ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT IN PAKISTAN

This thesis set out to explore and examine the antecedents and consequences of organizational commitment in public sector employees of Pakistan. In achieving this goal, a few measures of the constructs hypothesized to be the antecedents and consequences of organizational commitment were developed and validated. A study was conducted to examine the generalizability of Meyer and Allen's (1991) three-component model of organizational commitment besides several other studies aimed at examining the dimensionality, internal consistency, and validity related issues. Results on the Urdu translation of the measures indicated the both the versions do not differ significantly in terms of concept and meaning and assess the same construct in both the languages. Results related to dimensionality of the three component organizational commitment models indicated that the model is partially generalizable in our context. Internal consistency levels of Affective and Continuance Commitment Scales were satisfactory,' however, Normative Commitment Scale exhibited relatively low internal consistency reliability. The findings on the dimensionality of the Continuance Commitment Scale did not support the existence of two separate dimensions, i.e., Continuance Commitment-Personal Sacrifice and Continuance Commitment-Lack of Alternatives, thereby indicating that both feelings of personal sacrifice and perceptions of available alternatives constitute continuance commitment and that it should be treated as a unitary construct. The results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) indicated that despite substantial correlation, affective and normative commitment should be distinguishable. The results of the study conducted to examine the convergent validity between Affective Commitment Scale and Organizational Commitment Questionnaire revealed that both the measures are very similar and measure the same construct. CFA of the combined set of Affective Commitment Scale and Organizational Commitment Questionnaire revealed that Organizational Commitment Questionnaire items loaded with Affective Commitment Scale items on a single factor. This finding also supports previous theoretical and empirical evaluation of both the Affective Commitment Scale and Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (For example, Allen & Meyer, 1990,' Cohen, 1996; Dunham, Grube, & Castenada, 1994,' Hackett, Bycio, & Hausdorf, 1994; Meyer & Allen, 1984; Randall, Fedor, & Longenecker, 1990). Cross- cultural comparison on the mean levels of Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment Scales between our sample and those reported in other cultural contexts revealed that Pakistani and Chinese employees were higher on affective and normative commitment as compared to Canadian and south Korean employees who scored high on continuance commitment. Models developed each in antecedents and consequences variables were tested through LISREL. The results of the study conducted to examine these models revealed that intrinsic work values and internal work motivation are the strongest antecedents of affective and continuance commitment. However, these variables did not show a statistically significant relationship with normative commitment. Thus, the model incorporating intrinsic work values and internal work motivation and organizational commitment dimenions (affective and continuance) appeared to be the best fitting model of antecedents. Similarly, the best fitting model of consequences demonstrated that organizational citizenship behavior and procedural justice were the important variables and showed significant impact on affective and normative commitment. The study also showed that besides being influenced through affective and normative commitment, procedural justice also has a direct impact on organizational citizenship behavior. The results of the study conducted to replicate the best fitting LISREL models revealed that the tested models for antecedents and consequences do not fully replicate the data, however, taken into account the lack of prior theory and research on which these models could be based on, these may be considered adequate. The results of investigations to examine differences across gender on antecedents and consequences revealed that overall, men and women do not differ significantly on these variables. However, male employees exhibited high scores on turnover intentions as compared to their female counterparts who were significantly higher on normative commitment, job satisfaction, and internal work motivation. The overall findings of this thesis provide a framework for exploring dimensionality, antecedents, and consequences of organizational commitment. Finally, theoretical and methodological implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed in detail