reception of goals as well as values of an organization (b) effort, an eagerness to put effort
for the goals of organization (c) loyalty, an intention to remain part of the organization.
 There are many factors which affect the organizational commitment of employees.
These include the financial inducements. Among other factors inducing organizational
commitment are, good relations between supervisors and employees, good career
opportunities, role in organizational goal setting, lesser ambiguity in role, and fairness in
appraisal of performance.

The level of organizational commitment of employees has long been considered a

fundamental element to achieve better performance in private entities and greater efficiency
and effectiveness in providing services to society in public organizations. That is, the more this
link is in line with the organization’s objective, the higher the possibility of success, Gomes de
Jesus and Okazaki Row. According to Meyer,Allen and Topolnytsky(1998), when the
importance of building a commitment relation is recognized, the organization is in line with the
changes in the surrounding environment. Involvement and commitment are important for
productivity and for a higher level of work and activity, promoting optimization of capacity. They
are also important for the creation of opportunities and the use of individual and organizational
skills, influencing the speed of responses to the environment/ market and the internalization of
new technologies and knowledge.

From this perspective, the field of organizational behavior, whose focus is on the study
of what people do in organizations and how it affects performance in companies, has been
gaining strength, both among researchers and executives. Bastos and partners (2014) go
further by defining it as a field of study that instigates the impact that individuals, groups and
structure have on behavior within organizations, with the purpose of using this knowledge to
improve effectiveness.

Job satisfaction involves a subjective process, thus making it difficult to define it. It is
subject to the influence of internal and external forces, which can affect the physical and
mental health of the worker, as well as interfere, in their personal and professional behavior
(Robbins 2015).

Martinez, Paraguay and latorre (2014) consider that the human being has an active
reaction to situations of work that do not satisfy him her, changing attitude. The consequences
of job satisfaction have therefore been identified as extremely important to organizations.
Particularly in terms of its possible implications on productivity, efficiency, quality of work
relations and levels of absenteeism, (Siguera 2014).

Organizational commitment and job satisfaction are undoubtedly different constructs,

but Mathieu and Zajac (2014), Gelade, Dobson and Auer (2014), Meyer (2009), Eisinga,
Teelken and Doorewaard (2014 ) and Souza, Reche and Sachuk (2013), among others,
demonstrated the existence of an unequivocal relationship between them, and that they are, as
pointed out by Bastos (1993), correlated constructs. However, it is important to understand the
multidimensionality of both constructs and to evaluate their associations from this point of view.

While many empirical studies have focused on organizational commitment in private

firms, such as Nascimento, Lopes and Salgueiro (2014), Simon and Coltre (2012), and Perufo,
Godoy and Cattelan (2013), only few studies have examined organizational commitment in
public organizations, such as Oliveira (2013) and de Su, Baird and Blair (2013). Empirical
research that have examined organizational commitment in public organizations have found
that its level is lower than in private-sector organizations (Rainey, Traut and Blunt,
1986; Balfour and Wechsler, 1990; Zeffane, 1994).

Although commitment has been the link between the employee and the organization
that has been studied the most (Bastos et al., 2014), as reinforced in the work of Balsan and
partners (2016), the articles which bring research findings on these relations refer mainly to the
private sector. Thus, this work seeks to alleviate the scarcity of studies on organizational
commitment in the public sector, using more advanced statistical models, a need highlighted
by Bastos and partners (2014). In order to meet this central purpose, the following specific
objectives were outlined: a) to evaluate the work commitment and job satisfaction of municipal
civil servants; B) verify if there are differences depending on personal and institutional
characteristics; and, c) analyze the relationships that exist and the relationships between both
constructs.