Effects of Organizational Culture on Psychology of Employee Commitment
Syed Zahid Raza Rizvi1, Muhammad Waseem2, Asim Nisar3, Syed Kazim Raza Naqvi4, Nadeem Ehsan5
1,5
Department of Engineering Management, Center for Advanced Studies in Engineering, UET Taxila, Islamabad, Pakistan
2
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Wah Campus, Pakistan
3
Asian Institute of Technology, AIT, Bangkok, Thailand
4
Business Administration Department, Superior University, Lahore, Pakistan
(zahidr@hotmail.com, wasimciit@gmail.com, asim.nisar@ait.ac.th, kazim_cool@hotmail.com, m4nadeem@yahoo.com)
Abstract - Organizational culture strongly affects the
organizational commitment of employees. Healthy
organizational culture and environment bounds the
employees to that organization which also results in decrease
in turnover. Psychology plays a vital role in employee’s
commitment to the organization. There are many factors of
organizational culture which are having direct relation with
the employee’s commitment. In this research three factors;
participative environment, diversity and flexibility are
studied with their impact on organization culture. Study
carried on sample of 210 employees working in four
different organizations. Results of the present study show
that participative environment has maximum impact and
flexibility is the least influencing factor of the organizational
culture.
Keywords- Organization’s Health, Employee
Commitment, Employee turnover, organizational culture,
Diversity, Participative Environment
I. INTRODUCTION
Commitment is an agreement or promise to do
something in the future or an act of committing to a
charge or trust. It can also be considered as state or an
instance of being compelled or psychologically
encouraged. Workforce commitment is vital to achieve
organizational goals effectively and efficiently, therefore,
organizations have to give significant emphasis to
employee commitment and prudently head towards
solutions to gain employee satisfaction.
There exists a relationship between psychological
effects of employee commitment and variables such as
flexibility, diversity and participative environment.
Commitment could be of any type including employee
opportunity to leave the organization for better incentives
and pays or with some obligations that bounds the
employee to its organization. The obligations may be
some pressure or a force by the other employees or some
personal relations within the organization. Another
important factor which affects the mental condition of the
employee is effective commitment, through which the
employee is emotionally attached with the organization.
Flexibility is associated with the flexible hours
provided to the employees in order to retain and create
loyalty with the organization. Participative environment
includes the degree of participation of employees in the
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978-1-61284-449-7/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE

goal setting and other organizational decisions. Most of
the multinational organizations use to train their culturally
diverse employees in order to force them not to leave the
organization.
Relationship exists between the employees’ behavior
which is also indicated by favorable relation between
perceptions of empowerment and the commitment with
the organization. Growth and status of employee, decision
making and self efficacy all show positive association
with the professional commitment and behavior [1].
Diversity promise fulfillment may not be violated,
otherwise it can lead to lower organizational commitment
and more elevated turnover intentions because employees
across organizations are more receptive in such promises
[2]. Training and development, reward, recognition, and
teamwork can improve employees’ commitment. Special
focus on communication should be given as it is linked
with major improvements in employees’ organizational
commitment [3]. Job satisfaction and employee turnover
has strong relationship. Commitment with the
organization and job satisfaction play vital role in
employee turnover [4]. In role performance can be
measured by relationship between multiple commitments;
such as organizational commitment, occupational
commitment, job involvement, and group commitment;
customs, and cultural morals. Ethnicity and cultural
values do play a role in boosting performance but culture
has more impact on commitment [5]. Relationship exists
between age, justice and commitment forms human
values theory and six workplace commitment forms
(organizational, occupational, group, work, job, union). A
perception of organizational justice is important
parameter to gauge employee’s commitment [6].
Employees having strong relationship and commitment
are normally the integral part of organization. Whereas,
the employees that are outsourced have low job security
and lack commitment [7]. Employees having high quality
relationships demonstrated the highest levels of
commitment, job satisfaction and performance relative to
those who worked less extensively in this mode [8]. If
employee knows well about the service being performed
by that employee, then strong relation exists between the
job satisfaction and commitment with the organization.
Organizational support is positively associated with the
job satisfaction and employee commitment [9]. Another
important finding is that innovative and supportive
subcultures had positive associations with commitment,
while a bureaucratic subculture had a slight negative
association with commitment [10]. Diversity management
practices have positive effects on employees’
organizational commitment, which was mediated by their
perception of procedural justice [11]. The nature of
organizational commitment comprised of two dimensions
i.e. value commitment and continuance commitment. It
was revealed in the study that Organizational tenure,
retirement benefits, education, and age were dramatically
correlated with continuance commitment, whereas;
participation, perceived prestige, job involvement, and
role ambiguity were more sharply correlated with value
commitment [12]. Employee well-being and the
commitment with the organization are also related.
Moreover, employee’s perceived value and wellbeing
associated with the employee are positively related [13].
Different techniques can be utilized to find the
relationship between the psychological climate,
perception, motivation and performance related to the
employees. [14]. Employee perceptions about the
procedural justice also play an important role in
employee’s commitment. Organizations are required to
adopt fair justice and good politics which can leads the
good behavior of employees [15]. Organizations may
influence significantly on employee perceptions of the
psychological contracts [16]. Organizational culture
affects the employee trust and employee commitment
with the organization. Cultural aspect of organization has
increased the interest in the human resource development
program [17]. Strong relation exists between the
perceived support and organizational commitment.
Favorable relation exists between the perceived support,
intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction conditions and
turnover of employees. Moreover relationship between
the supervisor and employees are important to know the
employee’s commitment [18]. Commitment to
organization can be predicted through organizational-level
outcomes (e.g., turnover intentions), and commitment to
supervisor through supervisor-related outcomes (e.g.,
citizenship towards supervisor) [19]. Affective
commitment is one of those factors that exist between the
job satisfaction and job performance. Through job
satisfaction, emotional attachment increases with the
organization which leads to the better performance. More
over employees who have strong traditional culture are
more committed to the organization as compared to
weaker ones [20].
II. FRAMEWORK
Model has been developed based on the research
presented in the literature review in the previous section.
The model postulates the impact of three components of
organizational culture on the psychological effects of
employee commitment. Organizational culture can be
explained in terms of participative environment, diversity
and flexibility as shown in Fig.1.

A. Organizational Culture
It is a system of shared meaning which make the
members of an organization to understand that how to
behave. It can be considered as some pattern of believes
symbols, rituals, practices and myths that evolve in
certain time. Cultural aspects influence the overall
behavior of individuals in an organizational framework.
B. Diversity
It is mostly characterized by age, gender, and
ethnicity. Organizations consider diversity as a source of
gaining competitive edge. Eventually organizations are
forced to learn how to effectively deal different age group
employees whether they are younger or older employees.
Moreover, women are increasingly joining the work force.
Normally they are paid less than men due to their timing
constraints and their willingness to accept slower career
progression and lower salaries. Factors that also
contribute in growing diversity of workplace include
status or dual career couples.
Diversity
Organizational Culture
Psychological
Participative
Environment effects of
Employee
Commitment
Flexibility
Fig. 1. Framework
C. Participative Environment
Delegation of employee responsibility, accountability,
and authority over their work to employees, creates
participative environment. Participative environment
encourages employees to improve their work performance
and creates an atmosphere of improved communication in
all areas of organization. It emphasizes in setting tangible,
verifiable and measurable goals which are meant to
motivate the employee. If employees are empowered, it
makes them part of decision making. On the lighter side
of empowerment, it gives freedom to make decisions
about schedules and procedures to solve work related
problems which creates excellent participative
environment.
D. Flexibility
Flexibility is a way to describe about how and when
work gets done. It defines how the careers are structured.
Traditionally flexibility can be considered in form of time,
organization flexible policies and targets to complete or a
lot of control over work schedule.
M/S Fauji Cement. Non-probability and convenience
sampling is used.
C. Data Analysis Method
Multiple regressions are used to check the
dependency of psychological effects of employee
commitment on participative environment, diversity and
flexibility.

Multiple Regression Equation:

III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The multiple regression equation is given as:
This research used quantitative data to test
hypotheses, related to influence of organizational culture PEEC = β0 + β1 (PE) + β2 (D) + β3 (F) (1)
on psychological effects of employee commitment. These
hypotheses have been tested after profound analysis of Where:
data being gathered supported by the described literature PEEC= Psychological Effects of Employee
review. This research proposed to explore the influence Commitment
of; participative environment, diversity, and flexibility PE= Participative Environment
with psychological effects of employee commitment. D= Diversity
F= Flexibility
A. Hypothesis

H1: IV. ANALYSIS & DISCUSSION

H0: Diversity has an impact on psychological effects of To proceed for statistical analysis, Cronbach’s Alpha
employee commitment. is measured as 0.701, which is positive indication of data
HA: Diversity has no impact on psychological effects of reliability.
employee commitment.
A. Demographics
H2:
There are about 23.8% of female surveyed in this
H0: Participative environment has an impact on research. According to overall sampled employees’ data,
psychological effects of employee commitment. employee with bachelor degrees and master degree are
HA: Participative environment has an impact on leading the survey. Table I shows sampled employees’
psychological effects of employee commitment. data with respect to their organizations in terms of gender
and qualification.
H3:
TABLE I
H0: Flexibility has an impact on psychological effects of DEMOGRAPHIC SAMPLED DATA
employee commitment.
HMC Maruf Fauji Total
HA: Flexibility has an impact on psychological effects of Organization Name
Taxila
Sabro
Hospital Cement
employee commitment.
210
Number Of respondents 65 45 70 30
B. Sampling Design / Plan
Male 50 31 51 28 160
Gender
Female 15 14 19 02 50
The overall sample plan consists of the following Matric 09 08 04 10 31
elements: Inter 09 02 23 04 38
1) Sample unit: The important aspect in the Qualification Bachelor 31 10 18 14 73
quantitative research is to ascertain that who are going to Masters 15 23 24 02 64
be questioned /interviewed. Others 01 02 1 0 4
2) Sample size: The data has been collected from
210 respondents where 23.33% were female respondents
and 76.67% male. B. Description
3) Sampling procedure: The data were collected
from four different organizations i.e. Heavy Mechanical Reference Table II, the standard deviation for
Complex Taxila, M/S Sabro, M/S Maruf Hospital and Participative Environment is slightly lower than


Psychological effects of employee commitment, Diversity TABLE IV
and Flexibility. This shows that the respondents are very MODEL SUMMARY

far from the mean on all the variables. In nut shell,

Std. Error of
the Estimate
perceived Psychological Effects of Employee

Adj R2
Model

Statistics
Change
R2
R
Commitment and diversity is rather low but not more than
flexibility. There is an average Participative Environment.

TABLE II

chang
F Change

Change
df1
df2
DESCRIPTION

R2

Sig. F
N Min Max Mean Std. Deviation

PEEC 210 1.14 5.00 3.7980 0.84584 1 0.6(a) 0.36 0.35 0.68 0.36 38.59 3 206 0.000
PE 210 2.00 5.00 3.9206 0.71703 a Predictors: (Constant), Flexibility, PE, Diversity
b Dependent Variable: PEEC
Diversity 210 1.00 5.00 3.7351 1.00217
Flexibility 210 1.00 5.00 3.7060 0.94059
E. ANOVA

C. Correlations Reference Table V, the df in the third column refers to

the degree of freedom where df = K -1 providing that K =
Reference Table III, Psychological Effects of total number of variables. Lastly F = MS explained/ MS
Employee Commitment is positively correlated to residual resulting F = 38.592 showing zero significance.
Participative Environment, diversity and flexibility This implies that all our null hypothesis of H1, H2, & H3
indicating that with the increase in participative are substantiated.
environment, diversity and flexibility psychological
effects of employee commitment increases. Participative TABLE V
ANOVA SUMMARY
Environment is also positively correlated with diversity
and flexibility. Similarly diversity is positively correlated Model Sum of df Mean F Sig.
with flexibility. Squares Square
1 Regression 53.801 3 17.934 38.592 0.000(a)
TABLE III Residual 95.729 206 0.465
CORRELATION
Total 149.530 209
PEEC PE Diversity Flexibility
a Predictors: (Constant), Flexibility, PE, Diversity
Pearson PEEC 1.000 0.513 0.406 0.343 b Dependent Variable: PEEC
Correlation PE 0.513 1.000 0.243 0.412
Diversity 0.406 0.243 1.000 0.369
Flexibility 0.343 0.412 0.369 1.000
F. Coefficients

D. MODEL SUMMARY Reference Table VI, at the column of BETA under

Standardize coefficients, the highest number in the beta is
In the Table IV below, output R (0.60) is correlation 0.396 showing the highest impact on dependent variable.
of 3 independent variables with the dependent variable, It indicates that Participative Environment has the highest
here Interco relations between variables are taken into impact on psychological impact of employee commitment
account. R2 means that 36% of the variance in more than diversity and flexibility.
psychological effects of employee commitment has been
significantly explained by the three independent variables TABLE VI
COEFFICIENT SUMMARY
but still 64 % is unexplained.
In other words there are some other additional Model Unstandardized Standardized T Sig.
variables vital in explaining the psychological effects of Coefficients Coefficients
employee commitment. These variables may include but B Std. Error Beta
not limited to financial benefits, rewards, motivation, 1 (Constant) 0.713 0.293 2.429 0.016
emotional intelligence, culture, climate, job security, job PE 0.468 0.073 0.396 6.389 0.000
nature, career advancement, communication and Diversity 0.301 0.061 0.312 4.940 0.000
challenges. Flexibility 0.036 0.059 0.040 0.615 0.539
a Dependent Variable: PEEC



V. FINDINGS
Statistical analysis shows that all three null
hypotheses cannot be rejected. From the results of the
multiple regressions, it is evident that Participative
Environment is the most influential factor in explaining
psychological effects of employee commitment. Higher
the Participative Environment in the organization, higher
the commitment level in employees will be created and
found. Whereas, the least influential factor is Flexibility
in Pakistani environment i.e. employee commitment does
not vary much with the variation of flexibility in
organization. The noticeable issue is that diversity and
participative environment have the same impact on
psychological effects of employee commitment.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
Organizations need to pay close attention towards
making more participative environment to gain more
employee commitment. No doubt that participative
environment is the most influential factor in molding
psychological effect of employee commitment, but, the
fact is that only 36% of the variance in Psychological
Effects of Employee Commitment is significantly
explored. Rest of the 64% is still unexplained and has not
been considered in this study. The unexplained factors
may be explored by considering variables such as
financial benefits, motivation, emotional intelligence,
culture, security, communication and challenges; and
could be taken in future work to explore more of the
variances in Psychological Effects of Employee
Commitment.
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