MNG82001 Literature Review On Organisational Commitment

• Define the term ‘Organisational Commitment’ and describe the types of organisational outcomes it might lead to. 

The term ‘Organisational Commitment’ is the  “relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organisation.” The feeling of loyalty an employee feels correlates directly with his or her willingness to continue putting forth the effort. The three types of organisational outcome that are associated with this are; the acceptance of the values of the organisation, the willingness to go the extra mile working hard for the organisation, and the wish to remain with the organisation (Armstrong, 2006).  Organisation outcome mainly constitutes of these three outcomes namely affective, continuance and normative. The affective commitment is the emotional attachment that an employee feels they have, given the level of involvement and adaptability with work environment. Therefore, the higher the affective commitments, more likely are the chances that an employee is satisfied due to level of involvement and decides continue working diligently without any doubts. Continuance commitment, however, is committing to stay on with the organisation because it would be costly to leave (Allen and Meyer, 1990). These employees of continuance commitment remain in the organisation because they have to, as they feel the time or energy, for example, they have invested is of greater cost than to quit. Lastly, the normative outcome deals with employee feeling obligated to the company because of their own personal norms and values. This is where one feels they ought to stay with the organisation because it is the right thing. These reasons can vary from moral reasons, for example employee can be working for charity and feels its his civic duty, or for ethical reasons where one feels obligated to stay as company paid for tuition fees and training.

• Briefly describe two strategies, supported in the academic literature, that might lead to Organisational Commitment. 

In order to achieve high level of organisation commitment there are many strategies that can be stressed but we will be discussing two specific strategies in terms of increasing the levels of organisational commitment. The two strategies we will discuss are developing trust and encouraging innovation. Trust is an important factor in bringing about higher degree of organisational commitment. Being able to trust your co-workers and the leadership is a vital sign of a healthy organisational commitment. Leadership not only sets examples for the employees, but employees also learn decision-making and look for motivation and all this is possible if there is trust in the organisation. If the leadership has trust in their employees they will empower them and assign greater tasks to accomplish. In return the employees will put in extra effort in delivering those set goals based on higher levels of trust (Armenio, 2008).  Now let us consider the other strategy, which is encouraging innovation, and how that creates higher organisational commitment. To better understand how important innovation is we can turn our attention to Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, who was able to set the organisation apart from their competitors by applying several strategies but out of all of them, the most crucial was encouraging innovation. Leaders who treasure and encourage innovation are open to the ideas that an employee can approach them with more effective and efficient ways to perform tasks that would increase productivity and profitability (Baron and Kreps, 1999). Therefore, it is evident that the two strategies discussed and when applied would definitely lead to organisational commitment.