The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning Vol. 4, Num. 1, June 2008 104
A Study of Work Stress, Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Case to Employee Who are Taking Further Education in University
Dr. Jyh-Lung Tang, China Institute of Technology, Taiwan
ABSTRACT
This study aims to explore the correlation and different of self-report to employee working attitude.
The questionnaire is used as the main instrument to collect data and the variables of employee working attitude includes work stress, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behavior. There are 200 employees who are taking further education in one of institute of technology in Taipei is selected as sampling. The results are analyzed by Pearson correlation, t-test, and ANOVA. The finding of this study firstly showed that respondents performed high level score in variables of working attitude and correlation among variables is reach statistically significant by employee self-report.
Secondly, all variables reach in positive correlation except job satisfaction to work stress in role conflict, in which the higher job satisfaction the less work stress in the dimension of role conflict. Finally, there are significant different in self-report from background by age, working experience, working position, marriage status, where as there is no statistic significant difference at all variables by employees’ gender and who’s working company size.
INTRODUCTION
Technology is innovating in every second. To keep high quality, practiced, and experienced employee, organizations should provide more learning opportunities to improve employees‟ working competencies, and to avoid losing the competition abilities in human resource. Organization normally analysis what the employee need to train individually, and provides bunch of on-the-job training(OJT) programs to foster employee, still employee who are having high motivation to take promoted position, are try to take higher degree from out side of organization, for example, taking bachelor or master degree from University. The main reason is that Chinese culture makes people more concern the academic degree than the real working ability. Chinese people always doubts that whether the promotion opportunities would give to whom with lowers academic degree, and whether the manage practice would be easy if one with lower degree than subordinate does. Therefore, many employees enroll in the Universities in the evening after working or in the weekend to take further education.
Employees with higher academic degree might have more abilities to do the problem solving in a organization, but research reveals that core competitions is more relies on employees‟ organizational commitment, working stress, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behavior than knowledge and skills itself. Whether employees who have strong further education motivation are having higher attitude, would be the interested issue which this study tries to explore. Besides, there are some reports about the relationship between organizational commitment or job satisfaction and employees with different background by age or gender (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990). This study doubts that employee with different backgrounds, such as marriage status, working experience, working position, and the company size, could
The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning Vol. 4, Num. 1, June 2008 105 also have correlation by attitude performance. By the reasons above mentioned, this study is curiosity over that how the employees‟ work stress is, and also how is the organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational citizen behavior performed while they are taking further education in institute or Universities.
Based on the research background, the purpose of this study are:
1. To explore the correlation among work stress, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship behavior by employees‟ self-report.
2. To analysis the self-report of work stress, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship between different backgrounds.
3. To suggest teaching program to employees who are taking further education in the Universities.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Commitment
There have been several difference definitions of organizational commitment, the original conception is based on the work of Mowday, Steers, and Porter(1979), and more recently a three component conception of organizational commitment has been developed by Meyer, Allen, &
Smith(1993). The three components are: affective, continuance, and normative commitment. Affective commitment occurs when the employee wishes to remain with organization because of an emotional attachment; continuance commitment exits when a person must remain with the organization because of one needs the benefits and salary or cannot find another job; normative commitment comes from the employee‟s personal values and from the obligations that the person feels toward the employer(Spector, 2006).
Work/job stress
Stress is a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, constraint, or demand related to what he or she desires and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important(Schuler, 1980). Robbins (2005) said that stress can cause dissatisfaction, and job-related stress can cause job-related dissatisfaction. Job dissatisfaction is the simplest and most obvious psychological effect of stress. Job stress is a condition or situation at work that requires an adaptive response on the part of the employee. Role ambiguity and role conflict are the most studied stressors in occupational stress research. Role ambiguity is the extent to which employees are uncertain about what their job functions and responsibilities are. Role conflict arises when people experience incompatible demands either at work or between work and non-work. The result of Jackson and Schuler‟s (1985) meta-analysis showed that high levels of role stressors were associated with low levels of job satisfaction.
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is general defined as behavior that goes beyond the formal requirements of the job and is beneficial to the organization (Spector, 2006; Robbins, 2005). The measurement of OCB usually divided into three dimensions (Williams & Anderson, 1991), there are in-role behavior, OCB-individual, and OCB-organization. In-role behavior means employee endeavor to perform the task which one should done while working; organizational citizenship behavior-individual means to do advantage for others while interaction in working; organizational citizenship behavior-organization means making advantage to organization which one in working for. OCB is most
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likely when employees are satisfied with their jobs, have high levels of affective commitment, feel they are treated fairly, and have good relations with their supervisors. Some of these results have been shown to hold in other countries as well (Spector, 2006). For example, Farh, Podsakoff, and Organ (1990) found that OCB correlated with job satisfaction and employee perceptions of supervisor supportive behavior in Taiwan, and Munene (1995) found OCB related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment in Nigeria (cited from Sepctor, 2006).
Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction refers to a collection of feelings toward the job. A number of organizationally relevant behaviors are thought to be the result of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction (Spector, 2006) Satisfied employees would seem more likely to talk positively about the organization, help others, and go beyond the normal expectations in their job(Robbins, 2005). Based on Weiss, Davis, English, &
Lofgurist(1967), this study designed the measurement of satisfaction which included 2 dimensions:
intrinsic and extrinsic. Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky (2002) reveal that affective and normative commitment correlated positively with job satisfaction, in which high commitment was associated with high satisfaction, but continuance commitment correlated negatively. Mathieu &
Zajac(1990) shows the results of meta-analysis that there is s strong correlation (r = .49) between organizational commitment and global job satisfaction, and the result shows that organizational commitment is relates to age and gender as well.
RESEARCH DESIGN
Research framework
The study framework is designed as figure 1.
Population and sample
The population is the employee who is taking further education in the Universities, and the sample of this study is the employee who is studying in one of technical institutes in Taipei city Taiwan. This study selected one institute of technology as the main sampling pool, in which 200 employee-students was selected randomly.
Work stress
Job satisfaction
Organizational commitment
Org-citizenship behavior Dependent variables
Age Gender Marriage Status Working experience
Positions Company size Independent variables
Fig. 1 Research framework
The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning Vol. 4, Num. 1, June 2008 107 Research instrument
(1) This study uses questionnaire as the main instrument to collect data. The questionnaire included 4 variables, there are: work stress, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behavior.
(2) Questionnaire of this study is self-designed in which work stress variable is designed based on Rizzo, House & Lirtzman(1970); organizational commitment variable-scale is designed based on Allen &
Meyer(1990); job satisfaction variable-scale is designed based on Weiss, Davis, English, &
Lofgurist(1967); and the organizational citizenship behavior variable-scale is designed based on Williams & Anderson(1991).
(3) Each variable-scale composed of several dimensions and items, each of which as shown in table 1.
(4) The reliability of each variable-scale is measured by internal consistency, the Cronbach α of the variables are .731, .763, .844 and .861 respectively.
(5) The factor analysis is used as validity testing method by which Maximum Likelihood and directive Oblimin Rotation are selected as the main analysis method, the cumulative explanation of the scales are 66.195%, 70.088%, 62.516%, and 69.039% respectively.
Table 1. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire Variable-Scales dimensions items Validity - Factor analysis
Cumulative explanation (%)
Reliability- Cronbach α Work stress Role conflict 2
66.195 .731
Role ambiguity 4 Organizational
commitment
Affective 2
70.088 .763
Continuance 2
Normative 4
Job satisfaction Intrinsic 2
62.516 .844
Extrinsic 5
OCB
In-role behavior 3
69.039 .861
OCB-individual 4 OCB- organization 3
Research implementation
This study developed the research framework and proposal in December 2007, finished the questionnaire developing on February 2008. then, sent the questionnaire to sampling after panel discussion by 5 experts on end of the February 2008, and collected the response data before 10th March 2008.
Limitation and delimitation
This study selects the employee who are studying in further education and come from various companies as the study sampling, so that the results did not consider the organizational culture respectively.
Statistics methods
This study used the Pearson correlation to verify the relationship among variable, t-test to compare the different gender and marriage status employees‟ self-report to variables, and used the ANOVA(F-test) statistical method to analyze the different background in age, working experience, working position, and company size.
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RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Sampling frame
Six characteristics dimensions were selected, there are: gender, marriage status, age, working experience, position, and company size. This study has totally 163 respondents from sampling, the distribution of the characteristics are shown in table 2.
Table 2. Distribution of sampling
Characteristics Groups Frequency Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
gender Male 72 44.2 44.2
Female 91 55.8 100.0
Total 163 100.0
Marriage status Single 110 67.5 67.5
Marriage 53 32.5 99.4
Total 163 100.0 100.0
age Under 30 86 52.8 52.8
31-40 46 28.2 81.0
More than 41 31 19.0 100.0
Total 163 100.0
Working experience Under 1 year 45 29.6 29.6
1.1-3.0year 41 27.0 56.6
3.1-5.0 19 12.5 69.1
more than 5.1 47 30.9 100.0
Total 152 100.0
position upper level 27 17.4 17.4
middle level 38 24.5 41.9
operation level 90 58.1 100.0
Total 155 100.0
Company size few than 35 54 33.5 33.5
36-150 36 22.4 55.9
more than 151 71 44.1 100.0
Total 161 100.0
Correlation among work stress, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behavior
(1) The correlation among variables
The correlations among variables are shown in table 3. The result of this study shows that the correlation among work stress, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behavior are all reach at statistics significant level. This study has the same results as Spector(2006), Meyer et al.(2002), Munene(1995), and Farh, Podsakoff, & Organ(1990) did.
Table 3. Correlations among variables
scales
work stress Organizational commitment
Job satisfaction
Organization al citizenship behavior
Work stress 1 .366** .181* .338**
Organizational commitment .366** 1 .413** .486**
Job satisfaction .181* .413** 1 .313**
Organizational citizenship behavior .338** .486** .313** 1
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning Vol. 4, Num. 1, June 2008 109 (2) The correlation among dimensions of each variables
Although the correlations to 4 variables are reach statistics significant, some dimensions of variables are not statistically significant. The result revealed that (as shown in table 4):
A. Role conflict is not correlated to affective commitment, normative commitment, and variable of OCB which included in-role, individual, and OCB-organization dimensions.
B. Role ambiguity is correlated to all dimensions except continuance commitment.
C. Affective commitment is correlated to all dimensions except role conflict and continuance commitment.
D. Continuance commitment has correlation to the dimension of role conflict only.
E. Normative so correlated to all variables except role conflict and continuance commitment. . F. Both intrinsic and extrinsic has no correlation to continuance commitment only.
G. In-role OCB has no correlation to role conflict, continuance commitment, intrinsic, and extrinsic.
H. Both Individual OCB and OCB-organization has no correlation to role conflict, and continuance commitment.
Table 4. Correlations among dimensions of variables
Dimension (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
(1) role conflict 1
(2) role ambiguity -.228** 1 (3) affective
commitment -.004 .330** 1 (4) continuance
commitment .205** .072 .140 1 (5) normative
commitment -.102 .408** .423** .079 1
(6) intrinsic -.176* .417** .283** .101 .429** 1
(7) extrinsic -.311** .475** .210** -.018 .516** .535** 1
(8) In-role .055 .272** .302** -.020 .158* .023 .126 1
(9) individual .065 .300** .433** .021 .383** .232** .207** .432** 1 (10) OCB-org -.029 .348** .469** .008 .577** .316** .361** .307** .478**
Analysis the self-report of respondents to variables between different backgrounds
This study used the t-test statistics method to explore the employees‟ self-report to variables at gender and marriage status, and used the ANOVA(F-test) statistics method at age, working experience, position, and company size. The result shows in table 5.
(1) Employees‟ self-report to variables by age
A. Results reveal that age groups reach to significant difference in the variables of OC and OCB, the older employee in age, the higher score in OC and OCB they have. The works stress and job satisfaction were not statistically significant.
B. To the dimensions of each variable, dimension continuance commitment to OC, and dimension in-role to OCB were not statistically significant.
(2) Employees‟ self-report to variables by working experience
A. Results reveal that working experience groups to 4 variables were not statistically significant.
B. To the dimensions of each variable, different working experience groups reached statistic significant in the dimension normative commitment to OC, and dimension OCB-organization to OCB. The longer the working experience, the higher score in normative commitment and OCB-organization they did.
(3) Employees‟ self-report to variables by working position
A. Results reveal that working position groups reach to significant difference in the variables of OC and OCB, the higher employee in working position, the higher score they have. The works stress and job
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satisfaction were not statistically significant.
B. To the dimensions of each variable, different working position employees self-report at dimension continuance commitment to OC, and dimension in-role to OCB were not statistically significant.
C. Employee promote to higher working position is normally promotes from the lower level following the incentive system, this result verified that incentive system can promote the self-report or test score to OC and OCB.
(4) Employees‟ self-report to variables by company size
The result shows that it was no statistic significant to any variables by the background of company size. This study reveals that the self-report of work stress, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship behavior were not related to the company size. This study divided the company size into 4 groups, but the respondents are all working in the companies by which the company size is below 250 people, we hardly to compare the difference employees‟ self-report to variables between companies. The small company size is normally in Taiwan, the research framework to compare the self-report to variable by company size should be modified by further study.
(5) Employees‟ self-report to variables by gender
The result shows that it was no statistic significant to any variables by the background of gender.
This study reveals that the self-report of work stress, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship were not related to the gender. This study reveals the different result from Mathieu & Zajac (1990). To find the possible reasons and attributions, a further study should be followed.
(6) Employees‟ self-report to variables by marriage status
A. Results reveal that marriage groups reach to significant difference to the variables of OC and OCB, marriage employee has higher score than single employee did. The works stress and job satisfaction were not statistically significant.
B. To the dimensions of each variable, different marriage status group self-report at dimension continuance commitment to OC, and dimension in-role and individual-OCB to OCB were not statistically significant.
Table 5. Summary of the ANOVA & t-test table
Age F value
Working experience F value
Position F value
Company size F value
Gender t value
Marriage status t value
Work stress .293 .578 3.683* n.s .027 1.503 -.278
Organizational commitment
8.857***
2>1, 3>1
1.742 12.119***
1>3, 2>3
.445 .456 -2.480*
S<M
Job satisfaction 1.219 .187 1.276 1.418 -.054 -.872
Organizational citizenship behavior
11.282***
2>1, 3>1
2.185 16.285***
1>3, 2>3
.180 .016 -3.074**
S<M
role conflict .055 .589 .969 .327 1.221 -.200
role ambiguity .561 .772 2.854 .142 .571 -.302
affective commitment
12.566***
2>1, 3>1
2.802*
n.s
15.000***
1>2, 1>3
.353 1.224 -2.518*
S<M continuance
commitment .040 2.111 .779 .147 -1.516 .239
normative commitment
6.941***
3>1
4.757**
4>1, 4>3
14.094***
1>2, 1>3
2.764 1.068 -2.850**
S<M
intrinsic .591 .741 .246 1.569 -.234 -.169
extrinsic 2.027 .268 2.631 1.033 .078 -1.337
in-role 2.622 1.293 3.088* n.s .118 -.619 -1.499
The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning Vol. 4, Num. 1, June 2008 111 individual 5.403**
2>1, 3>1
2.811*
n.s
7.758***
1>3
1.168 -.162 -1.698
OCB-org 13.116***
2>1, 3>1
3.415*
4>1
20.233***
1>2&3 2>3
.461 .681 -3.635***
S<M Note: (A) Age, 1= under 30, 2=31-40, 3=older than 41 years old.
(B) Working experience, 1=under 1, 2=1.1-3.0 3=3.1-5.0 4=more than 5.1years (C) Position 1=upper level, 2=middle level, 3=operation level
(D) Company size 1=few than 35, 2=36-150, 3=more than 151 people.
(E) Gender 1=male, 2= female.
(F) S= singular, M=marriage.
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
Conclusions
1. The result of this study showed that employee who is taking further education in the University response high level score in variables in work stress, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship behavior. The correlation among variables is reach statistically significant by employee self-report. In which all variables reach in positive correlation except job satisfaction to work stress in role conflict. The result shows that the higher job satisfaction the less work stress in the dimension of role conflict. That means employees who are taking further education in University would endeavor to work harder and doing well performance if the organization provide a clear responsibility to each job, task, or positions to reduce the role conflict in work setting.
2. Although almost all variables related to each other, an interesting result comes from this study. The dimension continuance commitment in the variable of organizational commitment is not reach statistically significant. The possibility of the result could be the employees who are taking further education in University preparing to move or shift to other organization after employee graduated from University, they eager to get promotion during studying in the University. Therefore the continuance commitment did not have correlative to other dimensions of attitude variable of this study.
3. The older employee in age the higher organizational commitment and OCB they performed. But employee would not have different performance in continuance commitment in variable of organizational commitment, and in-role in OCB by age. The employee in different age would take responsibilities to their own present job till a good chance to move, or to promote. In other word, no matter what age employee who is taking further education, they will take the new job in other organization instead the present work position if there is opportunity to promote.
4. In the whole, there is no statistic difference to all variables by the employees‟ working experience. But this study shows that the longer the working experience, the higher score in normative commitment and OCB-organization they did. Experienced employees, who are worked more than 5 years, would show more moral in working.
5. In Chinese culture, working position which employee takes will normally consider the academic degree.
Sometimes organization rather chose the higher academic degree which employee possessed than real abilities. Employee promote to higher working position is normally from the lower level following the incentive systems, this result verified that incentive system can promote the employees‟ OC and OCB.
6. This study shows that there is no statistic significant difference at all variables by employees‟ gender and who‟s working company size. This study has difference results from other researches, the reason might be the respondents are all taking further education in Universities; most of them are waiting for a good promotion chance.
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7. This result reveals that marriage groups reach higher score than single group in the variables of OC and OCB, the works stress and job satisfaction is not statistically significant. Marriage employee normally should take more responsibilities to their family, might be transfer to the commitment and the OCB attitudes.
Suggestions
1. Life-long learning is now getting to be a major portion and main program in Universities. Employees who are taking further education to get a degree also become a trend in Taiwan. Besides the professional courses, this study suggests that professors and curriculum designers would consider infusing attitude conception into the contents of courses to further education program for employees.
2. In order to keep employee to stay in organization, the incentive or motivation system should be reviewed, especially to the employee who is younger, lees experience, lower position worker, or single.
The performance of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and OCB might be high, and work stress might be lower, if organization concern about the motivation by difference backgrounds of the employees.
3. The results should not generalized to other objects and countries, as researcher indicate (Spector, 2006) that one must be cautious in generalizing organizational commitment findings to other countries.
4. In order to explore whether the same result comes out from respondent in special organization, this study tries to do a further research to one of international hair-stylist companies.
REFERENCES
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http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1983/A1983QC03500001.pdf Robbins, S.P. (2005). Essentials of organizational behavior (8th Ed.). Pearson Prentice Hall, NJ.
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