A CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS
OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT*
Song Yang
University of Arkansas
*Direct all queries to Song Yang, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of
Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701. E-mail: yangw@cavern.uark.edu. I want to thank David
Knoke, Joe Galaskiewicz, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. I am also
grateful to Professor Steven Worden for proofreading the paper.
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The structural transformation of American organizations has had a tremendous impact
on organizational human resource practices, particularly on employer-employee relationships.
In this paper I analyzed how different organizational structures affect the organizational
commitment of employees at different occupational ranks. Using data from the 1991 General
Social Survey (GSS), I found that the occupational effect on organizational commitment, in
which higher ranking employees demonstrate greater commitment than do lower ranking
employees, is contingent on organizational structure. On the one hand, highly bureaucratized
organizations produce a commitment gap: Managers have a higher organizational commitment
than do workers. On the other hand, organizations with many high-performance work practices
elicit high levels of organizational commitment from workers but relatively low levels of
commitment from managers. I discuss the theoretical implications of these empirical findings.
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James Coleman’s theoretical discussion of organizational transition is echoed in a
number of researchers’ empirical studies on the new form of work structures called High
Performance Work Systems (HPWS), defined as organizations that adopt structures and
practices that are consistent with, and supportive of, quality control, and employee participation
(Appelbaum and Batt 1994:123-145; Cappelli, Bassi, Katz, Knoke, Osterman, and Useem; 1997;
Kalleberg and Moody 1996; Lawler 1995; Osterman 1994; Osterman 2000). However, research
studies of organizational commitment concentrate on either organizational structural effects or
occupational effects, neglecting the possible interaction between structures and occupation in
affecting organizational commitment (Mowday, Porter, and Steers 1982). To illustrate how the
commitment gap between managers and workers varies according to different organizational
structural properties, I investigate changes along two organizational structural properties:
organizational bureaucratization and those practices associated with HPWS. I first review
previous discussions on organizational commitment and how different work structures affect
employees in different positions. Second, I elaborate the different modes of exchange relations
between organizations and employees within two work systems — bureaucratic system and high
performance work system. I produce four testable hypotheses based on these discussions. Third,
I conduct statistical analyses using data from the 1991 General Social Survey. The results point
to the interaction process between organizational structures and occupations in affecting
employees’ commitment levels. I discuss theoretical implications of these results.
RESEARCH ON ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT
Organizational commitment is generally defined as the relative strength of an individual’s
identification with and involvement in a particular organization. Conceptually, it can be
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characterized by at least three factors: (a) a strong belief in and acceptance of the organization’s
goals and values, which indicates affective or value commitment; (b) a willingness to exert
considerable effort on behalf of the organization; and (c) a strong desire to maintain membership
in the organization, which captures workers’ attachment to organizations (Kalleberg and
Maskekaasa 1994; Mowday et al. 1982). The affective or value commitment is the fundamental
characteristic underlying organizational commitment because employees are not likely to exert
effort for or high attachment to their current organizations if they do not have a high value
commitment to them. Thus, although several researchers have tapped only value commitment in
studying work attitudes (Edwards 1984; Leicht and Wallace 1988; Perrucci and Stohl 1997),
their findings are directly relevant to my discussion.
Organizations use different strategies to motivate their workforce. Previous studies
suggest that organizations with great bureaucratization are more stratified in rewarding
employees based on their occupations than are organizations with less bureaucratization. For
example, Edwards (1984) demonstrated that bureaucratic systems elicited and rewarded different
work traits between managers and workers. For managers, bureaucratic organizations sought a
partnership, eliciting and rewarding their identification of enterprise’s goals and values. For
workers, bureaucratic organizations emphasized rule-obedience and behavioral predictability and
rewarded for workers’ regulation compliance.
Researchers also reported that high performance work systems upgraded workers’ status
using various incentives. Lincoln and Kalleberg (1990) found that “welfare corporatism” elicited
high organizational commitment from Japanese employees and explained the differences in
organizational commitment between U.S. and Japanese workers. Structural properties such as
teamwork and workers’ participation in business management were significant predictors for
4
increased organizational commitment from low-level workers in Japanese corporations. Perrucci
and Stohl (1997) coined the term “generative capital” to illustrate how Japanese corporations in
America facilitate workers’ commitments not only to their jobs or occupations but also to their
organizations and communities at large. These studies converge in finding that workers’ status,
reflected in job autonomy and participation in decision-making, is considerably improved in high
performance work systems. Workers are treated as valuable partners within organizations with
extensive high performance practices. Therefore, the commitment gap between employees in
different rankings may vary in different work structures. The key to understanding the variation
in organizational commitment is to investigate the resource exchange between employers and
employees (March and Simon 1958; Hrebiniak and Alutto 1972; Steers 1977; Mowday et al.
1982). The highly stratified resource allocation mechanism in bureaucratic systems creates a
commitment gap between managers and workers. In contrast, high performance work systems
move toward more egalitarian resource allocation, eliciting greater organizational commitment
from employees in all rankings. I synthesize those analytic insights and propose my hypotheses
in the following sections, in which I discuss resource exchange in bureaucratic and high
performance work systems.
RESOURCE EXCHANGES BETWEEN EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYEES
IN DIFFERENT WORK SYSTEMS
The traditional bureaucratic system was created in response to the management change
from capitalist entrepreneur to professional manager. The question of management incentive —
meaning how to align the interests of management and the investors — was raised when the
professional managers replaced the capitalist owners in managing the corporation (Berle and
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Means 1932). Bureaucratic systems treated the management as the business partner by providing
managerial authority. Managers received not only monetary incomes but also such non-monetary
payoffs as social prestige and increased entrepreneurial skills. Exercising authority also provided
managers with such psychological benefits as confidence, self-esteem, and self-actualization.
Cappelli et al. (1997) used the concept of a psychological contract to characterize
employer-employee relationship. The psychological contract contains the intangible exchange of
psychological benefits and normative obligations between organizations and employees. For
managers, bureaucratic corporations offer managerial authority, high work status, and substantial
career development. In exchange, managers exhibit high organizational commitment.
Bureaucratic organizations are interested in hiring obedient and rule-oriented workers.
They provide little structural incentive such as teamwork or profit-sharing programs to
encourage workers’ business participation and to align workers’ interest with organizational
performance. Workers in bureaucratic organizations receive their basic wages, but are provided
with limited training resources and job discretion; get few decision-making opportunities.
Consequently, workers place an emphasis on the work wage and job security, expressing less
interest in organizational goals and performances. A large commitment gap between managers
and employees is present in a bureaucratic system.
RESOURCE EXCHANGE IN HIGH PERFORMANCE WORK SYSTEMS
Increasingly globalized technology-based competition was a major force that compelled
U.S. Fordist organizations in the United States to adopt high performance work systems
(Osterman 1994). Fordist organizations are those adopting rigid work structures and methods of
task organization such as assembly line model that facilitate mass-production (Scott 1998: 39).
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Organizations responded by flattening the tall bureaucratic hierarchy and empowering low-level
workers. Using the data on 694 U.S. manufacturing establishments from a 1992 National Survey
of Establishments, Osterman (1994) reported that an important fraction of core workers have
substantial autonomy in those corporations employing high performance practices (see also
Cappelli et al.1997). In addition, high performance work systems return to workers some of the
job tasks traditionally reserved for management discretion (Coleman 1990).
Teamwork is the most important practice in high performance work systems. Osterman
(1994) found that self-directed work teams were surprisingly widespread, involving more than
50 percent of employees in large American corporations employing more than 50 workers. Yoon
and Baker (1994) found empirical evidence that vertical integration among employees in
different hierarchical positions entailed positive effects on employee commitment. Their findings
suggest that teamwork could be a useful instrument for corporations to use to elicit high work
morale from their employees, especially those at low levels.
In addition to the structural incentives that encourage workers’ participation in
management, high performance work systems use a combination of strategies, such as intensive
human capital investment, a stock sharing program, and flexible employee placement, to elicit
high organizational commitment from employees. The impact of new strategies is especially
pronounced for low-level workers because they would receive benefits that are traditionally
reserved for managerial employees.
Table 1 succinctly summarizes above discussions of the resource flow between
employees and organizations along the two organizational dimensions of bureaucracy and high
performance. It shows that high performance work systems use benefit packages reserved for
managers in bureaucratic system to motivate their workers. As a result, workers’ organizational
7
commitment escalates to the level close to that of managers. Thus, I speculate that a relatively
smaller commitment gap between managers and workers exists in high performance work
systems compared to the commitment gap in bureaucratic systems.
Table 1 here
However, the conceptual dichotomy between bureaucratic work systems and high
performance work systems appears only in textbooks. In reality, organizations may contain both
bureaucratic structures and high performance practices simultaneously. My research investigates
how the structural variations along these two dimensions affect employee organization
commitment. I examine the correlations among indicators of the two work systems. The results
section presents my findings.
Hypotheses
The organizational transition from bureaucracy to high performance compels a
reorientation of employee job values, in which workers’ efforts and corporate contributions are
acknowledged and appreciated. Organizational structure is a critical determinant for employees’
organizational commitments. From a work-structure perspective, it is plausible to hypothesize
that bureaucratization, in general, discourages employee’s organizational commitment and high
performance practices increase employee’s commitments.
H1 :
The greater the organizational bureaucratization, the lower the employee
commitment.
H2 :
The more prevalent the organizational high performance practices, the higher the
employee commitment.
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Employees in high-ranking positions are more likely to embrace high organizational
commitment than do employees in low ranking positions because high-level employees receive
more organizational benefits than do low-level workers. But this is true only in organizations
with great bureaucratization. In organizations with extensive high performance practices,
employers adopt a more democratic resource allocation toward employees in the different
rankings. Consequently, the manager-worker commitment gap becomes narrower in high
performance work systems. In other words, the strength of occupational impact on organizational
commitment is contingent upon organizational characteristics. This reasoning leads to the
following two conditional hypotheses:
H3 :
The greater the organizational bureaucratization, the greater the commitment gap
between managerial employees and workers.
H4 :
The more prevalent the organizational high performance work practices, the
smaller the commitment gap between managerial employees and workers.
METHODS
DATA
The data for this research are from the 1991 General Social Survey (GSS), an almost annual
omnibus, personal interview survey of U.S. households conducted by the National Opinion
Research Center (NORC) with James A. Davis and Tom W. Smith as principal investigators
(http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080/GSS/homepage.htm). First, 1,517 GSS respondents were
interviewed, yielding 1,431 employed persons, of whom 912 cases were the employed person
9
and 519 were their spouses. They are referred to below as the respondents. A total of 1,427
names of work establishments were transmitted to Survey Research Laboratory at the University
of Illinois (SRL), which collected information about the establishments by interviewing
establishment informants in the second organizational data collection stage. The discrepancy of
four cases between the original 1,431 GSS cases and later 1,427 names of work establishment to
SRL arose because GSS transmitted dirty data to SRL but released clean data to the social
science community (Knoke 1993: 4). The SRL eventually completed 727 interviews for a 64.5
percent rate of the usable work establishments (1,127) and 50.9 percent of the work settings for
the GSS respondents transmitted from NORC to SRL (1,427). Among the 727 final cases, 561
were completed by telephone, 137 by mailed questionnaire, and 39 from duplicates. The 39
duplicates result from the existence of more than one respondent for a given establishment.
Investigators interviewed such duplicated employers only once. Data from each such interview
were transferred to the records pertaining to the other respondents (Knoke 1993: 5). The data
collection procedure was based on a two-stage multiplicity design: collecting nominations of
establishments in face-to-face interviews by NORC interviewers for the GSS and telephone
interviews of establishment informants by interviewers for SRL. In this establishment survey,
multiplicity is defined as establishment’s total number of employees. Two-stage multiplicity
design ensures that the probability of work establishment to be selected into the sample is
proportional to its size (Knoke 1993: 2). These data offer valuable opportunities to study the
interaction between organizational structures and occupation in affecting employees’
commitment by providing information on both employees and their workplaces.
Organizational commitment is the dependent variable in the study. Lincoln and Kalleberg
(1990) employed a concise measure for organizational commitment consisting of six items in
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their Indianapolis/Atsugi studies. Several researchers have used this six-item scale and
consistently reported acceptable reliability (Kalleberg and Mastekaasa 1994; Marsden,
Kalleberg, and Cook 1996). My analysis uses this organizational commitment scale. Those
commitment questions are 1) I am willing to work hard than I have to in order to help this
organization succeed (strongly agree = 4, agree = 3, disagree = 2, strongly disagree = 1); 2) I feel
very little loyalty to this organization (strongly disagree = 4, disagree = 3, agree = 2, strongly
agree = 1); 3) I would take almost any job to keep working for this organization (coding method
same as Q1); 4) I find that my values and the organization’s values are quite similar (coding
same as Q1); 5) I am proud to be working for this organization (coding same as Q1); and 6) I
would turn down another job for more pay in order to stay with this organization (coding same as
Q1). The six items reflect the characteristics of organizational commitment identified by
Mowday et al. (1982). Question 1 measures whether employees would exert considerable efforts
for organizational interests. Questions 2, 4, and 5 capture subjective attitudinal identification
with organizational values and goals. Question 3 indicates how important organizational
membership is to workers. Question 6 taps the desire to maintain membership in the
organization. The commitment scale was calculated by averaging the scores of the six items for
each respondent. The reliability index for the six items was .79.
INDEPENDENT CONTROL
This section discusses my independent variables. Organizational bureaucratization and
high performance practices are measured by organizational manifestation of bureaucratic or high
performance properties. Every organization can be positioned along a continuum ranging from
low bureaucratization to high bureaucratization and also from low to high performance,
depending on how many bureaucratic or high performance characteristics are present. Thus, the
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aggregation of bureaucratic and high performance practices indicates the degree of
bureaucratization or high performance transformation for the establishments. All the measures
for bureaucratization and high performance work systems are firm-level indicators based on firm
information. I then use the aggregated measures to examine the overall structural impact on
employee organizational commitment.
To measure bureaucratization, I used three indicators, namely, formalization,
departmentalization, and vertical differentiation. The most salient characteristic of bureaucratic
systems is formalization, which is indicated by various formal procedures, disciplines, and
company rules. My data measured formalization by asking respondents to indicate whether their
establishments had written documentation for several types of personnel-related processes,
including hiring and firing, personal evaluation, and fringe benefits. My data measured
organizational departmentalization, the second component for bureaucratization, by asking
informants whether their organizations had separate departments or sections responsible for
various organizational functions. Finally, vertical differentiation captures the fundamental way
that bureaucratic positions are laid out. To do so, establishment informants reported the number
of vertical levels separating the highest and lowest positions at their establishments. For each
indicator of bureaucratization, I used its median to dichotomize the organizations into two
groups. Organizations that scored higher than the median were coded as 1, and those lower than
the median were coded as 0. I aggregated the three indicators’ scores, thus creating a
bureaucratization scale. The scale ranges from 0 to 3, representing the variation of workplace
bureaucratization from low to high. Table 2 reports the items for measuring formalization,
departmentalization, and hierarchical levels of establishments. The Cronbach reliability analysis
indicated a high level of reliability of .78 for the three items.
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I identify four indicators to measure high performance practices: decentralization, job
training, performance-based compensation, and workplace cohesion. Decentralization is an
important variable indicating consultative labor-management relations. The establishment
informants were asked whether their organizations allow employees below the organization’s
head to make decisions on such topics as hiring, job evaluation, wage level, punishment, and
scheduling.
Researchers converge in identifying extensive training programs as a critical element
differentiating high performance work systems from low performance work systems (Osterman
1994; Lawler 1995; Bailey 1990). The items for measuring training practices include training in
computer skills, the safe use of equipment tools, and management skills, resources allocated to
training, and the general effectiveness of training.
In high performance work systems, performance-based compensation elicits high work
morale and effort through aligning employees’ benefits with organizational performance. The
data have items measuring whether organizations offer such programs as cash or stock bonuses
for performance, profit-sharing, or stock option programs.
Workplace cohesion is constructed using information from GSS respondents to indicate
workplace relations among coworkers. Their answers range from 1 to 5, indicating low cohesion
to high cohesion in their workplaces. For each indicator in the high performance measures, I
used the median to dichotomize organizations into two groups. Those above the median are
coded as 1 in that indicator; those below the median are coded as 0. I summed up the results to
produce a scale for high performance practices from 0 to 4. The Cronbach reliability diagnosis
produces an accepted level of 0.635 for the four items to measure high performance work
systems.
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The variables discussed below, except for the two interaction terms, are individual
variables collected by interviewing respondents in GSS. The respondents’ occupations were
measured by asking respondents about their work duties and job titles. I treat those who reported
job title codes from 003 to 037 as managerial employees. Those who reported other job title
codes are coded as non-managerial workers. This classification is in line with the 1980 U.S.
Census Occupational Classification
(http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS/rnd1998/appendix/occu1980.htm). Managers were coded as 1
and workers as 0.
Manager-bureaucratization and manager-HPWS are the two interaction terms created by
multiplying the occupation with bureaucratization scale and high performance scale respectively.
To reduce the multicollinearity between the interaction terms and their main terms (Knoke and
Bohrnstedt 1994), I centered the continuous variables, bureaucratization and high performance
measures, by subtracting their means from their values prior to multiplying them with the
occupation scale (Aiken and West 1991). The centering method is also used to simplify the
interpretation of significant interaction terms (Cohen and Cohen 1983).
I also put in control many other independent variables of organizational commitment.
Previous studies suggest that personal characteristics, job characteristics, and organizational
characteristics affect employees’ organizational commitment (Mowday et al. 1982). Those
independent variables include job autonomy, measured by a single question “my job allows me
to take part in making decisions that affect my work (strongly agree = 4, agree = 3, disagree = 2,
strongly disagree = 1).” Union captures respondent union membership (member = 1, nonmember = 0). Organizational size is indicated by taking nature log of total number of full time
employees in the organization. Independent organization captures whether organization is a part
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of a larger organization (completely independent organization = 1, part of a larger organization =
0). Organization industry is coded according to U.S. Census bureau 1980 Industry Code
(http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS/rnd1998/appendix/class80a.htm), with manufacturing = 1, others =
0. Respondent income, education, gender (male = 1, female = 0), race (white = 1, others = 0),
age, and marital status (married = 1, other status = 0) are standard measures in the 1991 General
Social Survey. My regression model includes those variables to control for their impacts on
organizational commitment.
ANALYTICAL SECTION
To test my hypotheses, I conducted OLS regression to explain variations in workers’
organizational commitment. The independent variables include workplace characteristics,
employees’ occupations, the interaction terms between workplace characteristics and
occupations, and other controlled variables. The regression coefficients of workplace
characteristics indicate how different types of workplace affect workers’ organizational
commitment, which are used to test H1 and H2. The interaction terms between occupation and
workplace characteristics reveal how occupational impact on organizational commitment is
contingent upon workplace characteristics, thus producing empirical evidences to test H3 and H4.
In particular, the regression equation with interaction terms expresses as
Y (commitment) = a + b1Xbureaucracy + b2XHPWS + b3Xoccupation + b4Xbureaucracy*Xoccupation + b5(XHPWS*Xoccupation) + … + bkXk
Because the variable occupation = 0 for workers and occupation = 1 for managers,
Workers: Y (commitment) = a + b1 Xbureaucracy + b2 XHPWS + … + bkXk
Managers: Y (commitment) = a + (b1 + b4) Xbureaucracy + (b2 + b5)XHPWS + … + bkXk
The equations for workers and managers organizational commitment are readily available
through derivation after the OLS regression produces estimates for the first equation. With the
15
two separate equations for workers and managers’ commitment, I can predict how
bureaucratization and high performance practices exert different effects on workers and
managers’ organizational commitment (for details for the interaction method, see Aiken and
West 1991: 116-137). Because bureaucratization and HPWS are centered variables, the different
levels of bureaucratization/HPWS are indicated by one unit of standard deviation of
bureaucratization/HPWS above, equal or below 0 (Aiken and West 1991).
RESULTS
Table 2 reports the bivariate Pearson’s correlation coefficients among indicators for
bureaucratic work systems and high performance work systems. The results indicate that the two
work systems are not running in two distinctly parallel dimensions. Instead, they interweave in
many respects. Table 2 shows that all but one of the 12 bivariate correlation coefficients between
the three bureaucratic indicators (formalization, departmentalization, and vertical levels) and the
four high performance indicators (decentralization, training, performance-based compensation,
and teamwork) are significant. The one exception is between vertical level and teamwork. The
results also show that the in-group correlations among bureaucratic indicators and the in-group
correlations among HPWS indicators are much higher than the inter-group correlations between
indicators from the two groups. For example, bureaucratic formalization is highly correlated with
departmentalization but is weakly correlated with the other four HPWS indicators. The
correlation analyses suggest that organizations may simultaneously encompass characteristics of
both bureaucracy and high performance work systems. Central to the bureaucratization process
are formalization, standardization, and hierarchy, whereas central to high performance systems
are teamwork, decentralization, performance-based paying salary structure, and training. My
16
preliminary analyses indicate that the two processes may overlap and be present in one work
system.
Table 2 here
The unstandardized coefficients from an OLS regression of organizational commitment
are displayed in Table 3 to test the four hypotheses. In support of H1 that the greater the
organizational bureaucratization, the lower the employee commitment, each additional unit of
increase in organizational bureaucratization reduces organizational commitment by 0.066 units.
In support of H2 that the more prevalent the organizational high performance practices, the
higher the employee commitment, each unit of increase in organizational high performance
practice produces 0.069 unit of increase in employee organizational commitment. The managerbureaucratization interaction term does not exert significant impact on organizational
commitment. This result does not support H3 that occupation-commitment association is
contingent on organizational bureaucratization. In contrast, the manager-HPWS interaction term
exhibits significant impact on commitment, indicating a conditional impact of high performance
work systems on occupation-training association. This result supports H4 that the more prevalent
the organizational high performance work practices, the smaller the commitment gap between
managerial employees and workers. In controlled variables, job autonomy is strongly associated
with organizational commitment, indicating that high job discretion elicits greater organizational
commitment from employees. Employees in independent organizations have higher
organizational commitment than do employees in organizations with parent companies.
Table 3 here
Further examining how high performance work practices exert conditional impact on
occupation-commitment association, I follow the procedure in analytical section to compute the
17
regression coefficients of bureaucratization and high performance work systems on workers and
managers’ organizational commitment respectively. I found that each unit of increase in
organizational high performance practices increases workers’ organizational commitment by
0.069. In contrast, each unit of increase in high performance practices decreases managerial
organizational commitment by 0.071. I also found that each unit of increase in bureaucratization
decreases workers commitment by 0.066 units, but each unit of increase in bureaucratization
slightly increases managers’ commitment by 0.006.
Based on the results discussed in the preceding paragraph, I calculate the commitment
score for workers and managers at different levels of bureaucratization and HPWS. Table 4
shows the results. As bureaucratization escalates, the commitment gap between workers and
managers increases. But the magnitude of the change in the commitment gap associated with
increase of organizational bureaucratization does not pass the significant test, even though it is
consistent with my H3 that the greater the organizational commitment, the wider the commitment
gap between managers and workers. In contrast, as organizations implement more and more high
performance work practices, the commitment gap between managers and workers undergoes a
drastic change. At low levels of organizational high performance practices, managers have a
higher commitment than workers by 0.206 units. But at high levels of organizational high
performance practices, workers have a higher commitment than managers by 0.206 units, which
results from a constant increase of workers’ commitment and decrease in managers’ commitment
with an increase in organizational high performance practices.
Table 4 here
Figures 1 and 2 present visualized views of the changes in workers’ and managers’
organizational commitment along with changes in bureaucratization and HPWS. In both figures,
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the dotted line indicates workers’ commitment, and the solid line indicates managers’
commitment. The X-axis denotes bureaucratization/HPWS and the Y-axis organizational
commitment. Figure 1 illustrates that workers’ commitment decreases, as opposed to the slight
increase in managers’ commitment along with the change of bureaucratization from low to high.
A sizable commitment gap, in which managers’ commitment exceeds workers’ commitment,
appears at high levels of organization bureaucratization.
Figure 1 here
Figure 2 shows a dramatic view of the conditional impact of high performance practices
on the occupation-commitment association. Workers’ and managers’ commitments run in
completely opposite directions with an increase in organizational high performance practices. As
organizations use more high performance work practices, worker commitment increases, in
contrast to a sharp decrease in manager commitment. At the higher level of high performance
practices, workers exhibit much higher organizational commitment than do managers.
Figure 2 here
DISCUSSION
I studied how different work structures affect organizational commitment of employees
in different organizational rankings. I placed organizations along two continua, bureaucratization
and high performance practices. I emphasized that organizational commitment, in which highranking employees demonstrate higher levels of commitment than lower ranking employees
(Coleman 1990), does not occur in an vacuum but is contingent on the organizational structure.
The empirical evidence supports this suggestion.
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The result contradicts the conventional wisdom that managers embrace greater
organizational loyalty and commitment than do workers. A distinctive finding is that managers
have lower commitment than do workers at higher levels of organization high performance
practices. Kochan, Katz, and McKersie (1986) and Greenberg (1986) offered some cogent
explanations to this phenomenon. In an effort to reduce workers’ alienation, high performance
work systems increasingly replace managers with workers in many decision-making processes in
many self-management teams such as quality circle and quality of working life. As managers
lose their traditional power, their resistance and resentment to teamwork loom large (Kochan et
al. 1986). Managers feel that workplace transformation toward decentralization and teamwork
decreases their positional importance by removing many of their work privileges and relegating
them back to workers (Osterman 1996). In a recent wave of corporate downsizing and
restructuring, managers have become particularly vulnerable to job displacement (Cappelli et al.
1997). Managers’ concern about their job security inevitably affects their organizational
commitment.
Cappelli et al. (1997) argued that middle managers appeared to be the group whose
psychological contract with the organization had been the most severely violated as American
organizations underwent structural transformation. My research concurs with previous findings
that managerial employees have decreased their commitment to their organizations (Osterman
1996). Floyd (1996) suggested that managerial employees should reconstruct their work roles
and responsibilities in response to organizational transitions. But from the employer’s
perspective, the critical question is what organizations can do to rescue managers’ commitment.
Comparative studies showed that Japanese organizations were able to implement transition plan
without jeopardizing managers’ organizational loyalty (Lincole and Kelleberg 1990). Can
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transforming U.S. organizations borrow these practices to solve their managerial commitment
crisis? This is an important research question for future comparative, cross-culture studies.
I differentiated organizations along two continua: bureaucratization and high
performance practices. In reality, organizations may embrace several heterogeneous structural
properties. For example, an organization may contain high levels of bureaucratization and high
performance practices at the same time. This complication impacts most organizational research
and studies. For example, Marsden, Cook, and Kalleberg (1996) used decentralization to indicate
bureaucratization, but Kalleberg and Moody (1996) also argued that decentralization was also
one of the essential indicators for high performance work systems. Based on their observation of
Japanese companies, Lincoln and Kalleberg’s (1990) study asserted that “welfare corporatism”
encompasses a wide range of structural properties of both bureaucratic work systems and high
performance work systems. Future studies need to clarify the ambiguity in measuring
bureaucracy and high performance work systems and investigate how various work structures are
combined to affect employee work morale.
21
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Table 1: Resource Flows in Two Types of Work Systems
Bureaucratic System
High Performance Work Systems
Workers
Receive basic wage, limited
training, little job discretion,
no structural incentives.
Organizational commitment
level is low
Receive wage, training opportunities,
large job autonomy, managerial
authority, and structural incentives.
Organizational commitment level is
high.
Managers
Receive wage, great job
autonomy, training
opportunities, structural
incentives, and decisionmaking privileges.
Organizational commitment
level is high.
Receive wage, job discretion, training
opportunities, structural incentives,
and managerial authority.
Organizational commitment is high.
Commitment
Gap Between
Managers and
Workers
Large
Small
26
Table 2: Bivariate Pearson correlation matrix among indicators for
bureaucracy and high performance work systems
Mean/median/std
Formalization
Formalization
Departmentaliza
tion
Vertical level
0.61/1.00/0.49
2.07/1.00/1.46
Decentralization
2.95/3.00/2.12
Training
1.75/2.00/1.27
Compensation
0.68/1.00/0.76
Teamwork
4.27/4.00/0.81
-.854**
(727)
.391**
(683)
.192*
(704)
.329**
(727)
.101**
(727)
.235**
(468)
6.92/5.00/3.47
Departmentalization
Vertical
levels
decentralization
training
compensation
-.455**
(683)
.325*
(704)
.412*
(727)
.192*
(727)
.230*
(468)
-.235*
(663)
.240*
(683)
.111*
(683)
.031
(442)
-.401**
(704)
.402**
(704)
.203**
(456)
-.491**
(727)
.350**
(468)
-.521*
(468)
Numbers in parenthesis are total number of cases
* p < .05 ** p <.01 (two-tailed test)
27
Table 3: Unstandardized Coefficients from OLS regression of Organizational
Commitment
Independent Variables
Constant
Bureaucratization
High performance work systems (HPWS)
Managers
Non-managerial workers
Manager * Bureaucratization
Manager * HPWS
Age
Gender (male=1/female=0)
Race (white=1/others=0)
Marital Status (married = 1/others=0)
Education
Job autonomy
Income
Union (member=1/others=0)
Organizational Size
Organizational status (Independent organization=1/others=0)
Organizational Industry (Manufacture=1/others=0)
Adjusted R2
Model χ2 (df)
Number of Cases
Coefficients
2.126***
(.177)
-.066*
(.030)
.069**
(.021)
.058
(.048)
-.072
(.083)
-.14*
(.061)
.031
(.022)
.073
(.052)
.035
(.081)
-.017
(.054)
-.008
(.013)
.224***
(.027)
.098
(.072)
-.021
(.064)
.035
(.023)
.147**
(.056)
.028
(.069)
.195
29.925***(16)
401
Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.
Std of bureaucratization = 1.06; Std of high performance work systems = 1.47
* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001 (two-tailed tests)
28
Table 4: Variation in Commitment Gap Across different levels of
Bureaucratization and HPWS
Worker’s
commitment
Managers’
commitment
Low
2.200
2.119
-0.081
Average
2.126
2.126
0
High
2.057
2.133
0.076
Low
2.025
2.231
0.206
Average
2.126
2.126
0
High
2.227
2.021
-0.206
Organizational type
Bureaucratization
High Performance
Work Systems
Commitment gap
(Managers – workers)
29
Figure 1: Commitment in Bureaucracy
comparing managers and workers
2.20
2.15
2.10
MGRCOMMIT
WRKCOMMIT
2.05
1
2
3
bureaucratization
worker commitment = 2.126 + (-0.066)(bureaucratization)
manager commitment = 2.126 + (0.006)(bureaucratization)
30
Figure 2: Commitment in HPWS
Comparing managers and workers
2.25
2.20
2.15
2.10
2.05
MGRCOMMIT
2.00
WRKCOMMIT
1
2
3
HPWS
worker commitment = 2.126 + 0.069(HPO)
manager commitment = 2.126 + (-0.071)(HPO)
31