Understanding Organizational Commitment
A Meta-Analytic Examination
of the Roles of the Five-Factor Model of Personality and Culture
1. What are dispositional antecedents of
OC?
2. What is the role of FFM of Personality (as
a whole) on commitment?
Questions
3. Whether the relationship between FFM
and organizational commitment vary
across national culture (moderating role)
Dimensions of FFM Traits
1. Emotional stability (Neuroticism)
2. Extraversion
3. Openness to experience/ intellect
4. Agreeableness
5. Conscientiousness
Forms of commitment
Psychological bond with an organization
characteristic adaptation that is influenced by the interaction of traits and
situational factors
Meyer and Allen (1991, 1997) differentiated three forms of commitment:
1. affective commitment (AC; an emotional attachment to the organization)
2. normative commitment (NC; a felt obligation to remain with the organization)
3. continuance commitment (CC; commitment based on the costs and benefits
associated with leaving the organization).
H1: Emotional Stability is (a) positively related to
AC and (b) negatively related to CC.
H2. Extraversion is (a) positively related to AC and
(b) negatively related to CC.
Hypotheses
H3: Openness to Experience is negatively related
to CC.
H4: Agreeableness is positively related to (a) AC
and (b) NC.
H5: Conscientiousness is positively related to (a)
AC and (b) NC.
The Moderating Role of Culture
1. Individualism versus collectivism
2. Useful dimensions in understanding the influence of social context on
attitudes and behavior
3. The characteristics of collectivistic cultures (interdependent self, interpersonal
relationships, and normative pressures) provide trait-relevant situational cues
that trigger the expression of three of the FFM traits: Emotional Stability,
Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. (Based on Trait Activation Theory)
H6: Emotional Stability is (a) more strongly and
positively related to AC and (b) more strongly and
negatively related to CC in collectivistic cultures
than in individualistic cultures.
Hypotheses
(cont’d)
H7: Agreeableness is more strongly and positively
related to (a) AC and (b) NC in collectivistic cultures
than in individualistic cultures
H8: Conscientiousness is more strongly and
positively related to (a) AC and (b) NC in
collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures.
1. Defining research subject and questions
2. Choose Initial resources based on a structured frame
3. Examining resources’ scientific value
4. Extracting information
Steps to Meta
Analysis
5. Statistical analysis
6. Discussion over results
Here : the authors used Hunter and Schmidt’s (2004)
psychometric meta-analysis method
•Electronic databases in applied psychology
• Search with a combination of keyword
representing personality and commitment
Identification
of Primary
Studies
•Reference sections of relevant meta-analytic
studies and review papers
•Searching for possible unpublished/working and
in-press studies
•First: only primary studies based on employee samples
from work organizations
Inclusion
Criteria
•Second, primary studies which measured one of the FFM
traits with measures explicitly developed to measure the
FFM traits (e.g., the NEO-PI-R, the NEO-FFI, the IPIP, the
BFI, …
all FFM traits included in the current meta analysis are
comparable in terms of measurement/construct
• Third, primary studies assessing at least one of the three
forms of organizational commitment (AC, NC, and CC) .
•Fourth, primary studies that reported enough information
to calculate the correlations between FFM traits and
organizational commitment
•Two authors independently coded all the relevant
articles
•To verify coding accuracy:
Coding
Procedure and
Accuracy
• the effect sizes, sample sizes, reliability estimates, FFM
measures, forms of organizational commitment, and
publication status were compared.
•The interrater agreement rate was high at 98.9%
50 studies
55 independent samples
 N: 18,262
Correlation coefficient
Reliability
Comparison
index
correlation coefficients were corrected for unreliability
in both independent and dependent variables using
local reliability estimates reported (in all cases,
coefficients alpha)
Variability of the corrected correlations
calculating 80% credibility intervals (CVs)
Points for
interpreting
the result table
80% Credibility intervals (CV): If the credibility
interval around a positive average correlation
excludes zero, this suggests that at least 90% of
the individual correlations included in the metaanalysis are positive and thus the relationship is
generalizable in most cases.
95% Confidence intervals (CI); if these intervals
include zero, this suggests that the mean truescore correlation does not differ from zero.
To test the moderating role of culture, authors
conducted the independent sample z test with
mean true-score correlations
H1: Hypotheses 1a and 1b were both supported.
Notice: 80% CV for the relationship between Emotional
Stability and CC included zero, indicating that more
than 10% of the individual correlation coefficients in
this meta-analysis were positive.
Hypotheses
H2. Hypothesis 2a and 2b were also supported.
Notice: Extraversion–CC relationship is weak and its
80% CV included Zero, indicating that the negative
relationship is not always generalizable; more than
10% of the individual correlation coefficients in this
meta-analysis were
H3: was supported.
Notice: its 80% CV included zero, indicating that more
than 10% of the correlation coefficients in this metaanalysis were positive.
Hypotheses
H4. Hypotheses 4a and 4b were both supported; The
true-score correlations of Agreeableness with AC and
NC were in the hypothesized direction and significantly
differed from zero.
H5: Hypotheses 5a and 5b were both supported.
For informational purposes; All of the FFM traits were
positively correlated with overall/attitudinal
commitment and significantly differed from zero.
H6: Emotional Stability was slightly more strongly and
positively related to AC in collectivistic cultures than in
individualistic cultures, but they are not significantly
different (z= 0.48).
Hypotheses
(cont’d)
Emotional Stability-- CC was slightly stronger in
collectivistic than in individualistic cultures, but again
the difference was not significant (z= 0.13).
H7: Authors found support for both Hypotheses 7a
and 7b.
H8: Although Conscientiousness was slightly more
strongly and positively related to AC and NC in
collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures,
the differences are not statistically significant; z =
1.45 (for AC) and z =0 .98 (for NC). Thus, Hypotheses
8a and 8b were not supported.
FFM traits explained more variance in AC and NC in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures.
That is, the FFM traits were found to be more useful in determining or predicting organizational commitment in
collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures.
Implication
1. the FFM traits as a whole are significantly
associated with three forms of organizational
commitment and more strongly in collectivistic
cultures than individualistic cultures
2. findings underscore the role of Agreeableness in
shaping organizational commitment. Agreeableness
was the strongest predictor of both AC and NC.
The importance of Agreeableness is that Agreeableness
plays a critical role in understanding organizational
citizenship behaviors , turnover and counterproductive
workplace behavior
3. practitioners will benefit from considering all of the
FFM traits in their selection systems.
Limitations
1.
Is Mayer commitment measure a true measure yet?
2.
Other personality traits can influence OC too.
3.
There are certainly other situational moderators that may affect the
relation between FFM and organizational commitment.
4.
They just consider moderating role of Culture on some dimensions of
FFM.
5.
They consider just one comparison point: correlation coefficient
6.
In some cases they substitute correlation coefficient with composite
correlation coefficient
7.
some correlations were estimated based on a small number of
primary studies
8.
Understanding their article needs higher level of statistic knowledge
which make it almost incomprehensible for managers and
practitioners with a lower level of statistical knowledge
9.
The cross sectional nature of the data in almost all primary studies
included prevented the examination of causal relationship.
10. They did not consider the role of culture on openness to experience
and agreeableness but in their final result they mention all of them
Thanks for your attention