Culture meets commitment: how organizational culture influences affective commitment

Abstract

PurposeOrganizational culture has been identified as an important factor in increased employee commitment. Particularly during a shortage of skilled workers, commitment is a meaningful indicator of higher loyalty and retention. However, limited research has studied the relationship between organizational culture and commitment from a global perspective. Most research focuses on specific aspects of culture and examines the aspects' effects on commitment separately. The author's objective is to identify influential organizational culture's dimensions and assess dimensions' relationship to commitment holistically.Design/methodology/approachFor this purpose, the author analyzed a data set with 241,648 participants from 9 industries in Germany. The survey captures individual attitudes toward certain aspects of organizational culture and assesses workers' commitment to their organizations.FindingsThe results of a linear regression show that all cultural dimensions considered, namely transformational leadership behavior, team cohesion, compensation, fairness and caring attitude, if well-developed, positively and significantly influence organizational commitment. Interestingly, team cohesion has the greatest effect on commitment, followed by transformational leadership behavior, compensation, caring attitude and fairness.Originality/valueThis paper aims to examine the relationship between organizational culture and commitment holistically, thereby revealing which aspects of corporate culture are particularly important for increasing workers' commitment.