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REVIEW OF PUBLIC PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION / June 2004 Perry / ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

The Relationship of Affective Organizational Commitment with Supervisory Trust RONALD W. PERRY Arizona State University Research and anecdotal evidence suggest employee levels of organizational commitment have declined in public and private sectors. The important role of commitment in government recruitment and retention reinforces the need to maintain employee commitment. The literature is conflicted regarding the extent to which trust in supervisors can facilitate commitment. One public and one private organization were studied. Although trust and commitment were not closely related in a direct statistical sense, trust in supervisors has an important role to play in promoting organizational commitment. Employee attitudes toward layoffs and reorganizations were highly predictive of organizational commitment. Credibility, decision participation, empowerment, and feedback were significant predictors of supervisor trust. A trusted supervisor can provide meaningful interpretations of organizational intent and reassurance that the desirable value structure of the organization will be sustained. Keywords:

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organizational commitment; supervisor trust; organizational trust; supervisor credibility; organizational turbulence

n the past decade—particularly since the collapse of Enron and Worldcom and the fiscal crises in state and local governments—employees have begun to change their view of the organizations in which they work. Managers and researchers report that the bonds between employees and organizations are growing weaker (Kanter & Mirvis, 1989; Robinson, 1996). At the same time, affective organizational commitment in the public sector has long been seen as a key element in maintaining organizational resilience and output in the public and private sectors (Eaton, 2003; Romzek, 1985). The threat of waning levels of organizational commitment is particularly important for the public sector. Here the public service values embraced by government organizations attract potential employees and sustain their

Review of Public Personnel Administration, Vol. 24, No. 2 June 2004 133-149 DOI: 10.1177/0734371X03262452 © 2004 Sage Publications

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REVIEW OF PUBLIC PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION / June 2004

employment, sometimes in the face of lower resource and reward levels than those available in the private sector (Balfour & Weschler, 1990; Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995; Perry & Wise, 1990). Indeed, Nyhan (2000) argued that one of the most important challenges for public sector managers and supervisors is to determine what measures may be undertaken to maintain employee affective commitment to the organization. Although there is much empirical support for the need to enhance organizational commitment (Mueller, Wallace, & Price, 1992), there is much less clear guidance on how commitment can be increased. Nyhan (1999, 2000) and Blake and Mouton (1984) concluded that the principal avenue to increased organizational commitment lies in enhancing levels of trust in supervisors. In contrast, other researchers have reported that organizational commitment and supervisor trust are not closely related to one another, removing the possibility of altering organizational commitment by changing supervisor behavior (Allen, Shore, & Griffeth, 2003; Carson, Carson, Roe, Birkenmeier, & Phillips, 1999; Luhmann, 1979). Researchers holding this view believe that factors such as employee empowerment, participation in decision making, and feedback from supervisors are important tools in increasing organizational commitment (Bashaw & Grant, 1994; Carson et al., 1999; Lee & Olshfski, 2002). The public manager who desires to increase levels of employee commitment to the organization is consequently faced with a dilemma: What measures can be used to enhance organizational commitment? To begin to answer this question, in the context of conflicting advice from scholars and researchers, one must sort out the relationship between supervisory trust and organizational commitment. More specifically, it is necessary to understand not just whether trust “causes” commitment but also to identify other variables that affect trust on one hand, and commitment on the other. This task is conceptual and empirical. Conceptually, we must be clear about the meaning of commitment and trust. Failing such clarity, the ambiguity that is introduced into research interpretations will not point the way to effective practical measures that could be used by managerial change agents. Achieving such clarity permits a useful assessment of whether supervisory trust shapes organizational commitment. Following this, one can further assess managerial tools (variables) that influence trust and commitment. The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship of employee trust in direct supervisors with affective commitment to the organization. The relationships of trust and commitment with other key characteristics of the organization (layoffs, managerial reorganization) and characteristics of management (empowerment, participation, feedback) are also exam-

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ined. These variables are important because they are subject to managerial manipulation and therefore can be used as tools in the context of organizational change. An empirical assessment of relationships is made based on data from two organizations: a municipal fire department and a manufacturing firm. As a condition of collecting data, the management of each organization was promised that individual and organizational identity would be protected. AFFECTIVE COMMITMENT AND SUPERVISORY TRUST

For organizational commitment and supervisory trust, an important conceptual challenge lies in specifying the meaning of commitment and trust. For example, some studies use the direct supervisor as the object of trust assessment, while others use the organization’s top executive as the referent, and still others use the more global notion of trust in the organization, which conceptually probably overlaps affective commitment (Gilbert & Tang, 1998). Apparent differences in relationship (correlation) between different indicators of the same concept often arise from using different referents or objects for the measurement (Perry & Mankin, 2003). Here, the referent for affective organizational commitment is the organization (workplace), whereas the object for trust is the first-level supervisor. Organizational commitment—similar to trust—has been conceptualized in different ways, particularly with respect to the referent. Sometimes commitment is measured relative to the career, the job, personal relationships with coworkers, the workstation, or the employing organization (Mueller et al., 1992). Thus, the literature distinguishes among affective commitment (attraction to goals and values), continuance commitment (fear of leaving the job itself ) and normative commitment (peer pressure to stay). All forms of commitment should be distinguished from organizational trust, in that trust implies a level of acknowledged control, whereas commitment focuses on attachment (for different reasons). The classic definition of affective organizational commitment emphasizes the employee bond with the organization, captured by such things as acceptance of organizational goals and values and a strong desire to associate with the organization (Porter, Steers, Mowday, & Boulin, 1974). Similarly, Greenberg (1999) saw affective commitment as the “strength of people’s desires to continue working for an organization because they agree with its underlying goals and values” (p. 87). Robbins (1997) saw affective commitment as the

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employee’s degree of investment in a well-defined organizational culture; the individual enhances self-image by committing to established and visible values of the organization. In measuring affective commitment here, a single Likert-type scale item was used: “I stay with this organization because I respect the goals and values it represents.” A standard Likert-type 5-item response format was used for recording agreement and coded such that high numeric values meant high levels of commitment. This item captures the choice to stay with the organization and attachment to goals and values that consistently appear in definitions of affective commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991). Gilbert and Tang (1998) contended that trust should be seen as a feeling of confidence and support for a supervisor. Robinson (1996) also saw trust as embodied in “one’s expectations, assumptions or beliefs about the likelihood that another’s future actions will be beneficial, favorable, or at least not detrimental to one’s interests” (p. 576). Robinson’s (1996) definition is used here, and a modified version of his trust scale, also used by Courtney (1998), was adopted. Thus, trust was measured as a 7-item Likert-type scale, addressing supervisor integrity, motives, intentions, and fairness, using a standard 5-point response format. This scale was pretested for reliability on an availability sample of 22 public sector employees. The testretest reliability coefficient was .88; this exceeds the level of .80 set for reliable scales by Edwards (1957). ANTECEDENTS OF COMMITMENT AND TRUST

The empirical literature contains a variety of conflicting claims about the relationship of commitment and trust, in addition to ambiguous claims about what variables affect each concept. Some of the variation in research conclusions can be attributed to differences in the object or referent for trust and commitment. Nyhan (1999) reported that there was a positive relationship between trust in the supervisor and affective organizational commitment across three public sector organizations, implying that increases in trust produce increases in commitment. Yet even with Nyhan’s (1999) clearer definition of variables, the argument that affective commitment should be positively related to supervisor trust is not unequivocal. Certainly it is not difficult to see that high commitment to the organization might produce a halo effect for trust in one’s supervisor. Conversely, high


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supervisor trust might be associated with higher levels of affective commitment, to the extent that the supervisor was identified with the organization. It also seems possible, however, to have high levels of trust in the supervisor while not being committed to the organization (good supervisor, poor organization) and to not trust the supervisor while being committed to the organization (poor supervisor, good organization). The first two conditions described would produce a positive statistical relationship between affective commitment and supervisor trust, while under the last two there would be a much lower relationship. It seems reasonable that each of these four outcomes (as well as others) could be observed in public or private organizations. On a theoretical level, the relationship between affective commitment and supervisor trust is not generic but depends on the valence of the employee assessment of each variable. Consequently, the observed (statistical) relationship between affective commitment and supervisor trust depends on the valence (high or low) of each variable and could be positive, negative, or not present. A strategy for more carefully examining the connection between supervisor trust and affective commitment would involve using each variable as a predictor of the other in a regression analysis with other antecedents. A variety of factors have been isolated as antecedents to—and potentially managerial tools to change— affective commitment and managerial trust (Gilbert & Tang, 1998; Zand, 1997). More interesting, the literature often suggests that the same variables are antecedent to commitment and trust. These variables include employee empowerment (Bowen & Lawler, 1992; Nyhan, 1999), employee participation in decision making (Savery & Waters, 1989), supervisor feedback (Nyhan, 1999), and years on the job (Cangemi, Rice, & Kowalski, 1989). Employee layoffs (Brockner, 1988, 1992), and reorganizations (Wright & Bonett, 1993) have been largely conceptualized as structural variables related to affective commitment to the organization. Two critical variables believed related only to supervisor trust are tenure (years worked) under a supervisor (Mishra & Morrissey, 1990) and employee perception of supervisor credibility (Kouzes & Posner, 1993). The purpose here is not to assemble a formal theoretical model of antecedents for either affective commitment or supervisor trust. Rather, the goal is to clarify the relationship between commitment and trust in a multiple variable context that permits an assessment of the relative importance of each focal variable as antecedent to the other. Thus, data will be fitted to two conceptual models. The first is designed to explain affective commit-

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ment to an organization, using supervisor trust, empowerment, participation, feedback, perception of layoffs, perception of reorganizations, and years employed. The second model predicts supervisor trust using affective commitment, empowerment, participation, feedback, credibility of supervisor, and years under the supervisor. Measurements adopted for the predictor variables in each model follow the practices in the literature. Employee empowerment is defined in terms of the employee’s ability to assess situations and take actions in the absence of direct managerial supervision (Bowen & Lawler, 1992). A single Likerttype item was used to operationally define empowerment: “In my job, I have the freedom to make personal assessments of issues and make decisions about action without direct supervisory input.” The traditional 5-point Likert-type response format was coded so that higher numerical values for agreement indicate higher levels of empowerment. Employee participation in managerial decision making focuses on the extent of consultative participation characterizing work related matters (Sashkin, 1984). This variable was operationally defined as agreement with the statement “My supervisor routinely considers my opinions when making decisions that affect my workplace.” Using the Likert-type response format, coding placed high numeric values on high levels of participation. Employee feedback, in the context of affective commitment and supervisor trust, is usually conceptualized in terms of the existence of two-way communications between employees and management (Nyhan, 1999). The key measurement issue is open, bidirectional information exchange. Feedback was measured in terms of agreement with the statement: “I routinely provide comment regarding work issues and receive feedback from my supervisor on my input.” The Likert-type response format was coded such that high numeric values are associated with high levels of feedback. Social psychological studies have shown that trust and commitment form over time, while the person making the attribution observes and interacts with the referent object to achieve a degree of predictability of behavior (McKee & Ford, 1987). It is believed that through a process of observation, the employee achieves a degree of baseline information on a variety of behavioral dimensions—including intentions, motives, fairness, and integrity, all of which form a basis for attributions. Thus, two different measures of time are used for predicting affective commitment and supervisor trust. Because affective commitment has as a referent the organization, the variable used in the prediction model is number of years employed with the organization. Similarly, the referent for supervisor trust is the supervisor, so time is calculated as years reporting to this supervisor.


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Research has shown that an employee’s perception of company layoffs and frequency of reorganization are related to commitment and trust. James and Tang (1996) convincingly argued that downsizing an organization raises questions in employee minds regarding the justice and administrative skill with which the layoffs are implemented. They further pointed out that such concerns can lead to erosion of trust for supervisors and commitment to the organization. Thus, the belief that layoffs take place too frequently indicates a perceived personal vulnerability inherent in the organization. The measurement of perception of layoffs used a single Likert-type item: “Layoffs are too frequent in this organization.” The traditional response format was coded such that higher numeric values are associated with the belief that layoffs are too frequent. Management reorganizations—whether in the context of downsizing or not—tend to create an atmosphere in which it is more difficult for employees to maintain trust and credibility attributions (Bateman & Strasser, 1984; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, & Bommer, 1996). In organizations where functional workplace arrangements are frequently changed, employees may be faced with limited chances to observe managers and make judgments about trust. Similarly, employees may receive different messages about the values and mission of the organization, leaving confusion about the appropriateness of affective commitment. Consequently, unlike the perception of layoffs, the perception that reorganization takes place too often represents not a personal vulnerability but a structural vulnerability. The seriousness of reorganization practice as it relates to trust and commitment is most appropriately measured as an employee’s subjective perception. Employee perception of reorganizations was measured with a single Likert-type item: “This organization undergoes functional and management reorganization too often.” Answers were recorded on a standard Likert-type response format with higher numbers assigned to higher levels of perception of too much reorganization. Finally, researchers have reported that supervisor credibility is embodied by truthfulness (Dasgupta, 1988), certainty of promises (Hart, Caps, Cangemi, & Caillouet, 1986), reliability (Johnson-George & Swap, 1982), and openness in approach (Gabarro, 1978). Credibility was measured here as a 7-item Likert-type scale, following a modification of items used by Kouzes and Posner (1993) and Courtney (1998). The items included statements about forthrightness, promise keeping, honesty, and information sharing. The test-retest reliability coefficient for this scale was .87, above the minimum value for reliable scales.

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STUDY DESIGN

Data were collected from samples of employees at two organizations. One organization is a municipal fire department in a large southwestern city with a population of more than 1 million citizens. This is a fully professional department (no volunteer firefighters), more than 100 years old, with more than 1,000 sworn personnel. The department has remarkably stable management, with the current fire chief in place for more than 20 years. The department is widely recognized for its professional expertise and participation in national initiatives and training. It is nationally known for strong labor-management relationships, and its relationship with the local union is seen as a model for other union organizations. A probability sample of 100 firefighters was drawn from the department roster of personnel. Firefighter is the first rank among fire personnel in this department. Firefighters are supervised by company officers. Each of the selected firefighters was mailed a short questionnaire with the scale items and questions described above included. After three follow-up contacts, 88 firefighters (88%) completed and returned the questionnaire. The fire department sample included 70 Whites (79.5%), 3 African Americans (3.4%), and 15 Hispanics (17.0%). Seventy-one men (80.7%) and 17 women (19.3%) appeared in the sample. The second organization selected for study was a private sector manufacturing firm located in the same city. This firm is a subsidiary of a larger national firm that produces electronic parts and equipment. The local firm employs approximately 950 people. Similar to all business concerns in the recent past, this company has experienced an economic downturn. Consequently, significant downsizing and several reorganizations have taken place in the past 24 months. Several layoffs have been undertaken reducing the total workforce by approximately one fourth. A probability sample of 100 production—nonsupervisory—employees was drawn and mailed the same questionnaire used for the fire services organization. After three follow-ups, 71 employees (71%) completed and returned the questionnaire. In the manufacturing sample, 47 employees were White (66.2%), 3 were African American, (4.2%) and 21 were Hispanic (29.6%). Of the employees, 63 were men (88.7%), while 8 (11.3%) were women. The return rates in each organization are well above the minimum of 60% recommended for the meaningful analysis of sample survey data (Babbie, 1990).


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Table 1: Descriptive Statistics and Regression Summary for Affective Commitment Fire Departmenta Predictors

M

SD

Supervisor trust Empowerment Participation Feedback Years on the job Perception of layoffs Perception of reorganization

4.4 3.8 4.0 3.9 8.8 —d 1.1

.39 .50 .98 .99 5.26 —d .38

Manufacturing Firmb c

–.02 .14 –.14 .04 –.06 —d –.76e

M

2.6 2.2 2.3 1.1 7.2 3.4 3.3

SD

.64 .86 .74 .97 2.8 1.2 .89

c

–.03 .26 –.07 –.06 .10 –.29e –.28e

Note: a. Adjusted R2 = .56, F6,81 = 19.5, p < .05. b. Adjusted R2 = .18, F7,63 = 3.2, p