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Managing employees with control, commitment or with both: what leads to more affective commitment and proactive work behavior?

Maat, B.J. van de (2012) Managing employees with control, commitment or with both: what leads to more affective commitment and proactive work behavior?

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Abstract:The goal of this research paper is to find out how affective commitment and proactive work behavior of employees are affected by different types of organizational characteristics, (human resource) management styles, namely commitment oriented and control oriented, that find their outcomes through HR-practices like leadership, work content and employee participation. Research from Khatri and Budhwar (2002) notes that a commitment-based management approach can create an environment that encourages commitment to organizational objectives and provides opportunities for the exercise of initiative, ingenuity, and self-direction in achieving them. The natural emphasis of control-based management is on monitoring and influencing employee behavior closely via a variety of control mechanisms. These findings lead to the following research question: ´does the combination of commitment and control management lead to more affective commitment and proactive work behavior by employees than the effect of these two management styles separately have on affective commitment and proactive work behavior´? Employees from two different types of organizations, namely Lucky The Feel Good Provider and The Dutch Tax Collectors, filled in a questionnaire with items related to organizational culture, the management policy and HR-practices, which can make use of the commitment approach or the control approach. The independent variables of this research are subdivided in commitment variables, namely: human centered culture, transformational leadership, participation, work enrichment and control variables, namely: control centered culture, transactional leadership and performance appraisal. The expectation is that these variables will influence the dependent variables of this research, namely affective commitment and proactive work behavior. The hypotheses are tested by applying analyses to data collected from 145 employees. The results of the analysis did show that all control and commitment variables have a positive relation with affective commitment and proactive work behavior. The expected interactive effects between the variables was not always supported. We only discovered a positive interactive effect of work enrichment and transformational leadership on affective commitment and proactive work behavior. So, the research question is partly confirmed. Finally, the limitations of the findings and recommendations for future research are discussed.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology MSc (66604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/61630
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