Antecedents of Organizational Commitment

Running head: ANTECEDENTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT
Antecedents of Organizational Commitment
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ANTECEDENTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT
Introduction:
Geldenhuys, Laba and Venter (2014) define the term organisational commitment as the
psychological attachment or relatedness of employees to the organisations they are working with.
The area of organisational behaviour has gained immense importance because organisational
commitment of employees has great impact on the organisational performances. This is because
employees committed with the organisations deliver higher level of performances compared to
the less committed employees. Moreover, high employee turnover has several detrimental effects
on the organisational performances and this had led the organisations to gain information about
the factors or antecedents which ensure higher level of employee commitment. This is because
higher employee turnovers lead to loss of talented employees to other organisation. The
companies losing employees not only lose human capital but also the knowledge capital which
the resigning employees have. Multinational companies poach each other’s employees in order
to gain access to each other’s knowledge resources indirectly (by employing employees having
worked with competitor). The aim of the report would be exploring the factors or antecedents of
organisational commitment.
Analysis:
The employee commitment plays a very important role in the performance of the
organisations. Carlos Pinho, Paula Rodrigues and Dibb (2014) mention that employee
commitment depends on several antecedents. The antecedents of the employee job commitment
can be divided into three categories. The first categories of organisational commitment is related
to demographic factors age, gender, education and employee vintage. The second antecedent is
related to working environment while the third group of antecedents is dependent on availability
of alternative job opportunities in the market.

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ANTECEDENTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT
The first antecedent of job commitment is demographic in nature. Age is one of the
most important antecedents of organisational commitment since employees tend to lose their
sense of commitment towards their employers with age. However, it can also be argued that aged
and experienced employees show higher level of organisational commitment compared to the
younger employees. This is because as the age of the employees increases, they shift from lower
level executing jobs to job responsibilities which require these senior employees to guide and
control subordinate employees. This leads these senior employees to have stronger commitment
to the organisation compared to the lower level employees.
The second antecedent of organisational commitment among employees is culture.
This is because multinational companies due to their global operations operate in several
countries and employ their respective workforces. This leads to organisations acquire employees
from different cultural backgrounds. As De Baerdemaeker and Bruggeman (2015) mention that
while this employing of human resources from other countries have been highlighted as a
measurement towards diversity management, diverse employee culture with employees from
different cultural background may lead to employee conflicts. Thus, it is evident from this
discussion that though diversity management plays a very important role in ensuring continuous
innovations among the companies, it is also capable of causing conflict. The employee from the
company where the company resides may view this diversity of cultural background as a
challenge to their own position and may also view the company in a negative light. Thus, it can
be pointed out though diversity management is encouraged in business companies as a driver of
innovation, in reality it also leads to lowering of commitment of the existing employees which is
capable of effecting the business of the company badly.