The Influence of Corporate Culture on Employees

The measures for this study are corporate culture and organizational commitment. The study seeks to examine the relationship between the two variables, with corporate culture viewed as the independent variable while organizational commitment is viewed as the dependent variable.

Corporate Culture

The definition of corporate culture, initially focused on distinguishing levels of corporate culture and classifying culture as strong or weak cultures. Many definitions of corporate culture gave primacy to the cognitive components such as assumptions, beliefs, and values. Other definitions include behaviours and artifacts, leading to a common distinction between the visible and the hidden levels of corporate culture.

There are two perspectives in understanding corporate culture, the symbolic interactionist perspective and the social – anthropological perspective. The symbolic interactionist perspective view the exchange of symbols as the basis for the shared meaning for a group of social actors. Recognizing and using these symbols entails developing a ‘self' defined in terms of culturally specified symbols. Stemming from this perspective myths, archetypes, and stories and ideologies are often useful in explaining objectively organizational features as they embody and articulate the identity of organizational members. The social anthropological perspective view culture as socially constructed. The two perspectives have taken a contingency approach that argue that different environmental conditions give rise to and are consistent with different patterns of behaviour and cultures within organizations.

Corporate culture measures have been validated as involvement, consistency, adaptability and mission traits. Involvement trait measures the extent to which the participation of employees in decision making results to a consensus of responsibility and commitment to organizational goals. Consistency trait measures how employees shared values, beliefs and symbols result to coordinated actions. Adaptability trait measures how organizations system of behaviours and structures increase their capacity to survive in their environment. Shared mission trait measures how employees shared understanding of the function, purpose and objectives of organizations result to corporate commitment and effective performance. Corporate culture will be measured in this study using the four corporate cultural traits.

Organizational Commitment

Organizational commitment remains a contested construct that has been conceptualized and measured differently. It is viewed from behavioural and attitudinal perspectives. Behavioural commitment is concerned with the process by which an employee becomes part of a particular organization and appropriate behaviour exhibited by the employee. On the other hand, attitudinal commitment views organizational commitment in terms of the relationship between an employee and the organization, and the extent to which the employee and the organization share the same goals and values.

Despite the dichotomy between behavioural and attitudinal commitment, measures on the basis of attitudinal perspective have been most frequently validated and used in previous research. Based on attitudinal commitment, Mowday et al. define organizational commitment as the relative strength of an individual's identification with, and involvement in a particular organization. This can be characterized by three related factors: a strong belief in and acceptance of the organization's goals and values; a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization; and a strong desire to maintain membership in the organization. Lok and Crawford argue that Mowday et al.'s conceptualization of organizational commitment is consistent with the attitudinal perspective. This conceptualization is measured via Mowday et al.'s organizational commitment questionnaire (OCQ) which will be used in this study.

Based on the measures of the study, the following hypotheses were formulated and tested.

H1: There is no significant relationship between employees' involvement in decision making and employees' commitment to the organization.

H2: There is no significant relationship between consistency and employees' commitment to the organization.

H3: There is no significant relationship between organizations ability to adapt to their environment and employees' commitment to the organization.

H4: There is no significant relationship between employees' identification with organizational mission and employees' commitment to the organization.