The Role of Psychological Climate on Public Sector Employees' Organizational Commitment: An Empirical Assessment for Three Occupational Groups

ABSTRACT

In an effort to understand how proximal work environment shapes public sector employees' work attitudes, this study examined how perceptions of psychological climate were related to the extent of affective commitment in three occupational groups: clerical, professional, and managerial/executive. Data were gathered from 267 employees in 11 New York State agencies. Results indicated that the strength of association between measures of psychological climate and affective commitment varied across occupational groups. Implications of these results with respect to developing effective strategies for enhancing public sector employees' organizational commitment are discussed in detail.

Notes

*R indicates that the item was reverse coded for analysis.

*R indicates that the item was reverse coded for analysis.

Note: Inter-correlations among the eight measures of psychological climate were zero because they were based on an orthogonal factor solution.

*p < 0.05.

Note: Arithmetic means shown in bold; standard deviations shown in parentheses.

*p < 0.05. Differences in subscripted letters indicate statistically significant group differences in post hoc tests.

*p < 0.05.

James and colleagues (James et al. 1978; Jones and James 1979) initially identified five domains of psychological climate, but in subsequent work they included only four domains. Aspects of the fifth domain, organizational and subsystem attributes, were included in the first (i.e., role stress and lack of harmony) and fourth domains (i.e., social environment characteristics) of their model.

In some respects, the Parker and others (2003) review has limited value for the present study. They confounded supervisory support with upward influence, job autonomy with challenge, and even organizational commitment with job involvement. Further, only about 14 of the 121 samples pertained to government organizations (and far fewer of these specifically addressed commitment rather than job involvement).

The relationship between affective commitment and role ambiguity, as well as the other variables of psychological climate, may be moderated by a variety of individual and organizational circumstances, including occupational roles (Cohen 1992). This issue is addressed more directly in the following pages.

Park and Rainey (2007, 211) reported a stronger clarity–commitment correlation of .42, but their two-item scale does not correspond to these other studies: “Employees participate in developing long-range plans” and “My performance standards are clearly linked to my organization's goals and objectives.”

Job autonomy has been identified, conversely, as “centralization” (Yang and Pandey 2009) and “procedural constraints” (Wright and Davis 2003).

Career commitment items were “It is important to me that my career is in government”; “If I ever looked for a new job, I would try to find one in government, not in business or industry”; “Working for government allows me to give something back to society”; and “The opportunity to provide meaningful public service is an important reason why I originally took this job.”

The annual salary at grade 18 at the time of the study can be approximated as between $40,000 and $50,000.

Less variability in managerial responses to items in these two scales may have attenuated somewhat the magnitude of their correlations with organizational commitment reported in Table 7.

Data were examined to check whether employees' perception of psychological climate and affective commitment were clustered in 11 agencies; results of ANOVA and OLS regression analyses with robust standard error estimates provided no such evidence.

Yang and Pandey (2008) narrowly focused on the normative dimension of organizational commitment with item phrases such as “I have a sense of obligation” and “I owe a great deal to my organization.” Moon (2000) broadly incorporated a wide range of items including pride in organizational membership (“I feel a sense of pride”), job involvement (“The most important things that happen to me involve my work”), organizational citizenship behavior (“I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected”), and the expressed intention to quit (“I would be reluctant to change to another employer”).

One possible explanation for such divergent results is that the Park and Rainey (2007) four-item measure of affective commitment was not standard, including the generic statement “I would recommend the government as a place to work,” as well as an indicator of job satisfaction (“The work I do is meaningful to me”).

The corollary problem of potentially underestimating actual magnitudes is not often considered when the correlation between self-report measures is found not to be statistically significant.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shahidul Hassan

Shahidul Hassan ([email protected]) received his PhD in Public Administration and Policy from the University at Albany (SUNY) and currently serves as an assistant professor of Public Management at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at the Ohio State University. His current research focuses on the role of work climate on employees' work motivation, commitment, and performance in government and non-profit agencies.

John Rohrbaugh

John Rohrbaugh ([email protected]) earned his PhD in social psychology at the University of Colorado and currently serves as professor at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany (SUNY). His research has focused on the problem-solving processes of management groups, executive teams, and expert task forces to identify methods that would improve organizational decision making.