Experimental Analysis of Organizational Commitment within the Scope of Downsizing Threat and Empowerment Opportunity

The main aim of this study is to analyze the impact of downsizing threat and empowerment opportunity on organizational commitment at the beginning phase of the implementation process. This aim occurs because of lack of knowledge in related literature, which only concentrates on during/after phases and situations of downsizing and empowerment implementations. In this research, the field experiment and survey method were selected in order to collect the data of study, and applied in two experimental stages on 126 (n=252) subjects in an international textile company. The results demonstrate that organizational commitment is increased at the beginning of both downsizing and empowerment processes. This finding contains a significant distinction from the existing literature, especially which asserts a negative relation between downsizing and organizational commitment. Practical implications and directions for the future research are also discussed in this paper. Keywords: Organizational Commitment, Downsizing, Empowermen