Organizational Commitment in the Nonprofit Sector and the Underlying Impact of Stakeholders and Organizational Support.

Abstract

This study addresses a major challenge the nonprofit sector is facing: low organizational commitment from employees. In response to the call to take into consideration contextual and institutional factors, it draws from the stakeholder theory and the organizational support theory to investigate how internal and external organizational processes could influence organizational commitment. The quantitative data collected from over 200 nonprofit employees revealed that organizational commitment was positively related to engaged leadership, community engagement effort, degree of formalization in daily operations, and perceived intangible support for employees. Further analysis showed that tangible support measured as perceived fair pay has an indirect effect, which is contingent upon how well the nonprofits engage with internal and external stakeholders. Findings suggest that nonprofit employees’ personal tangible gains may come second when assessing their commitment to the organization; instead, how well their employer manages stakeholder relationships in a larger community plays a more significant role.