Encouraging Positive & Deterring Negative Employee Attitudes: Test of a Latent Variable Model.
| Author | Biswas, Soumendu |
Introductioin
A recurring challenge faced by contemporary managers is to elicit effective employee attitudes that shall serve as intrinsic motivators for superior performance. While job security, career advancement, and systematic pay increments can serve as decisive signals to attract talented human resources, it may not be enough to instill in them a sense of obligation, attachment, and an inherent drive to make regular contributions to organizational values and productivity (Fadli & Hongbing, 2020). Accordingly, the objective of the present study was to confirm whether employees' organizational trust (OT) along with their procedural justice perceptions (PJPs) can serve as explanatory constructs to enhance their affective commitment (AC) and reduce organizational cynicism (OCy) when mediated by their relational contract (RC) with the organization.
OT, PJPs, & RC
As per extant literature, OT may be conceptualized as a bilateral bond between co-professionals who are mutually reliant and who act for the other's welfare (Le & Lei, 2018). During this period, both parties are relatively vulnerable because both believe that the other shall fulfill their relational expectations and are satisfied when their honest mistakes are forgiven (Surya et al., 2021). From a credibility perspective, when employees detect honest attempts of their organization concerning openness in communication, explanations about decisions taken, and timely and accurate work inputs, their levels of OT are instantly augmented (Ambrose et al., 2007). Furthermore, OT is an important component of human resource (HR) management especially when managers intend to achieve organization-wide implementation of policies and initiatives (Matthysen & Harris, 2018). Besides, OT fosters a positive psychological climate for employees and this, in turn, evokes from them affirmative attitudes in terms of high levels of commitment, engagement, and involvement and low levels of cynicism, doubt, and deviance (Nguyen & Ermasova, 2018).
From an organization-employee exchange perspective, the extent to which the organization is trustworthy depends on the employees' perceptions of the organization's actions and their concomitant degree of justice and fair play (Amin, et al., 2020). Thus, along with OT, perceptions about organizational justice in general and procedural justice in particular, are central concepts that employees may consider while evaluating their socioeconomic contractual relationship with their organization (Vantilborgh et al., 2014). Employees appraise their relationship with their organization not only on whether the latter fulfills obligations towards any one individual but also on whether these obligations are met regularly and consistently for all (Epitropaki, 2013; Rodwell & Gulyas, 2015).
Based on the review of the literature above, the following study hypotheses may be posited.
H1. Employees' organizational trust will be significantly and positively linked to their relational contract with their organization.
H2. Employees' procedural justice perceptions shall be significantly and positively connected to their relational contract with their organization.
An additional hypothesis that emerges from the above discussion is as follows:
H3. Employees' organizational trust and their procedural justice perceptions will interact significantly and be positively related to their relational contract with their organization.
RC, AC & OCy: In organizations, work has to be systematized as per organizational objectives as well as employees' capabilities and inclinations (Cassimir et al., 2014; Salehzadeh et al., 2014). However, a well-designed work structure keeping person-job and person-ability fit in mind may not be enough to obtain the desired levels of employee effectiveness if they do not sense a strong relational bond with their organization to be affectively committed to and lack any intention of divergence from their organization's goals and objectives (Sinha & Israel, 2018).
Based on the aforementioned discussion, the following hypotheses are postulated:
H4. Employees' relational contracts will have a significantly positive correspondence with their organizationally-directed affective commitment.
H5. Employees' relational contracts will have a significantly negative association with their levels of organizational cynicism.
Furthermore, all the study hypotheses submitted for investigation so far indicate the scope for examining relational contract as a mediator variable. Thus, an additional study hypothesis is presented as follows:
H6. Employees' relational contract with their organization will significantly mediate the relationship between their organizational trust, procedural justice perceptions, and their interaction as the primary antecedents of affective commitment and organizational cynicism as the final consequences.
Overall, all the study hypotheses are put together as a conceptual LVM in Fig. I below.
Method Sample & Procedures
Data for the present study were collected in successive phases. First, the National Business Directory was used to randomly select 40 organizations all over India. Thereafter, the HR departments of these organizations were contacted to gain permission for data collection. 12 out of the 40 organizations allowed their employees to participate in the survey process. Of these 12 organizations, seven were from the manufacturing sector and were involved in business activities connected to mining, heavy engineering, cement production, laboratory equipment manufacturing, soft drink bottling, brewery, and tin plating. The remaining five organizations belonged to the services sector and were involved in banking, general insurance, marketing consultancy, information technology-enabled services, and hotels and hospitality services. Subsequently, a list of participants who voluntarily agreed to respond to the study survey was prepared for each organization. Based on this list, about 800 questionnaires were circulated. 451 completed and usable questionnaires could be finally collected which were then put through the data analyses procedures as detailed below. Thus, the response rate for this study was 56.38 percent. In this connection, 46 percent of the respondents belonged to the manufacturing and the remaining 54 percent belonged to the services sector organizations.
For the present sample, the average age of the respondents was about 38 years and their average work experience was about 13 years. All respondents were full-time, tenured, and permanent employees of their respective organizations. Also, 67 percent of the respondents were males while the remaining 33 percent were females. Based on their designation and job position, respondents were categorized as senior, middle, and junior managers with 19 percent belonging to the senior, 5 7 percent to the middle, and 24 percent to the junior level, respectively.
Measures
All the five study variables have been measured on...
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