Organizations in South Africa as in the rest of the world are under tremendous
pressure to improve their performance and increase their competitiveness in the
continuously changing world of work. Psychological empowerment, job satisfaction
and organizational commitment are important concepts to consider when dealing
with the changes in the world of work. Psychological empowerment refers to the
experience of empowerment among employees. Empowerment heightens employees’ sense of personal control and motivates them to engage in work which in turn results in positive managerial and organizational outcomes (Conger & Kanungo, 1988;Quinn & Spreitzer, 1997; Siegall & Gardner, 2000). Job satisfaction and organizational commitment have both shown to be important outcomes of
psychological empowerment.The primary objective of this study was to gain an understanding of the impact of psychological empowerment and job satisfaction on organizational commitment amongst employees in a multi-national organization. For the purpose of this study a quantitative, non-probability convenience sampling design was used to assess the three variables. The sample consisted of (N = 120) permanent employees were employed in the following departments namely: Administration, Engineering,Production, Quality and Commercial.A biographical questionnaire, The Measuring Empowerment Questionnaire (MEQ),Job Descriptive Index (JDI) and the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire(OCQ) were administered to gather data. The MEQ consists of 12 statements and measures psychological empowerment on four cognitions namely; meaning, impact, self-determination and competence. The JDI measures job satisfaction on five job
facets namely, pay, promotions, supervision, co-workers and the work itself. The
OCQ measures organizational commitment and consists of 15 statements. Each
statement attempts to extract the employee’s feelings towards organizational policies, goals and values, their willingness go the extra mile, and whether they are proud to be associated with the organization. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data.The Product Moment Correlations Coefficient was computed to determine the extent to which the variable investigated is related to each other. The ANOVA was used to determine whether there are differences in psychological empowerment based on biographical characteristics and also to assess differences amongst the variable. The T-test was utilized to assess whether there is a difference based on gender. For the biographical information namely gender, race and tenure results indicate significant statistical differences in organizational commitment. A statistically significant relationship was also found between psychological empowerment and organizational commitment. However, the strongest relationship was found between job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Furthermore results, indicate that employees at the multi-national organization are relatively satisfied with the nature of the work that they perform, with the supervision that they receive, as well as with their co-workers. Opportunities for promotion and compensation appeared to be however, the main
sources of dissatisfaction. With regards to organizational commitment employees
express below average belief in the organization’s goals and values, willingness to
exert extra effort on behalf of the organization and desire to maintain membership of the organization.With the exception of gender, the relationship between race and tenure with job satisfaction was found to be significant. With the exception of race, the relationship between gender and tenure with psychological empowerment was found to be significant.Results indicated a significant and direct relationship between psychological empowerment and job satisfaction.A limitation of this research is that the sampling composition and research design prevent the results to this study to be generalised to other organizations and it is recommended that a stratified random sampling design be utilised for future research. / Magister Commercii (Industrial Psychology) - MCom(IPS)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uwc/oai:etd.uwc.ac.za:11394/3511 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Theron, Crystal Jeanne |
| Contributors | Jano, Rukhsana |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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