Conclusions for the research present in chapter V. Managerial implications for nonprofit organization and contribution of the research presented after the conclusion part.
At the end of this chapter, the researcher gave suggestion for the future research.
Conclusions
The research question was to identify the factors that influence employee commitment in nonprofit organizations in Taiwan. To answer this, an eight item scale used for organizational commitment measurement was taken and six variables were examined. The six variables were job characteristic, job satisfaction, role fit, extrinsic reward, job stress, and turnover intention. They cumulatively explained 97% of the variance.
Using the data and analysis presented in Chapter IV, table 5.1 shows the results of the hypothesis testing.
Table 5.1 Hypothesis testing result
Research Hypothesis Result
H1 Job characteristic of nonprofit organization employees in Taiwan has a positive impact on organization commitment.
supported
H2 Job satisfaction of nonprofit organization employees in Taiwan has a positive impact on organization commitment.
not supported
H3 Role fit of nonprofit organization employees in Taiwan has a positive impact on organization commitment.
supported
H4 Extrinsic reward of nonprofit organization employees in Taiwan has a positive impact on organization commitment.
supported
H5 Job stress of nonprofit organization employees in Taiwan has a negative impact on organization commitment.
not supported
H6 Intention to leave of nonprofit organization employees in Taiwan has a negative impact on organization commitment.
supported
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The objective of the empirical test is to see if the organizational commitment antecedents identified with organizational commitment. The data analysis suggested that job characteristic, role fit, extrinsic reward, and intention to leave affect organizational commitment as hypothesized.
Job characteristic has positive impact on organizational commitment. It indicated that most of the respondents believe that the richer the job characteristic, which covers skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback in the context of nonprofit organizations, the higher the organizational commitment. The employees in nonprofit organization need a challenge in their job, they expect to learn new things rather than doing the repetitive job everyday. With the variety of the job the employees feel that they are doing the job which has contribution for the society and their skill also increases by doing something new. This feeling affect their attitude to the organization and it increases their commitment towards the organization.
Role fit has a positive impact on organizational commitment. It appears that most of the respondents consider that finding the right position and a job that fits them makes them stay longer with the organization. As the nature of nonprofit organization mission is to serving the community, the employee more prefer to do the job that they like and interested with. By doing the job that they like gives them a space to be creative and happy in doing it. This becomes a factor that makes them attach and remain with the organization.
Extrinsic rewards have a positive impact on organizational commitment. The basic need theory mentioned that people work for living. They have basic needs that have to fulfill in order to survive with their life. In nonprofit organization, as their nature is not looking for-profit, it becomes a dilemma how to compete with for-profit organizations to keep their employees. The interesting finding from the data analysis is the employees in nonprofit organization response that they feel satisfy with the payment received. It is contradictive with most of people’s thought about what nonprofit organization employees’ think about their payment. It means that nonprofit organization nowadays has improved their payment system which is good for the organization and the employees. As hypothesized that the higher extrinsic reward the higher organizational commitment, the improvement in wages for nonprofit organization has increased their commitment to the organization.
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Intention to leave has a negative impact on organizational commitment. It indicated that the higher intention to leave the lower organizational commitment to the organization.
From the breakdown of employees by tenure, the researcher found that employees who had been working for less than one year represented the highest percentage at 28.40%.
Second at 19.80% were employees who had been working more than 6 years. This shows that the turnover in nonprofit organizations is quite high with almost one third of the employees in nonprofit organizations being new workers. It also indicates that the commitment of new workers in nonprofit organizations is low. On the other hand, the data also had shown a tendency that employees who stay with the organization for a long period of time have a high commitment to the organization.
Managerial Implication for Nonprofit Organizations
This research study’s findings have important implications for nonprofit organization leaders. This research has demonstrated that employees’ perceptions about their job could affect their commitment to the organization and in the end this will impact turnover intention. Therefore, any study into organizational commitment in nonprofit organizations must consider these variables if the study is to be complete.
One important way to increase organizational commitment for the nonprofit organization is to provide organizational support from the leader and organization. With organizational support, employees will develop a stronger attachment to the organization and have less intention to quit their jobs (Loi, Yue, & Foley, 2006). The supervisors, managers or CEO of the organization must increase their awareness of employees’ needs.
Two-way communications between supervisors and employees and support from above is important in building a strong relationship which can strengthen employees’ commitment toward the organization.
Creating commitment among employees not only encourages them to commit more to their current organization but also reduces their intention of leaving. Competitive and fair reward of pay and benefits are useful for fostering organizational commitment.
Redesigning job content and changing management style are two useful strategies for management to promote employees’ satisfaction and commitment.
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“If we are to depend on non-profit organizations to the extent we do today, then steps need to be taken to improve the quality of work in the sector (Worklife report, 2003)”. As many studies show, there is a high turnover rate in nonprofit organizations requiring a quick organizational response. To avoid staff turnover, organizations must develop policies to address this tendency. Flexible organizational policies may help reduce job stress and increase work commitment. Work scheduling may need to take into account employees’ home needs in addition to organizational needs. Social agencies should promote an environment where employees have freedom to discuss problems and conflicts so that they can be addressed constructively. Organizations with restrictive environments generally have lower morale, job satisfaction, productivity, and organizational commitment (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2004).
The other form of intrinsic reward is the personal career. Chang (1999) mentioned that an individual who possess a stronger career desire may become more attached to the company. The modern attitudes for management encourage workers to develop a personal career, promote personal goals, and improve their sense of control and security in the job (Armour, 2002). In community service organizations those feelings are expressed in a desire for personal development and career promotion, and in the aspiration of workers to find a satisfying job that corresponds with their personal values (Freund, 2005).
Recommendation for social service organizations
From Chapter IV we found the areas in which social service organizations have done well for their employees and the areas where the organizations need to improve. The organizations have so far done well in building teamwork, the employees feel that they can learn new things in job and their job has lots of variety and beside that they can work independently thereby it could build their loyalty to the organization. Build good teamwork in the organization. Since social and human service workers are expected to accord top priority to clients’ problems and intervene in a timely manner when necessary, time-based conflicts are possible. Create a challenging work environment, letting the employee learn new things rather than doing the same job for a long period of time. Some nonprofit organizations give opportunities to their employees to continue their studies or attend conferences, training and seminars which are related to their jobs. Remind the employees about the mission and vision of organization is important in order to keep the work on the right path. The leader of one organization in the study suggested giving praise or rewards as encouragement for employees so they know that their work is
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important for the organization to achieve its mission As nonprofit organizations contribute a lot to the community, the government and citizens must pay more attention to them by supporting them with funding and assistance. With the funding support that organizations receive from government and donors, they can provide fair pay to their employees which are important given that the employees are a key part of the organization.
Suggestions for improvement are:
1. Improve the relationship between superior and the workers. Build a harmony relationship at work will make the employees feel comfortable in doing their work.
Discuss the problems and difficulties at work, it will solve the argument between superior and worker. By pay more attention to the worker and increase the awareness of their needs will reduce the stress at work. Give guidance for the workers how to give service to the clients in order to increase the quality of the service.
2. Create a pleasant work environment and give the worker a space to be free in doing their job and make their own decision. Lambert et al. (2006) mention that working undesirable hours, too many hours, or working during times of family or social obligations, all can lead social service workers to view their jobs in a less favorable light. With good teamwork and effective division of labor, the burden on each person can be reduced.
3. Extrinsic rewards and intrinsic rewards play an important role in keeping the employees. The extrinsic rewards usually form as payment, benefit, bonus, etc and intrinsic rewards beside the job satisfaction, career and promotion also become an important factor for the employee. The leader supposes to evaluate the work performance of their employees and based from that promotion can be given to the employee who has good performance. Previous literatures give an evidence that promotion and career could increase organizational commitment. For the smaller organization, promotion and career is hard to do. Usually in the organization just have simple structure organization and the relationship between superior and worker usually is not too formal. The other way to replace career and promotion in this case is the leader could make a close and open relationship with the worker, let the workers feel that they are a part and take an important place in the organization.
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Recommendation for Taiwan ICDF
The data shows that Taiwan ICDF has done well in many areas like fair payment to employees, creativity on the job, the freedom of the work, and the sense of belonging to the organization. On the other side, there are some items where ICDF should raise its awareness:
1. The importance of teamwork. The success of the organization comes from the success of teamwork with everybody playing a part. Working as a team is essential with every worker sharing in the work, discussions, and problem-solving.
2. Job satisfaction or the feeling of pleasure that comes with doing the job. Tzeng (2002) concluded that employees focus on factors of job satisfaction over which they have more influence such as a challenging work environment, recognition of achievement, and stress levels, rather than on factors over which they have less control such as salary.
3. Provide promotion and career development for the employee. Give a freedom to the employee to do their job with the supervision from the supervisor. Huang, Lawler, &
Lei (2007) mention that “the changing values of the workforce indicate that current employees are more interested in elevating their quality of life.” Beyond earnings, workers expect to gain benefits from their jobs such as challenge and a sense of achievement, career development and growth, balance between work and family life, a harmonious organizational climate, and a supportive managerial style. On the other side, job characteristics and compensation and benefits are good for the development of professionalism and enhance employee commitment to the organization (Huang, Lawler, & Lei, 2007).
4. Emphasize that everybody is important. The mission of the organization is impossible to attain without workers who commit themselves to the organization.
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Contribution of the Research
This research offers a framework tool to identify and examine the importance of organizational commitment antecedents and the control variables that affect organizational commitment. The leaders of nonprofit organizations have an important role in examining and considering these factors in their organizations. The higher the employee commitment to the organization the higher their work performance which will ultimately affect organizational performance. Satisfied workers will strive to continue and develop within the organization, display a more professional attitude, and provide community service that stems from a sense that the organization of which they are part fulfills their professional expectation (Freund, 2005).
In this study, the researcher also investigated the relationship between organization commitment antecedents and turnover intention. Hemmingway and Smith, (1999), Lambert et al. (2006), and Lou et al. (2007) examined the organization commitment antecedents on turnover intention.
The five independent variables taken for the testing were job characteristic, job satisfaction, role fit, extrinsic reward and job stress of the employees in nonprofit organizations. The dependent variable was turnover intention. The researcher intended to find the relationship between the variables. Using regression analysis, the researcher got the results that job satisfaction, role fit and extrinsic reward are relatively significant towards turnover intention. Since we have tested the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment previously and the result was not significant, we can conclude that job satisfaction of nonprofit organization employees does not have an impact on organizational commitment but has an impact on intention to leave. Tzeng (2002) hypothesized that higher general job satisfaction, higher professional role satisfaction, and higher general job happiness would correlate to lower intention to quit.
The analysis showed a significant correlation with intent to leave (Tett & Meyer, 1993;
Freund, 2005; Trimble, 2006).
The better the fit the higher the job satisfaction, the higher the organizational commitment, and the lower the turnover rate (Silverthrone, 2004). This literature supported the finding that role fit has a negative relationship with turnover intention.
Further, Edwards (1991) mentions that “The most common forms of employee desires that have been investigated are psychological needs, goals, values, interests, and preferences. These desires have been associated with such job supplies as pay, decision
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making latitude, role clarity, enrichment characteristics, and occupational characteristics”.
Extrinsic rewards have a negative relationship with turnover intention. The lower the rewards that the employee receives the higher turnover intention would be. It has been a common issue that nonprofit organization employees are paid less than those of for-profit organizations. Some nonprofit organizations are unable to afford paying decent salaries to their employees, which is one of the reasons why the turnover rate is high in nonprofit organizations.
The major importance of examining a worker’s intent to leave lies in the finding that turnover intention is a highly efficient variable for predicting rotation (Vanderberg, Richardson, & Eastman, 1999). It has been predicted that workers who no longer believe in the organization and its goals are most liable to want to leave the organization. Wong, Hui, & Law (1995) and Lum et. al. (1998) found a significant negative relationship between organizational commitment and intention to leave.
Suggestion for Future Research
As it found that turnover intention in nonprofit organization is pretty high, it is interesting to do more research in this field. Investigates more factors of turnover antecedents and how the factors affect the turnover intention. Explore the factors that become mediator and moderate between turnover intention and organizational commitment is also important in order to gain more knowledge about the issue.
The researcher also encourages other researchers to do the same analysis with different types of organization or at the other countries. Different culture might also affect organizational commitment.
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