Differences of Employee Commitment in terms of the Employee Personal Characteristics in Commercial Banks of Mannar District
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Date
2013
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Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
Employee commitment can be defined as a collective effect of employees’ awareness on the
organizational goals and objectives, the willingness to exert high efforts on behalf of the
organization and the true retention intention to stay within the organization (Potter et al., 1974).
According to Allen and Meyer (1991), there are three types of organizational commitment
namely, affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. Affective
commitment represents employee’s emotional attachment to organization and its goals,
continuance commitment represents awareness of the costs associated with leaving the
organization and normative commitment represents feeling of obligation to remain with an
organization.“Organizations of the 21 century are concerned about how to foster employee
environment.
Organizational success and sustainability require exceptional contributions from the workforce”
(Benjamin, 2012). Even though there are many factors affecting the employees’ commitment,
personal characteristics of employees (demographic factors) play a vital role in determining the
level of commitment of employees. For instance, Gallie and White (1993) found that
commitment of employees was related to personal characteristics. With reference to the past
research findings, it was clear that there are contradictory ideas in relation to identification of
the difference of employee’s commitment in terms of the employee personal characteristics.
This matter has poorly been researched in the Sri Lankan context. Therefore, the purpose of this
study was to identify the differences of employee commitment in terms of the employee
personal characteristics with special reference to public and private sector licensed commercial
banks in Mannar District.
Methodology
The study site of the present study was Mannar district and the population of the study was
employees who are working for licensed commercial banks. The sample was comprised with 65
employees from two public licensed commercial banks and five private licensed commercial
banks. Accordingly, 37 employees from public banks and 27 employees from private banks
were included in the sample. Data collection instrument was a structured questionnaire based on
commitment dimensions defined by Meyer and Allen (1991) and the employee commitment
questionnaire developed by Meyer and Allen (1991) was employed to measure the level of
employee commitment. Personal characteristics of employee included in this study were gender,
age, educational level, marital status and job tenure. Data was analyzed by using One-Way
ANOVA test in order to identify the differences of employee commitment in terms of personal
characteristics.
Results and Discussion
Table 1 summarizes the mean values of commitment level of employees in terms of personal
characteristics. The commitment level of employees in terms of gender in public banks seems
considerably different while the difference of commitment level is slight in case of private
banks. In terms of age, the commitment level of public employees is at its peak among the
employees who are in the age category of 16-25 years while those who are in the age category
of 25-35 years depicting a lower mean commitment. This tendency is in contrast to the situation
in private banks in which the highest commitment is accounted by the employees who are in the
age of 25-35 years. The commitment level of employees in terms of marital status shows an
interesting finding as the public employees’ trend is reversed in the case of private employees
where married employees are showing a higher commitment.
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Keywords
Management, Entrepreneurship and management, Banking, Financial Management, Human Resource Management, Employee Commitment