Employee Commitment And Organizational Culture In The Middle East: A Critical Analysis

Definition of Employee Commitment

Question:

Discuss about the Impact of Employee Commitment on Organizational Culture in Qatar.

Employee commitment can be defined as the degree to which the employees feel committed towards the organization. Employee commitment is a factor, which will help an organization to improve the operational productivity. This study is aimed at researching the commitment of the employees and how it affects the organizational culture. The organizational culture is linked with the performance of the employee and employee commitment plays a crucial role in developing the culture. Thus, this study will critically analyze the employee commitment in the organization in Middle East. The national culture affects the organizational culture and employee commitment will vary in different organizational culture.

Al-Sada, M., Al-Sada, M., Al-Esmael, B., Al-Esmael, B., Faisal, M. N., & Faisal, M. N. (2017). Influence of organizational culture and leadership style on employee satisfaction, commitment and motivation in the educational sector in Qatar. EuroMed Journal of Business, 12(2), 163-188.

What is the impact of employee commitment on organizational culture?

How does the organization culture differ in Qatar from the other countries?

Employee commitment in an organization has become one of the most important topics in the recent field of study. There is no particular definition to the organizational commitment and has been explained differently by diverse authors. According to Yamao & Sekiguchi, (2015), commitment has been defined as the amount of emotions one has for the group. While Laschinger, Read & Zhu, (2016), has defined commitment as the attachment of an individual to the values and goals of an organization.  However, Awadh & Alyahya, (2013), has defined employee commitment as the ability of an individual to identify and involve in the goals and objectives of an organization. The emotional attachment of an employee to its organization is the affective commitment while being aware about the cost of the organization is known as the continuance commitment. When an individual feels an obligation towards one’s job and employment is known as normative. There are two variables included in the study where employee commitment is the independent variable whereas organization culture is the dependent variable. The study will critically analyze the impact of employee commitment on the culture of organizations in Qatar.

Organizational culture is the factor, which has a lot of influence on the commitment of the employees (Alvesson, 2016). The organizational culture is specific to an organizational and set according the needs of the organization. Each organization has their own individual culture, which differentiates them from the others companies in the market. However, there are certain characteristics that are same for the organizations because they operate in the same country.. The change in the organizational culture will take a lot of time and it very difficult to adopt and achieve the desired organizational culture. The difference in the organizational culture will have great amount of impact on both corporate and personal level (Alvesson & Sveningsson,, 2015).

Link Between Organizational Culture and Employee Commitment

However, the organizational culture is the inner most level which consist of different layers. Brown’s Model has categorized the culture of an organization in to three layers. The outer layer consists of the values, mission statement and objectives of an organization. The middle layer consists of the issues and the beliefs of the employees in the organization. The inner layer consists of the subjects, which the employees are unable to talk (Mora, 2013). Organizational culture consists of three relationships; first is the relationship between the organization and its employees, the second is the hierarchy system, which defines the authority of the superiors and the subordinates. The final one defines the point of views of the employees regarding the purpose, goals and the destiny of the organization.

The organization can be differentiated and identified with the help of the six dimensions defined by Hofstede (Hogan & Coote, 2014). The dimensions are Result oriented vs. Process, Employee vs. Job oriented, Open vs. Closed communication system, Professional dependent vs. Parochial, pragmatic vs. Normative organization and Tight vs. Loose control. These dimensions help to identify the different dimensions in the organizational culture and at the same time highlights the differences between the national culture and the organizational culture.

There are various which will influence the commitment level of employees in an organization. Job enrichment, compensation and employee empowerment are the important factors, which will define the loyalty or commitment of an employee to an organization. The analysis of the personality, position and the education level determines the commitment of an employee to an organization (Yamao & Sekiguchi, 2015).  The position and the education level of the employees are the stronger factors normative and continuance dimension while the personality of an individual will be stronger for the effective and the continuance dimensions.

The effect of the type of leadership will also have an impact on the commitment of the employees. The secondary data suggest that the companies following transformational type of leadership have more effect on the commitment of the employees in the organization (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015). This shows that the organizations that look in to the individual needs of the organization will have more impact on the commitment level of the employees. The policies that provide the employees with an flexible environment will have more impact on the normative commitment of the employees.

The side bet theory as explained by Howard Becker states that the relation between the culture of an organization and employee commitment is based on the exchange of economy. The level of commitment is dependent on the hidden investment made by the employees in the organization.  There are some hidden motivates or investments which is valued by an individual which increases the level of commitment of the employees. Moreover, it is difficult for employees to disengage from the work they have been doing on a regular basis. When the value of the investment made by an individual decrease the level of commitment decreases and it results in voluntary turnover (Mazanec et al., 2015). This voluntary turnover will decrease the performance level of the employees. The employee commitment is a significant predictor of voluntary turnover in an organization and the companies can change their policies by identifying the commitment level of the employees. However, Porter has focused on the intangible side bets and he considers it to be more important. The three intangible factors that influence the commitment level of the employees are participation, loyalty and acceptance.  The commitment level of employees will be high if they have strong belief in the goals, values and objectives of the organization. When the employees are willing to exert a tremendous amount of effort to fulfil the goals of an organization then the level of commitment is high (Nisar et al., 2017). Finally, when the employees have a strong desire to be an integral part of an organization then the commitment level will be high. This two theories will define the level of commitment of employees in an organization and at the same time will help in identifying the influence of employee commitment on organizational culture.

The Impact of National Culture on Organizational Culture

The national culture will always have an influence on the organizational culture but there are certain set of values and ideals, which will be different and will be specific only for the organization.  Globalization has lead to the expansion of the multinational companies in various parts of the world and it is been difficult for these companies to adapt to the different national cultures (López?Duarte, Vidal?Suárez & González?Díaz, 2016). Thus, the relation between the national and the organizational culture will help to identify the cultural needs of the organization.

Research methodology is the most important aspect of the study as it defines the work that to done. There are lot of complexities that are involved in the validation of data and so the research methodology gives a proper direction to the research. Positivism is the research philosophy that will be used in this field of study. The existing theories will be validated with the help of this study so Positivism is the appropriate philosophy. The hidden facts can be easily identified using Positivism and formulates a scope for conducting descriptive study. It also helps in formulation of the hypothesis, which will validate the existing theories in practice. The research approach will be deductive in nature as it will help in the validation of the existing hypothesis and testing methods (Nisar et al., 2017). The existing theories have to be confirmed in this study so use of deductive method is the best possible approach. The conclusion from the data that has been collected will help in reaching a desired output. Moreover, formulation and testing of the hypothesis can only be done with the help of the deductive approach. The data analysis includes analysis of secondary data. The secondary data will consist of both qualitative data analysis. The qualitative analysis of the data will have to done by conducting surveys and interviews through questionnaires, which will include open-ended questions. The qualitative will identify the significance of the employee commitment in organizational culture (Saleem & Larimo, 2017). Sampling will be used to collect the data where a small amount of data will be taken from the population sample. The small sample will be the data that has to be analyzed. The target population for the analysis will be used a source of data for the analysis. There are two types of sampling methods, one is the probabilistic and other is the non-probabilistic. In this scenario, the non-probabilistic sampling method will be used where only the secondary data that has been validated will be used for the analysis. The secondary data will consist of the reviewed journal and research papers.

Serial No.	Activities	Start Date	End Date	Duration
1.	Selection of topic	05/08/2017	07/08/2017	3
2.	Formulation of aim and objectives	08/08/2017	09/08/2017	2
3.	Literature review	10/08/2017	19/08/2017	10
4.	Research methodology	20/05/2017	23/08/2017	4
5.	Data collection	24/08/2017	31/08/2017	8
6.	Data analysis	01/09/2017	06/09/2017	7
7.	Conclusion	07/09/2017	09/09/2017	3
8.	Final submission	10/09/2017	——-	1

References

Alvesson, M. (Ed.). (2016). Organizational culture. Sage.

Alvesson, M., & Sveningsson, S. (2015). Changing organizational culture: Cultural change work in progress. Routledge.

Awadh, A. M., & Alyahya, M. S. (2013). Impact of organizational culture on employee performance. International Review of Management and Business Research, 2(1), 168.

Hogan, S. J., & Coote, L. V. (2014). Organizational culture, innovation, and performance: A test of Schein’s model. Journal of Business Research, 67(8), 1609-1621.

Laschinger, H. K., Read, E., & Zhu, J. (2016). 23. Employee empowerment and organizational commitment. Handbook of Employee Commitment, 319.

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