Does Organizational Commitment Help to Promote University Faculty’s Performance and Effectiveness?

Abstract

To investigate the strategy of promoting university faculty’s performance and effectiveness through cultivating organizational commitment, the mixed-methods research collected data from a survey of 188 academics and interviews of 35 survey participants in Beijing. Analysis of survey and interview responses suggested that (a) it was appropriate to measure Chinese academics’ organizational commitment in terms of affective, normative, ideal, choice, and economic commitment; (b) normative and ideal commitment helped to promote faculty’s performance and effectiveness; while affective and choice commitment tended to be dysfunctional in faculty’s work; (c) economic commitment did not present significant relationships to performance and effectiveness; and (d) these relationships could be partly explained with the individual and interactive contributions of faculty’s personal goals, available resources, and perceptions of cost/benefit balance. These findings provided practical implications for university administrators from China and other countries influenced by Confucian culture in their efforts to promote academic excellence in higher education institutional performance review.