Gender, Organizational Commitment and Job Performance in the Ugandan Local Government

The purpose of this paper was to establish the association between gender, organizational commitment and job performance of sub-county chiefs in the Ugandan local government. Most of the literature review indicates the effect of gender on organizational commitment, the effect of gender on job performance and the relationship between organizational commitment and job performance. A total of 320 sub-county chiefs were involved in the study and were selected using multi-stage stratified random sampling. A self-administered questionnaire used to collect data measured the following variables: Organizational commitment, job performance, and demographic variables of gender, age, educational level and tenure (years of experience). Data was entered into the computer using SPSS program. Factor analysis was carried out to establish different components of job performance, which were: cooperation, time consciousness, organization citizenship behavior (OCB), and communication. The already established components of organizational commitment that were used were: affective, continuance and normative commitment. A t-test, Pearson correlation and regression analyses were carried out to test the hypotheses. Results indicated that: gender does not significantly influence organizational commitment as well as it components of affective, continuance and normative commitment; males and females do not significantly differ on their levels of job performance and its components of cooperation, time consciousness, organization citizenship behavior and communication; there was a positive significant relationship between overall job performance and affective commitment as well as normative commitment; and only affective commitment was a significant predictor of job performance. Employees who value hard work, and are committed and highly participate in organizational activities are likely to be outstanding (good) performers. However, targeting one employee attitude in order to improve performance may not be enough. It is very important to focus on a combined pattern of work attitudes to obtain the desired goals. Keywords: Gender, Organizational commitment, Job performance DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-14-03 Publication date:May 31st 202