The Influence of Corporate Culture on Employees

Organizational commitment which is defined as the degree to which an employee identifies with the organization and wants to continue actively participating in it is an interesting topic in the field of organizational behaviour. The interest in this topic is due to the fact that employee commitment is vital to contemporary organizational success. The stronger an employee's commitment to the organization, the less likely the person is to quit. Strong commitment is also correlated with organizational citizenship, job satisfaction, job performance and employee retention.

As a result of the importance of organizational commitment, several studies have sought to identify its causal antecedents. However, corporate culture has received relatively low levels of empirical investigation among the possible antecedents of organizational commitment. The authors (Lok and Crawford) expressed their surprise that corporate culture was not mentioned in Mathieu and Zajac's comprehensive meta-analysis and review of the antecedents and correlates of organizational commitment.

Corporate culture affects the way in which people behave in an organization. Corporate culture can be viewed as the unique pattern of shared values, attitudes, rituals, beliefs, norms, expectations, socialization, and assumptions of employees in the organization . Corporate culture is therefore equated with the personality of the organization, depicting employee behaviour even when they are not instructed on what to do.

Research evidence suggests that corporate culture exerts a considerable influence on organizational behaviour, especially in the areas of efficiency, effectiveness, and commitment. This means that by developing an appropriate corporate culture, organizations can achieve success. There is therefore the need to study the influence of corporate culture on employee commitment to the organization.

It is assumed that corporate culture influences employees' sense of engagement, identification and belonging to the organization. Lok and Crawford observed that such sentiments might reasonably be expected to affect commitment. Due to the dearth of research on organizational commitment in Nigeria and the lack of adequate research attention given to the effect of corporate culture on organizational commitment globally as evidenced in previous research, there exists a huge research gap that this study intends to fill.

The study is significant for a rapidly developing country such as Nigeria as there is great need to understand how corporate culture influences employee attitude of commitment to the organization. This could lead to improvements in workplaces to help employees become more committed to their jobs. Theoretically, it is imperative to enhance our understanding of how corporate culture affects organizational commitment in a non-western country. Finally, the study will help managers in decision making especially in the areas of recruitment, selection, promotion, training, motivation, and instituting change in the organization.