Does affective commitment positively predict employee performance?: Evidence from the banking industry of Bangladesh

Abstract

The role, effect and importance of affective commitment is predicted to be contingent to context in many extant literatures. However, no study has yet explored the disposition of contextual influence on affective commitment-job performance link. This study is designed to observe the difficulty of psychologically disassociating the affective commitment construct from other types of commitments (normative or continuance) among the respondents of a complex and rarely explored context of Bangladeshi banking industry. This case study is the first one to examine the institutional context for its possible influence on the link between affective commitment and job performance in two banks in Bangladesh for the purpose of literal replication. This study uses information from interviews and focus group discussions among 53 participants and survey results of 436 respondents from the selected banks. The qualitative findings preceded and informed the survey and helped to explain the quantitative findings in this multi-method study. The qualitative data has been analysed using recursive abstraction technique and thematic analysis. Structural equation modelling (in AMOS21) has been used to analyse the quantitative survey data. The results show that the external and internal contexts of the banks have considerable impact on the nature, perception and effect of affective commitment among the respondents on their job performance. Moreover, it is observed that affective commitment does not positively predict employee performance in the case study banks. Qualitative findings from interview and focus group discussions have explained why committed employees may not be the high performers and high performing employees may not be committed. The policy implication for the HR practitioners is that, adopting unfair HR systems may lead to undesirable retention of a genuinely committed but mediocre workforce incapable to get other job offers or low affective commitment and retention rate of high performing employees. Essentially, the banks should avoid unsystematic and non-transparent recruitment and selection practices, performance management system and compensation policy. In addition, the management should strategically align the career development opportunities to the organisational goals in order to ensure meaningful affective commitment that may lead to higher job performance. JEL Classifications: D23, M29, M59

Determinants of field salespersons’ sales performance in deposit money banks: Does organizational commitment mediate?

“…The role perception has a significant negative influence on both OC and sales targets' performance. This inverse relationship supports Mackenzie et al (2008) but diverges from Morris and Koch (2009) and Kibedi and Kikooma (2013). This implies that the more ambiguous and over-bloated FS perceives the assigned role; the more likely it may negatively affect both OC and performance.…”

The influence of performance feedback frequency and affective commitment on the sunk cost effect

“…Second, the results provide a possible explanation for why previous studies have inconsistent results regarding the effect of high performance feedback frequency on later performance (Casas‐Arce et al, vs. Kuvaas et al, ) and point out that affective commitment is another necessary condition for improving performance. Meanwhile, the survey results support Khan's () argument that the lack of an effective performance management system such as performance feedback system is the reason why affective commitment cannot improve job performance. Fourth, in the practical aspect, this study provides an important reference that can guide firm management to design performance feedback system and employee motivation to reduce the sunk cost effect.…”

“…The manager's affective commitment coming from satisfaction with the organization and job will motivate him (her) to respond to management feedback (Allen & Meyer, ). Although it is generally believed that affective commitment will positively influence job performance (Suliman, ; Boxall & Macky ), the empirical results are divergent (Khan, ). The affective commitment–job performance relationship is contingent to context (Wright & Bonett, ).…”

“…However, moderators of commitment measure, job level, age, and tenure did not have at least marginally significant effects. Khan () deemed that affective commitment cannot positively predict job performance due to lack of a systematic performance management system. Acknowledged from these points, we posit that if the managers have high affective commitment, due to emotional attachment to the organization (Meyer & Allen, ) and share interests with the organization (Abernethy, Bouwens, & Kroos, ), they will carefully assess the unfavorable performance information provided by the management and avoid continuously investing.…”

Adding a new dimension to the spirituality at work concept

“…Workers thus transfer their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual existence to the organization which can improve job performance (Gavin and Mason, 2004; Rego et al , 2007; Khan, 2015). Psychological well-being and happiness has been found to be related to productive work (Luthans and Youssef, 2007).…”