Knowledge workers: what keeps them committed; what turns them away

Abstract

There is a well established literature on the antecedents of organizational commitment, though the relative importance of these antecedents to particular groups of workers remains unclear. Relying on a general set of antecedents for all workers may result in the application of inappropriate HRM policies and practices. Our focus is on knowledge workers as they have been identified as important to organizational success.The literature is, however, divided on what constitutes knowledge work so we develop and apply a measure that focuses on what these workers do.We then use this measure to examine attitudinal and behavioural commitment. We find, using responses from 1969 employees, knowledge workers have higher attitudinal commitment and lower intention to quit than routine-task workers. Further, the antecedents of commitment for knowledge workers and routine-task workers differ in many important respects, creating challenges for organizational decision makers. KEY WORDSattitudinal commitment / HRM / intention to quit / knowledge workers / routine-task workers

Transformational leadership and R&D workers' multiple commitments: Do justice and span of control matter?

“…First, relationships with leaders are reported to be a significant domain of effective management for this group of workers as compared to traditional workers (Benson & Brown, 2007). Knowledge workers expect their leaders to respect their know-how and allow them the discretion to actualize their potential, develop their personal and intellectual capacity and achieve their career goals.…”

“…To this end, the present study examines antecedents of organizational and supervisory commitments among R&D workers. In doing so, specific attention to leadership is paid, as leadership is one of the most influential antecedents of commitment (Benson & Brown, 2007;Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996). Of the various leadership behaviors, transformational leadership (TL) is observed to have a positive relationship with commitment (e.g., Avolio, Zhu, Koh, & Bhatia, 2004;Bono & Judge, 2003;Lowe et al, 1996).…”

“…Thus, keeping them as human resources committed to their organizations and leaders is critical. Despite their increasing importance to organizations and economies, little is known about the antecedents of organizational and supervisory commitments among R&D workers (Benson & Brown, 2007).…”

Factors associated with organizational commitment of academic employees in Botswana

“…While the ability to attract, retain and develop competent employees is important for all organizations, it is amplified for universities due to their reliance on the knowledge and skills of their academic employees (Alvesson, 2004), the complexity and ambiguity of academic work (Benson and Brown, 2007), the global demand for and shortages of quality academics, the aging academic work force and the high costs associated with replacing competent academic staff (Southcombe et al, 2015). Though employees are the most priceless assets of an organization (Voon et al, 2011), academic employees are the backbone of universities; and high turnover rates among academic employees have detrimental effects on the development of universities (Li et al, 2017), student learning and achievement (McInerney et al, 2015) and the image of the academic sector in general (Alzubi, 2018).…”

Work innovations: transformation, micro-emancipations, or discursive shift?

“…The new practices come with 'new' organisational and industry forms such as the 'virtual organisation', 'network organisation', 'creative industries'. Discursively, the changes in the workplace reach far beyond the organisational walls, and even encompass new constructions of the individual ('knowledge worker') and society ('network society', 'global society') (Benson and Brown, 2007;Castells, 2004). These fictive entities dominate popular discussions of work and are largely taken-for-granted.…”