Peer effects on organizational commitment: Evidence from military cadets

ABSTRACT

The commitment of soldiers to the military is essential because it could lead to increased morale, motivation and retention. Despite the accumulation of knowledge about predictors of organizational commitment (OC), efforts to investigate environmental factors influencing OC are in their infancy. We note that individuals shape their attitudes toward the environment based on information obtained from their surroundings, and we investigate peer effects on OC using data from a natural experiment of randomly-assigned military academy roommates. A total of 400 cadets (Sex ratio: 93.5% male, Age: 21.13 $\pm$ 1.43 years) from 136 living quarters participated in this quantitative study. In both self- and roommate-reports, we found that the average affective commitment (AC), continuance commitment (CC), and normative commitment (NC) of roommates in a living quarter can still predict AC, CC, and NC of the remaining individual in that same living quarter, respectively, even after controlling for the personal predictors of that remaining individual. Additionally, in self-report, we discovered that when there is a high heterogeneity in AC among roommates within a living quarter, the AC of the remaining individual in that living quarter tends to be higher, even after controlling for the personal predictors of that remaining individual. These findings provide initial evidence that attempting to assign soldiers with low OC to the same living quarters as those with high OC may be worthwhile.

KEYWORDS:

• Organizational commitment
• peer effect
• soldier
• cadet

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contribution

Seungju Hyun served as lead for study conceptualization, study design, funding acquisition, formal analysis, and writing-review and editing. Xyle Ku, Joonyoung Hu and Byeonghyeon Kim served in a supporting role for recruitment of participants and formal analysis. Hoyoun Ki and Jaewon Ko served in a supporting role for formal analysis and writing.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, Seungju Hyun, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the ROK Army Soldiers’ Value and Culture Research Center in 2023. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.