Anticipating Change in the Higher Civil Service: Affective Commitment, Organizational Ideology, and Political Ideology

Abstract

Although both academics and practitioners recognize that relationships exist between cultural predisposition and support for reform, few attempts have been made in the public sector to gauge them. This study applies the concepts affective commitment, organizational ideology,and political ideology, as established in the organizational behavior literature, to data taken from higher-level federal civil servants at the inception of the Clinton Administration's National Performance Review (NPR). Quantitative analyses confirm the importance of affective commitment to support for NPR and demonstrate that affective commitment varies greatly with organizational type. The study also lends credence to the hypothesis that strong ideologies can prove resistant to induced change. Political ideology appears a relevant factor but only in select agency cultures.