Employee View Of Self Can Influence Their Organizational Commitment

Today’s best managers know that an employee’s view of themselves can influence their organizational commitment. Some employees view themselves based on their membership in groups, and how much they adhere to the goals and values of groups to which they belong. These employees typically have an emotional attachment to their organization and are internally driven to work hard for the company. Other employees have a view of themselves based on their own advantage and well-being compared to others. These employees evaluate themselves based on their own personal goals, rewards, and successes, and they want to surpass other employees. These employees only stay with an organization when it provides them with rewards and benefits that they desire.

Source: Johnson, R. E., & Chang, C.-H. 2008. Relationships between organizational commitment and its antecedents: Employee self-concept matters. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38, 513-541.

Help Employees Recognize and Avoid Burnout Before It Sets In

Burnout means feeling exhausted, overextended, and depleted. Employees who feel burnt out tend to have low job satisfaction, low organizational commitment, high absenteeism, high intentions to leave, and are more likely to quit their job. Today’s best managers know the warning signs of burnout. When employees start feeling hostile and angry about unfair organizational practices, and begin to lack faith that the organization will solve their problems, then employee burnout can set in. Today’s best managers help stop burnout from happening before it takes hold of employees.

Source: Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. 2008. Early predictors of job burnout and engagement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 498-512.

Tell Stories to Help Improve Employee Commitment To the Organization

Today’s best managers know that telling stories is an important indicator of employee commitment to the organization. There are two primary purposes for telling stories in organizations: grounding and instruction. Employees tell stories to point out and clarify key values, called grounding. Employees tell stories about how things are done, called instruction. Organizational commitment means that employees have strong feelings about and identify with the goals and values of the organization. The more frequently that employees tell stories about the organization, the more strongly committed they tend to be about that organization, and the better able to withstand turbulence at work.

Source: McCarthy, J. F. 2008, April. Short stories at work: Storytelling as an indicator of organizational commitment. Group & Organization Management, 33, 163-193.

Motivation To Gather Information Results In Finding More and Better Information

Today’s best managers know the importance of information gathering for effective managerial performance. Managers who have access to more and better sources of information are better able to make sense of their environment, are more effective at spotting trends, and are more able to achieve higher levels of performance compared to managers without such information. The larger the social network, the more time managers spend looking for more information, and the more information they find. However, having a large social network is only helpful for managers who are motivated to take advantage of the information that is available from that network.

Source: Anderson, M. H. 2008. Social networks and the cognitive motivation to realize network opportunities: A study of managers’ information gathering behaviors. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 51-78.

Not Meeting Employee Expectations May Not Be As Bad For Organizations As Was Thought

Managers know that unmet employee expectations on the job can negatively affect: organizational commitment, job performance, absenteeism, motivation, job satisfaction, and turnover. However, today’s best managers know that the influence of unmet employee expectations on job attitudes and behaviors may be less powerful than was once thought. Instead, actual experiences may play a more important role than meeting or not meeting employees’ expectations. Although meeting employee expectations is still important, today’s best managers can worry less about the negative results that doing so might have on employees’ behaviors and attitudes on the job.

Source: Brown, S. A., Venkatesh, V., Kuruzovich, J., Massey, A. P. 2008. Expectation confirmation: An examination of three competing models. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 105, 52-66.

Develop Employee Psychological Capital To Improve Employee Attitudes and Performance

Today’s best managers know that employees have psychological capital when they: 1) have confidence that they can succeed at challenging tasks, 2) are optimistic about being successful now and in the future, 3) work hard to reach goals, but change their goals if necessary, and 4) are resilient and can bounce back from adversity. Having psychological capital can lead to higher levels of performance, job satisfaction, and commitment, and lower levels of absenteeism for employees. Managers used to believe that people were just born with a certain level of psychological capital. However, today’s best managers know that employees can develop and improve their psychological capital.

Source: Luthans, F., Avey, J. B., & Patera, J. L. 2008. Experimental analysis of a web-based training intervention to develop positive psychological capital. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 7, 209-221.