The theory relating to employee commitment to his organization has received increasing popularity as it will help the company to retain more staff and thereby increase in performance, productivity and profitability. Commitment of staff is important for several reasons, it will ultimately reduce employee turnover. Highly committed employees will tend to work for efficiently than less committed employees with more job satisfaction. Commitment of employees is a better indicator of effectiveness of an organization. Organizational commitment can be referred to as an individuals identification with and involvement in the specific company. It can be characterised by a minimum of three indicators such as Acceptance of the company goals and values. Secondly ability and willingness to contribute considerable effort to attain that goals and values and finally strong desire to continue with the company.
The nature of the job is playing a vital role in organizational commitment. Though several studies are conducted relating orgainzational commitment and Job design employee productivity and performance many aspects of the subject are still not covered. Attitude of employees or the motivation to work in relation with job satisfaction and organizational commitment are important in the field of human resource management and organizational behaviour perspective. Employee attitude has a direct impact on all aspects of business. Organizational commitment concentrates on total interest of the employee towards the organization rather than work. There is a relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction, commitment leads to job satisfaction however most studies treat commitment and satisfaction differently.
Managers and consultants across the globe believe that a company cannot achieve it aims and objectives without enduring commitment from all staff of the organization. Employee motivation is a key element that determine the degree of commitment towards work. This include all the elements that create sustain and channelize human behaviour to a particular direction called work. Motivation is assumed as a good thing one cannot feel to be a good situation if one is not motivated enough.
Organizational behaviour is a large concept of management that studies how people act in an organization. Management can use scientific theories regarding behavioural practise to effectively improve their relation with employees and improve overall objectives of the organization. Organizational behaviour is an interdisciplinary subject that include ideas and research from human behaviour and interaction.
Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment is a bond which linking its employees to the company or organization. In United States employees are less committed to organizations than in Japan or elsewhere in Asia. It is common that some employees shows much commitment and acceptance to the goals and values of the company and they also shows a strong desire to maintain the membership in the organization.
Meyer and Allen (1997) call this form of commitment to the organization affective commitment. Another group of employees displays characteristics of normative ways of commitment (Wiener,1982). According to Wiener this groups of staff does not show or develop a very strong emotional attachment or commitment to the organization. How ever employees who has higher levels of these types of commitment continues to work hard and with good productivity. This is because of a total influence of their cultural, philosophy, family and organizational ethics than direct their behaviour. A third section of employees remain in the organization not because of any loyalty or commitment to the organization but because they have no other alternative job available or if they invested too much in the company that they can’t leave. According to Meyer and Allen this take the form of tenure, status, retirement benefit, and some other form of benefits. The third form of organizational commitment presented originally by Becker in 1960 is referred to as continuance commitment.
Meyer investigated some of the factors leading to the decision of an individual to join in an organization and their resultant commitment. The more the employee can match his qualities and skills with the job and its environment the better his job satisfaction and the better his commitment as well.
A number of studies shows that organization commitment can predicts many variables such as absenteeism, organizational citizenship, performance and turnover. A primary aspect of organizational commitment can be extra role behaviour. This means employees go beyond their job specifications and done some thing extra. Most of the managements appreciate initiatives by the employees, this shows their commitment and positive attitude to the company. But few of the management professionals argue that job descriptions can effective describe all the aspects of the work of an employee. Organizational commitment resulted in more positive outcomes, it reduces absenteeism and it improves and promotes job satisfaction. Many firms changing from simple work systems to highly motivating high commitment work systems that needs high discretion, motivation with less supervision from management. It involves more roles to employees so that their creativity and working efficiency would improve, this leads to high performance and job satisfaction.
While studying about organizational commitment various factors should be taken in to account. Some of this factors include age, gender and longevity of services of the employee, and Human resource management practices followed within the organization and organizational characteristics.
Strategies of motivating Employees
Salary: Salary can be one of the most successful factor influencing motivation and job satisfaction. For using salary as motivation factor managers must consider several factors such as job rate, personal allowances, length of service, performance, personal traits etc.
Incentives: Money has the power to attract and retain. Giving various types of incentives will keep staff motivated and better committed to the organization. Basically every staff is working for some sort of financial benefit, so the monetary benefit paid to the employees should be adequately cover their standard of living and competitive enough in the industry otherwise employee turnover will be higher for the company and the existing employees will not be motivated, instead frustrated employees cause reduced commitment to the organization. So management must take sufficient interest and care to maintain their employees with good pay and incentives it will help to improve organizational commitment.
Staff training : This is an important motivational factor for all the organizations It is an indispensable strategy for motivating employees. This will give information with latest development and technologies in their respective field of work. So that the employees will feel confident and equipped with new strength to work more effectively and scientifically, ultimately it will increase motivation and productivity.
Information and communication: Availability of information regarding the consequences of ones action on others help to keep employees motivated.
Local and national culture and its influences on attitude towards work
positive attitude towards work leads to resilience – It means the strength to quickly relieve from adverse conditions or failure. If one person is viewing failure as a learning opportunity rather than blaming themselves or others they can soon come out of the failure and be able to successful in a short span of time.
Optimism: Through optimistic approach one can attain success in life and profession. You will be able to influence the world and there by becoming successful in whatever you doing. Because of these features every employees should develop an optimistic approach to whatever he is doing in the organization. It will help to develop organizational commitment and better motivation.
Confidence: Confidence coming out of optimistic approach. If you are confident you believe in yourself and are ready to undertake new challenges. Confident employees is an asset to the organization and they will help to improve motivation not only to themselves but also all the people related to them with their work so the entire organization will keep motivated and better performance will be the result.
Creativity Positive attitudes are key to forward thing and there by innovation. Without all these qualities no one will be able to try and implement new business ideas.
Conflict resolution: In modern world every person is going through lot of interest conflict with one another. Conflict resolution is one of the major qualities needed to survive. A positive attitude towards ones work and company will increase a worker’s efficiency to conflict resolution.
Emotional intelligence: It is the ability or skill to manage ones emotions and to control behaviour. Emotional intelligence include personal competence such as self awareness, self regulation and self motivation and social competence such as social skills and social awareness.
Achievement drives: Positive attitude towards work also increase achievement drive.
Motivation: Motivation and positive attitude towards work go hand in hand.
Management Philosophy and Organizational Commitment in Retail Industry:
In India there a more than 100 very big retail malls are operating and a number of retail centers are under development. The developers are not worried about the retailers and they are not doing anything towards the promotional side of these malls, but in many other countries especially in Europe this is not the case. As a result the branding, marketing, budgeting and the financial side of running profitably of these retail centers professionally has much scope in developing countries. The retailers are simply treated as a means of exploiting cash for the development of properties and townships instead of treating them as integral part of such centers. The space available for business is also in an increasing trends so lot of possibilities for new and existing retails organizations to come and explore the vast expanding markets. They can make better results if they focus on scalability, vision and by making a better brand development.
The major challenges facing by most of the retailers are narrow margins, high cost in terms of rent and operating expenses, unpredictable and unreliable supply chains, competitive pressure etc. These factors affect not only their profitably but the very existence as well. As retail industry grows this competition become more vigorous so that management of retail sector needs much professional skills and qualifications. Professional retails managers can come to this and there are immense scope for them. They must have the ability to understand these business challenges and also have the ability to manage all the aspects of the business.
The type of customers who usually visit these type of shopping malls include focused buyers and impulse buyers. Focused buyers spent little time inside as compared to impulse buyers. Their shopping will completed quickly as they know what to buy. But in the case of impulse buyers they spend more time for window shopping. Shopping centers with entertainment zones and or promotional activities have more impulse buyers. The management of these shopping centers become critical to attract impulse buyers as they can do lot towards promotional activities so that customers will be attracted.
Managing retail centers is bit different from event management or simply facility management. The key elements which are taken in to account include Positioning, Zoning, promotions and marketing, facility management such as footfalls, ambience, infrastructure and finance management. Lack of market research is a major problem for retail management.
With regard to the nature of the retail labour market it is highly not organised. Many people with good educational qualifications and job experience are available to place in retail management. The success of a retail section is highly depending on the sales personnel’s. A sales man must know about each and every aspect of the item he going to sell to the buyer. What type of customers they are going to serve and what they want and what are their expectations and the market competitions and prices and the alternative products available as substitutes. It is important to know about the alternative products as well otherwise the sales personals would find sometimes difficult for the buyers to convince about their products.
Labour market for retail management is also depend on demographic trends and seasonality, population and unemployment etc. Unemployment is a major factor determining the availability of labour for the retail market. If the unemployment is higher more workforce is available to deploy in retail sectors. People will accept generally any types of job as a means of livelihood if they have no other job. But if the unemployment rate are low it is difficult for the retail sales sector to attract enough number of staff with low cost and in good time. This is because people with education and skills will prefer to work in more better sectors of employment and with good companies having some sort of brand value.
Population is also a major factor affecting the labour market. The age group of population is very important , where in a society the percentage of population with more youngsters have more availability of personnels not only to retail sector but also for any sectors of the labour market.
Demographic changes and the availability of labour market imbalance is often a complex issue. Migration of population to different regions within the country and to foreign countries affect the labour market. With regard to retail labour force this change is is significant. If more and more people are migrated to certain regions of the country in some parts of the country there will be unemployment and in other side there is labour shortages as well. This is also true with inter country migration as well. For this reason many countries bring some sort of regulation for migration. So that they can protect and regulate their labour market according to the needs of their respective economies.
Seasonality is also affecting the labour market to a great extent. Seasonality of demand is the key which determining the demand of labour force to any industry. In tourism industry this factor plays a major role. All the countries affected by this factor, in seasons with high flow of tourists the market needs more and more employees. The retail sector is also not exemption for this.
Retail management is responsible for running retail outlets and thereby managing targets and profits of a company. It is the duty of the retail manager to ensure that effective sales promotional activities are carried out at minimum possible costs. Retail managers are also responsible for customer satisfaction as well because they are the people who have first hand information about customers. They are ensuring that staff are fully meeting the company’s standards.
Managing the store include many important points to taken into consideration. The store manage will need to learn not only how to select the most ambitious candidate but also how to train them and keep them motivated and controlling every aspects of the job.
Depending on the size and structure of the business the company management can allocated different functions such as marketing, logistics, information technology, customer service, and human resources to the retail managers.
The work of a retail manager can include the following;
Motivating the sales team to maximise sales
Managing stock which include deciding and controlling re ordering levels and thereby ensuring sufficient commodities are available all the time.
Analysing sales amounts and there by forecasting sales. It will help top management to fix targets for the future.
Staffing issues such as interviewing and selection.
Conducting performance appraisals and reviews and prepare reports.
Provide organization training and development
Effective use of information technology within the store to record sales trends and customer behaviour
Organising special events and promotions to maximise sales
Collect data regarding trends in markets and customer initiatives and analysing competitor activities.
Make frequent visits to sales floor updating and resolving any relevant issues
Take initiative in changes such as new schedule in working hours in accordance with seasons and customer needs.
Take care of health and safety and related issues.
Updating colleagues on market information and business performance.
Promoting a business locally by doing liaison activities with local authorities and organizations
Respond to customer complaints and suggestions.
Customer satisfaction and in store experience: measuring customer satisfaction is key for a successful retail management. Customer satisfaction can be measured in terms of repeated sales, and better relations with customers. Consumer satisfaction is a response, it may be emotional or cognitive in relation to a particular product used, expectations or consumption experience which happens in a specific time.
Labour Turnover
Staff turn over is an ongoing problem in any industry resulting in implication over employee morale, production, organizational policies etc. Unfortunately in many of the companies in retail industry the Labour turn over is very high. In order to reduce staff turn over it is inevitable to identify factors leading to job frustration and low morale and resulting in low organizational commitment there by increasing employee turn over.The main factors affecting the labour turn over are demographical trends includes population and immigration etc. seasons, economic conditions, environmental factors, political factors national and state and local political influences are a considerable factors affecting labour turn over in any business. All these factors are inter related and organizational culture may directly or indirectly affect staff turn over.
Pay and other benefits: In developing countries the salaries in retail sector is very low. The nature of the labour market is largely non organised and lack of effective legislations to ensure workers well being is also a major factor towards this. In developed countries minimum wages is ensured by law so that employment opportunities for every body is fair and justifiable. As for example in United Kingdom with legislation of minimum pay Act every one get the legal minimum wages for working in every sector. Truly speaking the sections most benefited from this legislation is the workers in retail sector and other people who working in the agricultural sector etc.
Training and development: There is a large need for training and development in retail sector. Large chunks of the staff are given little or no training at all. A reason may be high employee turnover, because if companies are investing good sums in training and development and if the employees are changing frequently it is a loss of money for the organization.
An Analysis of Management Practices and commitment In China
As elsewhere in the world in China also organizational commitment is characterized by an attitude of attachment to an employer and organization. There are many factors contributing to then development of organizational commitment and the influence on job attitude. Some antecedents to commitment can be split into personal characteristics and factors arising out of situations. Personal characteristics include age, gender and employment tenure. Second set of factors include company specific situations such as working environment, management attitudes, remuneration packages and all other factors affecting motivation and work of an employee. Because of the increase in production and industrial facilitates in china there is much to explore about the similarities of studies that conducted in the western countries in relation to China.
Gender: Chinese people have much egalitarian attitude towards women in the work place compared to European countries and America. After the cultural revolution both men and women are expected to play equal roles in work and society. Since China is a more communistic approach there are limitations to change employment. That means in China situations are not easy for workers compared to Europe. There is more social anchoring in China. As a result of this egalitarian and communistic society there is limited skill transferability, increased commitment to work, lowered educational and technical skills opportunity and sufficiency.
Age and Tenure:
In studies concentrated on the United States revealed that age and the member of years service in a particular company can influence the organizational commitment. As one person gets older the relocation tendencies get reduced and while personal investment and attachment to the organization gets increased. So the more tenure one employee has with his organization the more will be his organizational commitment to the company. In China age would cause lower number of work alternative, more anchoring in community, low attractive for re location, low educational skills development and transferability, and therefore continuance commitment would be more.
Educational: Researchers have found that people with higher education would have more commitment. It is found that workers having high levels of qualifications may have higher expectations and they are more committed to their occupation at the same time they have more scope to choose other jobs and they can easily relocate compared to employees with lower qualification their continence commitment may be low. Chinese valued education highly, In a traditionalistic communistic society each person contribute in accordance with their skills and qualities. Higher levels of education also reflect in greater degrees of behavioural commitment as well. In modern Chinese society there is greater mobility and opportunities to move around in private sectors.
Situational Factors: Situational factors are the second major component of organizational commitment These factors include components that connected to the work and employees experiences and specific features of their organization.
There are many organizational characteristics that can positively influence commitment. For example the more better an organization can present the achievement of its goals and objectives the degrees of commitment it can attract from its employees. The organizational effectiveness questionnaire will demonstrate the achievement of the objectives of an organization in the views of the employees and their anticipated commitment to the organization. I modern China as well a organization with good achievement and positive relationship with employees have a relatively higher degree of employee commitment.
Leadership Behaviours
Those work experiences that occurring while working in an organization related with na role in decision making or collecting thinking can have an effect in organizational commitment. Leadership behaviour and participative decision making have an impact on organizational commitment.
Leadership behaviour include behaviour connected with productivity, managerial aspects such as planning, co ordination, discipline, clarification and problem solving etc. It is expected that these types of behavioural pattern will be predictive of organizational commitment.
Management practices and Organizational Commitment in Korean Culture.
Korea share common oriental culture with its neighbouring states whilst maintaining its own identity. Their unique culture combined with the geo political environment of the Korea resulted in a specific management culture different from their counterparts in other countries.
Since the 1960s Korean companies achieved a good deal of economic growth and their management style played a major role in this regard. Everybody connected to the organization owners, top executives, managers, supervisors and workers are all integral part of the process and they al perform well their assigned duties. The unique feature here is performance. Regarding the external system of the organization the support from government is important. No organization can perform long term without suitable government policies. In Korea particularly the role of government is prominent and in return for this the government is expecting some favours from the industry. For economic growth the government and industry acts as supplementary and complementary relationship.
Efficient use of human resource is key to success. Korean people are peace loving by nature and hard working. Koreans hate bloodshed and violent demonstrations. There were some incidents of violence but compared to the rest of the world in Korea this type of incidents are rare. This is a feature of the Korean culture and many of their specific charcetiscs and Korean management system and their culture are inte related. Japan occupied Korea from 1910 to the end of world war II so some of the management systems of Japan also influence Koreans. The features of Korean management system also include consensus decision making, Life time employment, very strong loyalty and commitment to the employer, personalistic approach, male domination, harmony etc are also can be seen in Japanese management system.
The hierarchical order of power within the organization are also sharing common characteristics with Japanese management style. In Japan a decision is not taken until every one agrees to the agenda, this is consensus in decision making according to Japanese culture. This is similar to Korean concept as well. For example a project proposal drafted by a lower division employee is circulated throughout the company hierarchy and reviewed and suggestions are included according to consensus. The company president affix his signature only after all this process so that there is no room for ambiguity and the project proposal aims and objectives and advantages are clear to everyone and the document will be a legitimate one. To implement such a project will be very easy, the co-operation from all levels of employees are guaranteed and the proposal will be a success.
The life style Koreans had practised was different from the rest of the world till the 1960s. Their geographic territory is surrounded by big powers like China, Russia and Japan. Because of this reason their military power was not developed because most of the times they were under the umbrella of China. There was no use to develop huge logistic systems for military activities which will help merchant also to flourish. So the business and trade were also not developed and the people depend on agriculture largely for lively hood. The business class did not have much interests in the country because there was no scope for them in a much agricultural society. But after 1960s Koreans gained much improvements in their industrial and business sectors and the management style followed by Koreans also got much popularity. Japan on the other hand was a military power in the past as well so also they had relations with another countries than Korea.
Organizational Commitment and Job Practices in Japan
In Japan the commitment to the organization is more because of Japanese culture and their willingness and dedication to work. Employees turn over figures shows that in America the turnover rate is almost double when compare Japanese workers. This because in Japan The commitment to the organization is more. An employees commitment is characterised by at least three factors. They are willingness to hard work, desire to remain with the organization, a strong belief and acceptance of the organizations goals and objectives. Because of these commitment in organization is more with Japanese workers their productivity is also very high compared to their U.S counterparts.
In Japanese culture education is highly valued. For getting a job in a reputed company in Japan the candidate must studied in top rated colleges and universities. This is the case with prestigious companies other candidates who did not able to secure admissions in top rated colleges usually satisfied with small and medium sized firms which cannot offer comparatively higher amounts of salary and other perquisites.
Another prominent feature of Japanese management is permanent employment or life time employment. Permanent employment covers only minority of the total work force that work for big companies. Usually employees are recruited directly from campuses and after the probationary period employees are not usually dismissed except on serious misconduct. The candidates can continue in the company for their entire career. This is a specific feature found in Japanese companies but in Eorpoe or America this type of management practices is not general. Since most of the companies practising life time employment inter company mobility is not possible for professional managers because most of the roles are promoted by the company internally. So the selection of most talented employees becomes critical.
In Japanese system of management rather than individualism collective behaviour and decision making and team spirit is important. Individual interests should he subjugated to group in order to maintain tem spirit. The concept of ‘quality circle’ used to enchance productivity and quality widely used in Japanese companies is an example of tem spirit oriented approach.
Active Company Unions are also a prominent feature of Japan. Company union is different from trade union in this case the company is closely related with the union and company has much influence on the union. Company unions are independent and not affiliated with trade unions. The proposers of company unions are claiming that they are mores closer to the employees in their problems and they are solving the problems keeping in mind of the company’s profitability and at the same time protecting the employee’s interests as well. Where as trade union are more dangerous and influenced by politicians with vested interests behind them. Strikes are usually rare. Every employee of the company have to join the company union. In some countries for example in the United States company unions are outlawed by the government. Opponents of company unions are in opinion that company unions are actually a shield against trade unions while they claim that they are protecting the employees interests they actually standing for the company first so the genuine interests of employees may be ignored.
Managerial Style in Japanese companies give much importance for the bottom level. Every levels of management is open to suggestions from their subordinates. Middle level management collects and evaluates feed back from lower levels and pass it on to the top management. Managers are getting their hands dirty to understand the trouble with working in low levels and acquire the skills and problem solving capacities. Informations are always passing from top level management to lower levels and vise versa. So that every one in the company is keep updating with what is happening with the company at all times. It is key to the company for maintaining commitment and motivation among the employees and attaining higher productivi