Desire to work in an organization forever among university employees in Botswana

Abstract

The importance of commitment of employees to their organizations is evident in the volume of research that continues to be conducted on the subject and in the research findings that have linked high levels of commitment to favourable organizational outcomes. Factors that lead to differential levels of commitment appear to differ from one context to another. For this reason, each organisation should periodically determine the extent to which its employees remain committed, as well as factors that distinguish highly committed employees from those who are less committed to the organisation. This study uses one aspect of the construct of affective commitment, namely, the "desire to work for the organisation for ever" to study the extent to which a representative sample of 360 employees at a university were committed to the organization. Chi-squared tests of association were used to determine univariate correlates of commitment, while multiple logistic regression analysis was used to determine a parsimonious predictive model for commitment. A total of 15 of the numerous factors initially investigated were found to be statistically associated with "desire to work for the organisation for ever". A multivariate logistic regression model revealed that only six of the factors associated with "desire to work for the organisation for ever" were adequate to predict the type of commitment investigated. These factors were educational attainment, use of food supplements, frequency of symptoms of fatigue, support from supervisors and responsiveness of the management.

The affective commitment of academics in a university in Botswana

“…The few empirical studies on organisational commitment and related constructs in Botswana were not focused on academic employees (Fako and Forcheh, 2000;Fako et al, 2009;Ongori, 2007). One study that focused on academic employees used a single indicator "employees" desire to work for the University for ever" (Fako et al, 2014) to study affective commitment. Another study investigated organizational commitment and not affective commitment (Fako et al, 2018).…”

“…The study aims to explore the nature of associations between affective commitment and several variables that have been reported as possible antecedents, correlates and consequences of component measures of commitment in the extant literature (Fako et al, 2014;Lam and Liu, 2014;Meyer and Allen, 1991;Meyer et al, 2002;Schoemmel and Jønsson, 2014;Wang et al, 2010). From the list of variables that were found to be associated with affective commitment, further analyses were done to identify a parsimonious set of factors that predict affective commitment among academic employees.…”

Factors associated with organizational commitment of academic employees in Botswana

“…Continuance commitment is the result of economic decisions and rationale motivated by investment of individual resources and anticipation of subsequent rewards (Becker, 1960). It is a "marriage of convenience" that is driven by enlightened self-interest (Fako et al, 2014) and consideration of what the individual would lose if they left the organization (Hosgorur et al, 2017). According to Zhang et al (2017) ideal commitment refers to the employee"s realization of their occupational ambitions; economic commitment arises from anxiety over a financial shortfall that may result from leaving one"s job, while choice commitment is rooted in one"s lack of confidence in finding a job.…”

“…Normative commitment is based on a moral obligation (Meyer and Allen, 1997) to remain an employee of the organization as a result of internalization of normative pressures (Gbadamosi et al, 2007), a sense of guilt resulting from thoughts about leaving the organisation (Fako et al, 2014), a desire to compensate favours received from the organisation (Joolideh and Yeshodhara, 2009), or perceived expectation to reciprocate specific benefits to an organisation (Mercurio, 2015). Continuance commitment involves an instrumental calculation (Matthieu and Zajac, 1990) of the relative benefits that an employee associates with staying in the organization against the costs of leaving the organisation (Becker, 1960;Mercurio, 2015).…”

“…Author(s) agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License resource scarcity and cutback management (Chordiya et al, 2017), which have resulted in challenges of attracting and retaining high-quality employees, and sustaining employee morale, motivation and performance (Fako et al, 2014). It is one of the most fundamental concepts that have been explored in relation to workforce motivation and productivity (Tolentino, 2015).…”