The purpose of this study is to analyze the determinants that play roles in deciding the level of organizational commitments of dispatched government officials and to probe the strategic alternatives for improvement in organizational commitments. To s...
The purpose of this study is to analyze the determinants that play roles in deciding the level of organizational commitments of dispatched government officials and to probe the strategic alternatives for improvement in organizational commitments. To serve this purpose, a thorough review on the legal and institutional aspects regarding dispatch operation as well as antecedents regarding organizational commitment have been performed, and finally an analytical model for the organizational commitment of dispatched officials has been proposed.
The model is composed of 7 components: four independent variable groups along with an extraneous variable group, and a moderating variablegroup. In addition, the overall organizational commitment level has been defined as a dependent variable. The four independent variable groups are 1. Individual psychological characteristics variable (need for achievement, meaningfulness of assigned job, responsibility for job, and efficacy) 2. Organizational characteristics variable (job prestige, cohesiveness of members, perceived centralization of decision-making, formalityof rules and regulations, leadership styles, and relationship with superiors, peers and customers) 3. Job characteristics variable (variety of skills needed, task identity, task significance, task autonomy, feedback of outcome, role conflict, role ambiguity, and work overload) 4. Human resource management characteristics variable (fairness of compensation, fairness of promotional opportunities, and job security). The extraneous variable group is the demographic statistics characteristics variable (agency, sex, age, duration of employment, education, rank, marital status, and household income level). The moderating variable group is institutional and status characteristics variable (employment status at the original and dispatched agencies, institutional status of the dispatched agency, and voluntariness of dispatching). Finally, the dependent variable group, which is the overall organizational commitment level, is composed of affective commitment (AC), continuance commitment (CC), and normative commitment (NC). The model is devised in the way that all of the other components affect the dependent variable group.
Based on the model, a survey is performed for two groups of government officials; officials who are working at their original agency and dispatched officials. In addition, interviews with managers who are in charge of managing dispatched officials are performed in order to probe for the improvement of the dispatched officials system and for more efficient management methodology.
The summary of the findings of this study is as follows;
First, it was observed that dispatched officials showed a lower level of overall organizational commitment compared to the officials working at their original agencies as was the case in all three sub-factor commitments, AC, CC, NC. The gap between the two groups turned out to be the largest in NC followed by AC. There was virtually no difference in terms of CC, though. Relatively higher level of difference was observed in meaningfulness of job among the individual psychological characteristics, job prestige and members' cohesiveness among the organizational characteristics, task significance, task autonomy, role ambiguity, and work overload among the job characteristics, as in the case of job security among human resource management characteristics.
Second, it was observed that voluntarily dispatched officials showed substantially higher average level of organizational commitment in all perspectives than coercively dispatched officials.
Third, the analysis on determinants of organizational commitment of dispatched officials can be summarized as follows; individual psychological characteristics mainly affect AC and NC, but do not affect CC. AC is affected by meaningfulness of job, need for achievement, and efficacy, while NC is affected by only meaningfulness of job and need for achievement. The overall organizational commitment level turned out to be affected by need for achievement the most followed by the meaningfulness of job and efficacy.
In organizational characteristics, centralization of decision-making turned out to affect CC negatively while job prestige turned out to affect AC and NC positively. In addition, relationship among members turned out to affect the AC in a positive way.
In job characteristics, role ambiguity turned out to affect AC negatively while task significance turned out to affect CC positively.
Among human resource management characteristics, fairness of promotional opportunities and job security turned out to affect AC a little, while fairness of compensation affects CC a little.
Fourth, results of the interviews with managers of human resource department of 10 government agencies revealed the followings; in many cases, the reasons to request for dispatched officials is to have experts with certain level of expertise or skills in specific fields. Also, many respondents agreed that creating a permanent position (regular T/O), if possible, would be necessary in many cases.
Based on the results of the above research, the following strategic schemes are recommended to enhance the level of organizational commitment of dispatched officials.
First, for long term dispatches, it would be better to create permanent positions (regular T/O) for dispatched officials to establish more stable status of employment and to maintain enhanced level of expertise on the field.
Second, agencies with substantial number of dispatched officials need to make extra efforts to establish a more advanced provisions concerning the prescribed responsibilities of administrative affairs as well as provisions concerning authority delegations. At the same time, they also need to make a systematic approach in developing workload distribution system such as S.O.P. manuals. Furthermore, delegation of authority and responsibility to dispatched officials is recommended to enhance the level of ownership and membership for the assigned work. In addition, it is necessary to provide training opportunities regularly for dispatched officials to enhance need for achievement and to let them recognize the meaningfulness of job and the significance of their task. Through these activities, role ambiguity can be minimized.
Third, it seems that a systematic follow-up is needed for dispatched officials to guarantee them fair access to promotion, performance evaluation, and performance bonus.
Fourth, it is necessary to have a more thorough management system for dispatched officials and to create a better organizational atmosphereto improve relationships among members.
Finally, it would be appropriate to set the selection criteria first before selecting the officials to be dispatched, and bestow priority to volunteers. In case of no volunteer, a thorough explanation regarding why he/she was selected should be given to reach an agreement or an acceptance.