Employee commitment in MNCs: Impacts of organizational culture, HRM and top management orientations

Abstract

This article tests a model of organizational commitment in multinational corporations (MNCs). According to the model, organizational culture and human resource management (HRM) affect employee commitment directly as well as indirectly through top management team orientations. Szpecifically, we examined the effect of top management team global orientation and geocentric orientation, which are seen as contributing uniquely to employee commitment in MNCs. The model was tested on a sample of 1664 core employees working in 39 affiliates of 10 MNCs. We found strong overall support for the model. In particular, organizational culture characterized by high adaptability and a HRM system characterized by high performance work practices were found to have a significant and direct effect on employee commitment. In addition, we found that the effect of these traditional elements of the human organization is partially mediated through top management orientations, specific to international firms. The validity and generalizability of these results are reinforced by the control of a set of demographic variables as well as nationality of parent company.

Turnover Intention, Organizational Commitment, and Specific Job Satisfaction among Production Employees in Thailand

“…Organizational commitment also describes the attitude of an employee towards the goal of organization that he or she feels identification with, which motivates him or her to make an effort for the effectiveness of organization as a valuable member of the organization (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979). Although several scholars have criticized this attitudinal definition of organizational commitment (Swailes, 2002), it has been widely validated and applied in previous studies (Taylor, Levy, Boyacigiller, & Beechler, 2008). Later, Allen and Meyer (1990) presented the three-dimensional components of organizational commitment.…”

Attitudes Toward Organizational Change Among Public Middle Managers

“…On the other hand, high-performance HRM practices, also called "high commitment" HRM practices (Whitener, 2001) or "high-performance" work practices (Gould-Williams & Davies, 2005;Kalleberg et al, 2006), can be described as a set of HRM practices that are intended to have an impact on employees' commitment towards their organization (Taylor et al, 2008). These HRM practices are devised to enhance the performance of employees while promoting mutual influence, respect, and responsibility (Huselid, 1995;Lindorff, 2009).…”

Theoretical Foundations

“…This includes topics such as increases of resource commitments over time (Johanson & Johanson, 2006;Santangelo & Meyer, 2011), competitive dynamics (Chang & Park, 2012;Narayanan & Fahey, 2005), headquarters-subsidiary relationships (de Jong et al, 2015;Jindra, Giroud, & Scott-Kennel, 2009), and subsidiary exports (Estrin, Meyer, Wright, & Foliano, 2008;Filatotchev, Stephan, & Jindra, 2008;Filatotchev, Liu, Buck, & Wright, 2009). Other scholars investigate internal processes in MNE subsidiaries, such as human resource management practices (Bjö rkman, Fey, & Park, 2007) and organizational culture (Caprar, 2011;Taylor et al, 2008;Welch & Welch, 2006). For emerging economy MNEs, the main challenge is to manage overseas subsidiaries when they are still at early stages of internationalization, and hence international management competences at headquarters are still weak (Meyer & Thaijongrak, 2013;Mutlu, Wu, Peng & Lin, 2015;Peng, 2012) .…”