The moderating effects of employee personality characteristics on organizational commitment during periods of organizational change

Abstract

The process of organizational reform often damages employee organizational commitment. Therefore, methods able to maintain or enhance such commitment are of value to organizations undergoing reform. The main objective of this research was to consolidate theories on work characteristic change and organizational commitment in work characteristic models, and to propose a research framework to interpret how organizations reinforce and enhance employee organizational commitment in changing environments. Targeted samples included employees of domestic Taiwan banks that had been merged with or acquired by a non-Taiwanese bank. With a total of 303 effective questionnaire surveys returned and multiple regression method used, results indicate that, in a changing organizational environment, work characteristic change helps raise employee organizational commitment, and that employee personality attributes impact upon the actual effect that work characteristic change has on an individual employee’s organizational commitment. In addition, results found that work characteristic change has a greater effect on organizational commitment in employees’ external locus of control personalities than in those with internal locus. Key words: Work characteristic change, employee personality characteristics, internal locus of control, external locus of control, organizational commitment.