Influence of psychological empowerment on affective, normative and continuance commitment

Abstract

PurposePsychological empowerment and organizational commitment continues to be of interest to researchers as well as practitioners. There are several researches on organizational commitment. The research with respect to psychological empowerment, which is emerging as very important factor for employees of service sector is rare. The purpose of this paper is to examine the linkages between psychological empowerment and factors of organizational commitment.Design/methodology/approachThe sample size for the study comprised 332 Indian IT executives. The data were collected during the time when organizations were trying to overcome recession. Descriptive and inferential statistics like correlation, regression and canonical correlation were used to analyze the data.FindingsResults of data analysis confirm the hypotheses drawn from the literature. Consistent with other studies, the results of this study confirm that the psychological empowerment influences affective and normative commitment positively. However, no relationship was found between psychological empowerment and continuance commitment.Practical implicationsThe prime objective of organizations is to increase affective commitment among employees of the organization. The basic change suggested in this paper is to undergo a job design and make employees understand the importance of their task/job. The feeling among employees that the job done by them has significant impact on the day‐to‐day work activity will generate high degree of affective commitment.Originality/valueThe paper shows that organizations can influence the affective and normative commitment of employees by providing jobs that are challenging for the employees, and by having correct alignment with the goal.