The nexus between internal marketing in hospitals and organizational commitment: Incorporating the mediation roles of key job characteristics

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This study assesses the effect of internal marketing on the organizational commitment of health workers, with the mediating roles of salient job characteristics in this relationship evaluated.

Design/methodology/approach: A correlational design was applied to test a framework of nine hypotheses using primary data. A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data from 717 health workers who met some selection criteria. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test the hypotheses.

Findings: The structural CFA model had a good fit at 5% significance level [chi-square (χ²) = 9.09; P = 0.421]. More importantly, internal marketing makes a significant positive effect on the commitment of health workers. It also makes a positive effect on job tenure, which means that internal marketing enables employees to increase job security and spend more years on the job. Tenure makes a negative effect on organizational commitment, possibly owing to the confounding variables captured and/or the fact that employees tend to expect too much from their employers as their experience and tenure increase. Income makes a positive effect on organizational commitment, which suggests that health workers get more committed to patient care when their job income increases. The study concludes that organizational commitment increases as internal marketing improves.

Originality/value: This study employed primary data in a unique context in which the mediation effect of key job characteristics on the relationship between internal marketing and organizational commitment of health workers is assessed. Apart from its contribution to the expansion of a relatively small empirical literature, this study demonstrates the role of internal marketing in advancing organizational commitment and motivators of health workers.

KEYWORDS:

• Internal marketing
• organizational commitment
• job tenure
• on-the-job education
• job income
• job promotion
• health care marketing
• hospital management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Nestor Asiamah is an international public health researcher whose research network extends to the U.S.A., U.K., Italy, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. His research interest focuses on health services management, healthy ageing (social gerontology), and global health. He currently leads an international research team and serves as the lead research scientist at the Africa Centre for Epidemiology (ACE).

Frank Frimpong Opuni is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing at Accra Technical University. His research focuses on e-commerce, internet marketing, and electronic marketing.

Henry Kofi Mensah is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Human Resources and Organisational Development at the KNUST School of Business, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. His teaching and research interest focuses on social responsibility, ethics, sustainability, and employee development. He is a member of the African Academy of Management (AFAM).