Higher education in a democratic South Africa faces huge challenges – primarily the need to
achieve greater equity, efficiency and effectiveness in institutions and across the system.
Universities had to open their doors to students of all races, transform curricula to become
more locally relevant, and produce scholars able to address South Africa’s problems. When
organisations face these changes, they still need to support their employees. They need to
ensure that the employees feel secure in their employment to improve their commitment to
the organisation.
The objective of this study was to investigate the perceived organisational support and
organisational commitment of academics in South Africa. A cross-sectional survey design
was used. A non-probability convenience sample was taken from a higher education
institution in South Africa (N=388).The Survey of Perceived Organisational Support (SPOS)
and Allen and Meyer’s Organisational Commitment Scale were administered.Cronbach alpha
coefficients, Spearman product correlation coefficients, MANOVAs (to determine
differences in demographic groups) and multiple regression analyses were used to analyse the
data.
Principal component analysis resulted in a two-factor model for perceived organisational
support, namely positive support and negative support. Regarding organisational
commitment, a two-factor model was also extracted, namely affective commitment and
continuance commitment.
The results attained from the product-moment correlations indicated that positive support has
a negative relationship with negative support. Positive support is also practically significantly
related to affective commitment and continuance commitment. A MANOVA analysis was conducted to determine the differences in levels of POS
experienced with regard to staff, ethnicity, language, faculty and gender. The results indicated
that no significant differences were found in the levels of POS experienced with regard to
staff and gender.
Statistically significant differences were found between levels of negative support with
regard to ethnicity, language and faculties. Statistically significant differences were found
between levels of positive support of staff in different faculties.
MANOVA was also used to determine differences between staff with regard to commitment
levels. Statistically significant differences were found between levels of continuance
commitment. Support staff experience higher levels of continuance commitment than
academic staff do.
Multiple regression analyses indicated that positive support predicted 9% of the variance in
affective organisational commitment and 18% of the variance in continuance commitment.
Recommendations were made for future research. / MCom (Human Resource Management), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nwu/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/11976 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Scott, Chantalle |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds