Organizational climate & job involvement among virtual workers in service organizations.
Birdie, Arvind Kaur ; Jain, Madhu
Globalization and technology has revolutionized the workforce and
as a result virtual work emerged as an option for upcoming service
organizations. The increased use of virtual work has not been
accompanied by concomitant research efforts to understand better the
socio-psychological contributors to effective virtual work environment.
The present paper tries to explore the relationship between perceived
organizational climate and job involvement in virtual workers. The
sample consisted of 100 virtual workers working in hospitality in India.
A co-relational research design was employed. Data were collected
through using questionnaire method. The results revealed that perceived
organizational climate is not significantly related to job involvement
and virtual work has revolutionized behavior within organizations.
Introduction
As the technology advanced and liberalization came in early
nineties in India, it not only changed individual's lifestyle to a
large extent but also brought the world closer. As a result, laws,
economies, and social movements are forming at the international level.
This globalization brought big changes in organizations also. Virtual
working is one of them. The major virtue of virtuality is that, if done
right, it creates truly agile organizations well equipped to negotiate
the crumbling markets of recession (Birkinshaw, 2010)
It is becoming commonplace for organizations to have large numbers
of employees who work off-site, telecommuting from a home office,
phoning from a car or airplane while travelling on business, or
teleconferencing from a hotel room or vacation spot. For multinational
companies and organizations who work across the borders and cost cutting
is one of the issues with increasing their efficiencies in terms of
customer focus, this might prove profitable as in the case of IBM which
reports that firm estimates $ 100+million are saved each year. But from
the psychologist's perspective whether really these virtual working
helps individuals as virtual workforce to balance out their work and
life issues and increasing workforce feels satisfied from this kind of
working? The downside of electronically connected virtual workplaces is
that employees are often expected to work, or to be available, beyond
the normal working hours of the organization. Henttlonen and Blomqvist
(2005) argued that information technology plays an important role in
virtual teams but virtual team work involves significant social
redesign.
Virtual teams are the next logical step in the evolution of
organizational structures (Lipnack & Stamps, 1999). Townsend and
colleagues (1998) defined virtual teams as "groups of
geographically and/or organizationally dispersed coworkers that are
assembled using a combination of telecommunications and information
technologies to accomplish an organizational task". Organizational
climate, manifested in a variety of human resource practices, is an
important predictor of organizational success. Numerous studies have
found positive relationships between positive organizational climates
and various measures of organizational success, most notably for metrics
such as sales, staff retention, productivity, customer satisfaction, and
profitability (Greatworkplace, 2009).
Job Involvement
As organizations and workers continue to adopt virtual work the
effect of this organization's climate on job involvement is not
explored. When there is no face to face accounting in most times in
virtual setting and one is working in home environment or vacation where
there is generally so much of distraction, how involved is virtual
worker in his job?
Job involvement has been defined as an individual's
psychological identification or commitment to his / her job (Kanungo,
1982). It is the degree to 'which one is cognitively preoccupied
with, engaged in, and concerned with one's present job (Paullay et
al., 1994: 224) Mashayekhi, Sajjadi & Tabrizi (2013) found positive
relationship between organizational climate of schools and job
involvement of 130 physical teachers at Jiroft city of Iran. If there is
serious "financial tsunami", the financial service personnel
may lose confidence and this may influence their job involvement, and
even, they lose their jobs. It was attempted to understand the critical
factors of their job involvement after suffering from the
"financial tsunami" attack. Some suggestions were put forward
to restore the job involvement of the financial service personnel. The
empirical analysis discovered that "perceived organizational
support" (POS) was the significant direct effect on job involvement
of the employees. Peer relationship positively had an influence on job
involvement through perceived organizational support; the direct effect
was weaker than the indirect effect. These results demonstrated that
peer relationship was conducive to job involvement of the financial
service personnel via the five constructs of perceived organizational
support. In another result, the direct effect of financial service
personnel's guanxi networks on job involvement was weaker than the
indirect effect (Hao, Jung & Yenhui, 2009).
Work Alienation
Work alienation and job involvement are correlated with one another
(Hirschfeld & Field, 2000).Studies by Rose and colleagues (2002;
2004) have found a very strong link between Organizational Climate and
employee reactions such as stress levels, absenteeism and commitment and
participation. Griffin et al's (2000) organizational climate model
accounts for at least 16% single-day sick leave and 10% separation rate
in one organization.
Mishra and Wagh, (2004) conducted a study on public and private
sector executives on the job involvement dimension. Two groups of
executives differ significantly on mean score. Further they pointed out
that reward work culture and environment, challenging job delegation of
authority and responsibility were found to be potential factors for job
involvement. Usually the higher one's identification or involvement
with a job, the greater is the job satisfaction (Schultz & Schultz,
2004). It was found that when involvement is low, one's
relationship with the company cannot be really strong. On the other hand
when involvement is high the relationship stays strong even at low level
of satisfaction. Furthermore while establishing the relationship between
commitment and involvement he observed that the committed employees in
marketing were low on the involvement factors (Ashok, 2002)
Past studies that have examined correctional staff support for
rehabilitation and punishment policies have produced conflicting
results. Most studies have focused on personal characteristics including
age, gender, job position, tenure, education, marital status, prior
military service, and race. To expand the area of inquiry and assess the
potential antecedents of the work environment regarding correctional
staff support for inmate rehabilitation or punishment the impact of job
stress, job involvement, and organizational commitment on staff
attitudes towards the rehabilitation or punishment of inmates was
examined. Findings indicated that job involvement and organizational
commitment positively influenced correctional staff support for
rehabilitation policies; however, job stress and job satisfaction did
not have a significant effect on correctional staff attitudes towards
either punishment or rehabilitation. (Lambert, Hogan, Barton & Oko,
2009)
Emery and Barker (2007) suggested that the organizational
commitment of customer contact personnel was significantly correlated
with customer satisfaction but not profit and productivity. On the other
hand, the job involvement of customer contact personnel was
significantly correlated with customer satisfaction, profit and
productivity. There was a significant difference between the team and
non-team structures for job involvement, but not for organizational
commitment of customer contact personnel.
Dimitriades (2007) explored to highlight the nature of
inter-relationship(s) between service climate and job involvement in
impacting customer-focused organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) of
frontline employees in a diverse cultural context, at the crossroads of
East and West. He provides empirical evidence of the applicability in
Greek service contexts and illuminates the complex nature of
interrelationships between organizational climate for service and job
involvement in predicting customer-oriented organizational citizenship
behaviors, expanding the OCB literature. In a study in New Zealand.
Guthrie (2001) showed a positive association between use of high
involvement work practices (HIWP's) and employee retention and firm
productivity. Cohen's (1999) research supported the important
status of job involvement as an antecedent of organizational commitment.
Specifically, Cohen argued that those individuals with high levels of
job involvement, which stems from positive experiences on-the-job
(Kanungo, 1979; Witt, 1993), make attributions from these experiences to
the organization.
Brown & Leigh (1996) investigated the process by which employee
perceptions of the organizational environment are related to job
involvement, effort and performance. The researchers developed an
operational definition of a psychological climate to their own well
being. Perceived psychological climate was then related to job
involvement, effort and performance in path--analytic framework. Results
showed that perceptions of a motivation and involving psychological
climate were related to job involvement, which in turn was related to
effort. Gable and Dangello (1994) studied and addressed the effect of
job involvement on the relationship between Machiavellianism and job
performance. The results showed a significant effect for managers who
perceive themselves as possessing high levels of job involvement. No
effect was found for managers who perceived themselves as having low
levels of job involvement.
Sample
As virtual working is still in its early age in India, the present
study was on a sample of 100 male virtual workers with post graduation,
3 years of work experience and mean age of 26.5 years selected adopting
purposive sampling method on the availability basis as well as on the
willingness to participate in this study. Respondents were selected from
various organizations in IT, ITES, and hospitality sectors being
residents of Delhi and NCR (National Capital Region). Product movement
correlation was applied to find out the relation between the variables.
Measurement
The organizational climate inventory developed by Chattopadhyay
& Agarwal (1976) was used to measure perceived organizational
climate which consisted of 70 items. OCI dimensions were performance
standards, communication flow, reward system, responsibility, conflict
resolution, organizational structure, motivational level, decision
making process, support system, warmth, identity problems. Reliability
coefficient by Spearman-Brown Formula was .898. P being .001 on 68 out
of 72 items shows validity.
Job Involvement Scale: Singh (1984).The 20 items which constituted
the scale related to the areas namely intrinsic motivation, attachment
to work, fulfillment of organizational demand, commitment for work,
internalization of organization goals, and organizational
identification. The reliability of the job involvement scale computed by
the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient is .85. The coefficient of
co-relation between the scores on the two tests is. 93(N=400). The
results of the factor analysis indicate that 89% of the items had
significant loading on factor-I indicating the unidimensionality of the
scale. Out of the twenty items constituting the scale, 13 were true
keyed and remaining 7 items were false keyed. The possible scores of
each item ranged from one to four. Since the scale consists both true
keyed and false keyed items, two different patterns of scoring were
adopted.
Procedure
With due permission from authorities of organizations,
questionnaires and an interview schedule were administered after
establishing rapport with the subjects. For assessing over view of
virtual workers, a detailed interview of 10 virtual workers as per their
availability was taken by the researchers.
Results & Discussion
The hypothesis stated that there will be significant relationship
between perceived climate with job involvement among virtual workers.
Table 1 shows that perceived organizational climate and job involvement
is not significantly correlated. Various possible reasons can be
advanced for this finding. The results are in line with
researcher's observations taken during the interviews with virtual
workers:
"I have both opinions. It is better to be in office, I think.
Atleast one has some schedule; at 9 am you have to get ready and in
evening at least by 8-9 you will be back home. But right now I
don't have any schedule. I have to work anytime anywhere; its like
24x 7. My Efficiency decreases in home". Sector C Case IT.
"We can save time and energy by working virtually but it
depends on circumstances, I have small kids and my wife is also working
in a bank. So at times its convenient for me to take care of kids as I
work from home but it has its distractions at times. Yes, overall I am
happy as I am a family man now. At this stage I am not very aggressive
in work. Earlier I was".
H Case, GM Hospitality
"I personally don't prefer to be a virtual worker as
there are so many distractions at home and in a case of any escalated
mail, I cannot ask or control my team from home. My team members can
work from home. I have no objections but I don't. Job involvement
is not much in comparison to my first company".
D Case IT Sector
The integrated model theory covers the dispositional approach in
which job involvement is viewed as dependent on individual personality.
The influence exerted by some stable personal characteristics such as
age, gender, marital status, external and internal control features, job
seniority, dwelling locations, the intensity of high level work demands
in terms of time and responsibility and the protestant work ethics will
ensure individuals hold different work attitudes and behavior (Sekaran
& Mowday, 1981). In a situational determined approach, job
involvement can be viewed as the personal attitude towards the
particular job.
Technology usage is also one factor which affects job involvement.
Jain & Rathore (2011) investigated stress due to technology on
software professionals and found continuous stress affects the
person's job involvement negatively. And virtual workers' work
is technology based only and computers or telephones are most important
tool and part of environment of their work.
This can be explained by the following studies where job
involvement gets affected by other factors also.
When virtual distance is relatively high the following critical
success factors significantly degrade:
* Job satisfaction drops off by over 80%
* Innovation falls by over 90% and competitive advantage is
severely impacted.
* On time/on budget project performance suffers by over 50%
* Goal and role clarity decline by over 60% (Lojeski, 2009)
Utilizing panel data for three age groups from the 1972-73 and 1977
Quality of Employment Surveys, Lorence and Mortimer (1985) investigated
the life course and found job involvement is quite volatile in the
initial stages of the work career, it becomes more stable, supporting
the aging stability hypothesis as workers grow older. The results of
study also indicate that the potential of applying a life span
developmental perspective to the study of the sources and consequences
of job involvement.
Virtual work perceived organizational climate is very different
from traditional organizations climate in terms of socialization. Lodahl
and Kejner (1965) emphasized that during the process of socialization,
certain work values are injected into the individual that remains even
at the later stage in the form of attitude towards job. Mishra and Shyam
(2005)conducted a study to find out the relationship of social support
and job involvement in prison officers. Job involvement scale developed
by Kapoor and Singh (1978) and serial support scale developed by Cohen,
Mermistein, Kmatrek & Hoberman (1985) were administered on a sample
of 200 prison officers. The results showed that serial support, and
belonging support have significant positive relationship with job
involvement. Stepwise multiple regression analysis suggests that overall
serial support is a significant predictor of job involvement of prison
officers. The other predictors are belonging, support, appraisal support
and tangible support.
In an exploratory study, virtual teams versus face to face teams by
Warkentin, Sayeed and Hightower (1997) it was found that teams using
computer mediated communication system (CMCS) could not outperform
traditional (face to face) teams under otherwise comparable
circumstances. Further relational links among the team members were
found to be a significant contributor to the effectiveness of
information exchange. Though virtual and face to face teams exhibited
similar levels of communication effectiveness, face to face team members
report higher levels of satisfaction. Findings of 957 surveyed employees
from four evangelical higher education institutions found a negative
correlation between climate and commitment in staff members.
Administrators were found to have a more favorable view of their
institutional climate than staff. Employee age, tenure, and
classification had predictive value for organizational climate, whereas
only employee age and tenure predicted organizational commitment
(Thomas, 2008).
Research studies over the past two decades, which have explored the
construct of job involvement, have approached it from two different
perspectives (Sekeran & Mowday, 1981). First, when viewed as an
individual difference variable, job involvement is believed to occur
when the possession of certain needs, values or personal characteristics
predispose individuals to become more or less involved in their jobs.
For instance Rabinowitz and Hall (1977) found that individual
characteristics such as age, education, sex, tenure, need strength,
level of control and values were linked to job involvement. The second
perspective views job involvement as a response to specific work
situation characteristics. In other words certain types of jobs or
characteristics of the work situation influence the degree to which an
individual becomes involved in his / her job. Ebrahimi &
Mohamadkhani (2013) studied the relationship between organizational
climate and job involvement among 125 teachers of high schools in
Delijan city of Iran and found there was no significant relationship
between job involvement and organizational climate dimensions of spirit,
hindrance, intimacy and consideration; however, there was significant
relationship between job involvement and, aloofness as well as
production emphasis.
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Arvind Kaur Birdie is Associate Professor & Acting Principal,
IIMT School of Management (Vedatya), Gurgaon. Email:
[email protected]. Madhu Jain is Associate Professor, Department of
Psychology. University of Rajasthan, Jaipur. E mail:
[email protected]
Table 1 Pearson Correlation Matrix of Virtual Workers (N=100)
Job Per Comn Rwd Resp
Invol Std Flo Sys
Job Invol 1
Per Std .02 1
Comn Flo -.01 .46(**) 1
Rwd Sys .02 .72(**) .52(**) 1
Resp .09 .25(*) .36(**) .27(**) 1
ConfReso -.02 .68(**) .59(**) .63(**) .31(**)
Org Strc .04 .11 .14 .23(*) .03
MotiLvl -.05 .41(**) .74(**) .50(**) .33(**)
DM .03 47(**) .85(**) .60(**) .25(**)
SS -.00 .54(**) .72(**) .63(**) .28(**)
Warmth -.10 .36(**) .56(**) .34(**) .53(**)
Id Prob .04 .69(**) .63(**) .71(**) .32(**)
OC .00 .73(**) .87(**) .78(**) .46(**)
Conf Org Moti- DM SS
Reso Strc Lvl
Job Invol
Per Std
Comn Flo
Rwd Sys
Resp
ConfReso 1
Org Strc -.03 1
MotiLvl .47(**) .13 1
DM 63(**) .12 .70(**) 1
SS .64(**) .19 .54(**) .63(**) 1
Warmth .30(**) .14 .67(**) .41(**) .31(**)
Id Prob .76(**) .18 .53(**) .64(**) .77(**)
OC .77(**) .24(*) 79(**) .84(**) .81(**)
Warmth Id OC
Prob
Job Invol
Per Std
Comn Flo
Rwd Sys
Resp
ConfReso
Org Strc
MotiLvl
DM
SS
Warmth 1
Id Prob .43(**) 1
OC .63(**) .84(**) 1
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Job Invol: Job Involvement
Per Std: Performance Standards
Comn Flo: Communication Flow
Rwd Sys: Reward System
Resp: Responsibility
ConfReso: Conflict Resolution
Org Strc: Organization Structure
MotiLvl: Motivational Level
DM: Decision Making
SS: Support System
Warmth: Warmth
Id Prob: Identity Problem
Oc: Organizational Climate