Participative Decision Making and Organizational Commitment: The Mediatory Role of Influence and Communication

Abstract

In a high turnover environment, inculcating organizational commitment among employees is a big challenge. We proposed a theoretical framework explaining how participative decision making affects commitment. For this, we modified the Jackson (1983) model explaining the effect of Participation in Decision Making on communication, and further extend it to Organizational commitment in the perspective of Elele & Fields (2010). The participative decision was measured by employee engagement in decision making (EE), meeting load (ML), and management support (MS). These factors increase, Perceived Influence among employees (PI), Job-related communication (JR), and Personal communication (PC). Moreover, thorough these communication factors, organizational commitment got increase. This is classified as Affective commitment (AC), normative commitment (NC), and continuance commitment (CC). To establish its empirical validity, we conducted a survey based on a close-ended questionnaire, from 200 employees, working in different organizations of Karachi. Data were analyzed using structured equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis. The result suggested that Job-related communication effectively mediate employee engagement in decision making and both Affective and normative commitment. Similarly, Personal communication and Perceived Influence also mediate the effect of meeting load on continuance and normative commitment respectively. Moreover, management support increases both Perceived Influence and Job-related communication. And lastly, employee engagement has a significant positive effect on Perceived Influence. Overall findings backed our theory and explain the strong effect of Participative decision making on commitment mediated by communication.