The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning Vol. 4, Num. 1, June 2008
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A Study of Work Stress, Organizational Commitment, Job
Satisfaction, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Case
to Employee Who are Taking Further Education in University
Dr. Jyh-Lung Tang, China Institute of Technology, Taiwan
ABSTRACT
This study aims to explore the correlation and different of self-report to employee working attitude.
The questionnaire is used as the main instrument to collect data and the variables of employee working
attitude includes work stress, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship
behavior. There are 200 employees who are taking further education in one of institute of technology in
Taipei is selected as sampling. The results are analyzed by Pearson correlation, t-test, and ANOVA. The
finding of this study firstly showed that respondents performed high level score in variables of working
attitude and correlation among variables is reach statistically significant by employee self-report.
Secondly, all variables reach in positive correlation except job satisfaction to work stress in role conflict,
in which the higher job satisfaction the less work stress in the dimension of role conflict. Finally, there are
significant different in self-report from background by age, working experience, working position,
marriage status, where as there is no statistic significant difference at all variables by employees’ gender
and who’s working company size.
INTRODUCTION
Technology is innovating in every second. To keep high quality, practiced, and experienced
employee, organizations should provide more learning opportunities to improve employees‟ working
competencies, and to avoid losing the competition abilities in human resource. Organization normally
analysis what the employee need to train individually, and provides bunch of on-the-job training(OJT)
programs to foster employee, still employee who are having high motivation to take promoted position,
are try to take higher degree from out side of organization, for example, taking bachelor or master degree
from University. The main reason is that Chinese culture makes people more concern the academic degree
than the real working ability. Chinese people always doubts that whether the promotion opportunities
would give to whom with lowers academic degree, and whether the manage practice would be easy if one
with lower degree than subordinate does. Therefore, many employees enroll in the Universities in the
evening after working or in the weekend to take further education.
Employees with higher academic degree might have more abilities to do the problem solving in a
organization, but research reveals that core competitions is more relies on employees‟ organizational
commitment, working stress, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behavior than knowledge and
skills itself. Whether employees who have strong further education motivation are having higher attitude,
would be the interested issue which this study tries to explore. Besides, there are some reports about the
relationship between organizational commitment or job satisfaction and employees with different
background by age or gender (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990). This study doubts that employee with different
backgrounds, such as marriage status, working experience, working position, and the company size, could
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also have correlation by attitude performance. By the reasons above mentioned, this study is curiosity
over that how the employees‟ work stress is, and also how is the organizational commitment, job
satisfaction, and organizational citizen behavior performed while they are taking further education in
institute or Universities.
Based on the research background, the purpose of this study are:
1. To explore the correlation among work stress, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and
organizational citizenship behavior by employees‟ self-report.
2. To analysis the self-report of work stress, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and
organizational citizenship between different backgrounds.
3. To suggest teaching program to employees who are taking further education in the Universities.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Commitment
There have been several difference definitions of organizational commitment, the original
conception is based on the work of Mowday, Steers, and Porter(1979), and more recently a three
component conception of organizational commitment has been developed by Meyer, Allen, &
Smith(1993). The three components are: affective, continuance, and normative commitment. Affective
commitment occurs when the employee wishes to remain with organization because of an emotional
attachment; continuance commitment exits when a person must remain with the organization because of
one needs the benefits and salary or cannot find another job; normative commitment comes from the
employee‟s personal values and from the obligations that the person feels toward the employer(Spector,
2006).
Work/job stress
Stress is a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, constraint,
or demand related to what he or she desires and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain
and important(Schuler, 1980). Robbins (2005) said that stress can cause dissatisfaction, and job-related
stress can cause job-related dissatisfaction. Job dissatisfaction is the simplest and most obvious
psychological effect of stress. Job stress is a condition or situation at work that requires an adaptive
response on the part of the employee. Role ambiguity and role conflict are the most studied stressors in
occupational stress research. Role ambiguity is the extent to which employees are uncertain about what
their job functions and responsibilities are. Role conflict arises when people experience incompatible
demands either at work or between work and non-work. The result of Jackson and Schuler‟s (1985)
meta-analysis showed that high levels of role stressors were associated with low levels of job satisfaction.
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is general defined as behavior that goes beyond the
formal requirements of the job and is beneficial to the organization (Spector, 2006; Robbins, 2005). The
measurement of OCB usually divided into three dimensions (Williams & Anderson, 1991), there are
in-role behavior, OCB-individual, and OCB-organization. In-role behavior means employee endeavor to
perform the task which one should done while working; organizational citizenship behavior-individual
means to do advantage for others while interaction in working; organizational citizenship
behavior-organization means making advantage to organization which one in working for. OCB is most
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106
likely when employees are satisfied with their jobs, have high levels of affective commitment, feel they
are treated fairly, and have good relations with their supervisors. Some of these results have been shown
to hold in other countries as well (Spector, 2006). For example, Farh, Podsakoff, and Organ (1990) found
that OCB correlated with job satisfaction and employee perceptions of supervisor supportive behavior in
Taiwan, and Munene (1995) found OCB related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment in
Nigeria (cited from Sepctor, 2006).
Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction refers to a collection of feelings toward the job. A number of organizationally
relevant behaviors are thought to be the result of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction (Spector, 2006)
Satisfied employees would seem more likely to talk positively about the organization, help others, and go
beyond the normal expectations in their job(Robbins, 2005). Based on Weiss, Davis, English, &
Lofgurist(1967), this study designed the measurement of satisfaction which included 2 dimensions:
intrinsic and extrinsic. Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky (2002) reveal that affective and
normative commitment correlated positively with job satisfaction, in which high commitment was
associated with high satisfaction, but continuance commitment correlated negatively. Mathieu &
Zajac(1990) shows the results of meta-analysis that there is s strong correlation (r = .49) between
organizational commitment and global job satisfaction, and the result shows that organizational
commitment is relates to age and gender as well.
RESEARCH DESIGN
Research framework
The study framework is designed as figure 1.
Population and sample
The population is the employee who is taking further education in the Universities, and the sample
of this study is the employee who is studying in one of technical institutes in Taipei city Taiwan. This
study selected one institute of technology as the main sampling pool, in which 200 employee-students
was selected randomly.
Work stress
Job satisfaction
Organizational
commitment
Org-citizenship
behavior
Dependent variables
Age
Gender
Marriage Status
Working experience
Positions
Company size
Independent variables
Fig. 1 Research framework
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Research instrument
(1) This study uses questionnaire as the main instrument to collect data. The questionnaire included 4
variables, there are: work stress, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational
citizenship behavior.
(2) Questionnaire of this study is self-designed in which work stress variable is designed based on Rizzo,
House & Lirtzman(1970); organizational commitment variable-scale is designed based on Allen &
Meyer(1990); job satisfaction variable-scale is designed based on Weiss, Davis, English, &
Lofgurist(1967); and the organizational citizenship behavior variable-scale is designed based on
Williams & Anderson(1991).
(3) Each variable-scale composed of several dimensions and items, each of which as shown in table 1.
(4) The reliability of each variable-scale is measured by internal consistency, the Cronbach α of the
variables are .731, .763, .844 and .861 respectively.
(5) The factor analysis is used as validity testing method by which Maximum Likelihood and directive
Oblimin Rotation are selected as the main analysis method, the cumulative explanation of the scales
are 66.195%, 70.088%, 62.516%, and 69.039% respectively.
Table 1. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire
Variable-Scales dimensions items Validity - Factor analysis
Cumulative explanation (%)
Reliability-
Cronbach α
Work stress Role conflict 2
66.195 .731 Role ambiguity 4
Organizational
commitment
Affective 2
70.088 .763 Continuance 2
Normative 4
Job satisfaction Intrinsic 2
62.516 .844 Extrinsic 5
OCB
In-role behavior 3
69.039 .861 OCB-individual 4
OCB- organization 3
Research implementation
This study developed the research framework and proposal in December 2007, finished the
questionnaire developing on February 2008. then, sent the questionnaire to sampling after panel
discussion by 5 experts on end of the February 2008, and collected the response data before 10th
March
2008.
Limitation and delimitation
This study selects the employee who are studying in further education and come from various
companies as the study sampling, so that the results did not consider the organizational culture
respectively.
Statistics methods
This study used the Pearson correlation to verify the relationship among variable, t-test to compare
the different gender and marriage status employees‟ self-report to variables, and used the ANOVA(F-test)
statistical method to analyze the different background in age, working experience, working position, and
company size.
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RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Sampling frame
Six characteristics dimensions were selected, there are: gender, marriage status, age, working
experience, position, and company size. This study has totally 163 respondents from sampling, the
distribution of the characteristics are shown in table 2.
Table 2. Distribution of sampling
Characteristics Groups Frequency Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
gender Male 72 44.2 44.2
Female 91 55.8 100.0
Total 163 100.0
Marriage status Single 110 67.5 67.5
Marriage 53 32.5 99.4
Total 163 100.0 100.0
age Under 30 86 52.8 52.8
31-40 46 28.2 81.0
More than 41 31 19.0 100.0
Total 163 100.0
Working experience Under 1 year 45 29.6 29.6
1.1-3.0year 41 27.0 56.6
3.1-5.0 19 12.5 69.1
more than 5.1 47 30.9 100.0
Total 152 100.0
position upper level 27 17.4 17.4
middle level 38 24.5 41.9
operation level 90 58.1 100.0
Total 155 100.0
Company size few than 35 54 33.5 33.5
36-150 36 22.4 55.9
more than 151 71 44.1 100.0
Total 161 100.0
Correlation among work stress, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational
citizenship behavior
(1) The correlation among variables
The correlations among variables are shown in table 3. The result of this study shows that the
correlation among work stress, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational
citizenship behavior are all reach at statistics significant level. This study has the same results as
Spector(2006), Meyer et al.(2002), Munene(1995), and Farh, Podsakoff, & Organ(1990) did.
Table 3. Correlations among variables
scales
work stress
Organizational
commitment
Job
satisfaction
Organization
al citizenship
behavior
Work stress 1 .366** .181* .338**
Organizational commitment .366** 1 .413** .486**
Job satisfaction .181* .413** 1 .313**
Organizational citizenship behavior .338** .486** .313** 1 ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
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(2) The correlation among dimensions of each variables
Although the correlations to 4 variables are reach statistics significant, some dimensions of
variables are not statistically significant. The result revealed that (as shown in table 4):
A. Role conflict is not correlated to affective commitment, normative commitment, and variable of OCB
which included in-role, individual, and OCB-organization dimensions.
B. Role ambiguity is correlated to all dimensions except continuance commitment.
C. Affective commitment is correlated to all dimensions except role conflict and continuance
commitment.
D. Continuance commitment has correlation to the dimension of role conflict only.
E. Normative so correlated to all variables except role conflict and continuance commitment. .
F. Both intrinsic and extrinsic has no correlation to continuance commitment only.
G. In-role OCB has no correlation to role conflict, continuance commitment, intrinsic, and extrinsic.
H. Both Individual OCB and OCB-organization has no correlation to role conflict, and continuance
commitment.
Table 4. Correlations among dimensions of variables
Dimension (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
(1) role conflict 1
(2) role ambiguity -.228** 1
(3) affective
commitment -.004 .330** 1
(4) continuance
commitment .205** .072 .140 1
(5) normative
commitment -.102 .408** .423** .079 1
(6) intrinsic -.176* .417** .283** .101 .429** 1
(7) extrinsic -.311** .475** .210** -.018 .516** .535** 1
(8) In-role .055 .272** .302** -.020 .158* .023 .126 1
(9) individual .065 .300** .433** .021 .383** .232** .207** .432** 1
(10) OCB-org -.029 .348** .469** .008 .577** .316** .361** .307** .478**
Analysis the self-report of respondents to variables between different backgrounds
This study used the t-test statistics method to explore the employees‟ self-report to variables at
gender and marriage status, and used the ANOVA(F-test) statistics method at age, working experience,
position, and company size. The result shows in table 5.
(1) Employees‟ self-report to variables by age
A. Results reveal that age groups reach to significant difference in the variables of OC and OCB, the
older employee in age, the higher score in OC and OCB they have. The works stress and job
satisfaction were not statistically significant.
B. To the dimensions of each variable, dimension continuance commitment to OC, and dimension in-role
to OCB were not statistically significant.
(2) Employees‟ self-report to variables by working experience
A. Results reveal that working experience groups to 4 variables were not statistically significant.
B. To the dimensions of each variable, different working experience groups reached statistic significant in
the dimension normative commitment to OC, and dimension OCB-organization to OCB. The longer
the working experience, the higher score in normative commitment and OCB-organization they did.
(3) Employees‟ self-report to variables by working position
A. Results reveal that working position groups reach to significant difference in the variables of OC and
OCB, the higher employee in working position, the higher score they have. The works stress and job
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110
satisfaction were not statistically significant.
B. To the dimensions of each variable, different working position employees self-report at dimension
continuance commitment to OC, and dimension in-role to OCB were not statistically significant.
C. Employee promote to higher working position is normally promotes from the lower level following the
incentive system, this result verified that incentive system can promote the self-report or test score to
OC and OCB.
(4) Employees‟ self-report to variables by company size
The result shows that it was no statistic significant to any variables by the background of company
size. This study reveals that the self-report of work stress, job satisfaction, organizational commitment,
and organizational citizenship behavior were not related to the company size. This study divided the
company size into 4 groups, but the respondents are all working in the companies by which the company
size is below 250 people, we hardly to compare the difference employees‟ self-report to variables between
companies. The small company size is normally in Taiwan, the research framework to compare the
self-report to variable by company size should be modified by further study.
(5) Employees‟ self-report to variables by gender
The result shows that it was no statistic significant to any variables by the background of gender.
This study reveals that the self-report of work stress, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and
organizational citizenship were not related to the gender. This study reveals the different result from
Mathieu & Zajac (1990). To find the possible reasons and attributions, a further study should be followed.
(6) Employees‟ self-report to variables by marriage status
A. Results reveal that marriage groups reach to significant difference to the variables of OC and OCB,
marriage employee has higher score than single employee did. The works stress and job satisfaction
were not statistically significant.
B. To the dimensions of each variable, different marriage status group self-report at dimension
continuance commitment to OC, and dimension in-role and individual-OCB to OCB were not
statistically significant.
Table 5. Summary of the ANOVA & t-test table
Age
F value
Working
experience
F value
Position
F value
Company
size
F value
Gender
t value
Marriage
status
t value
Work stress .293 .578 3.683* n.s .027 1.503 -.278
Organizational
commitment 8.857***
2>1, 3>1
1.742
12.119***
1>3, 2>3
.445
.456
-2.480*
S<M
Job satisfaction 1.219 .187 1.276 1.418 -.054 -.872
Organizational
citizenship
behavior
11.282***
2>1, 3>1
2.185
16.285***
1>3, 2>3
.180
.016
-3.074**
S<M
role conflict .055 .589 .969 .327 1.221 -.200
role ambiguity .561 .772 2.854 .142 .571 -.302
affective
commitment 12.566***
2>1, 3>1
2.802*
n.s
15.000***
1>2, 1>3
.353
1.224
-2.518*
S<M
continuance
commitment .040 2.111 .779 .147 -1.516 .239
normative
commitment 6.941***
3>1
4.757**
4>1, 4>3
14.094***
1>2, 1>3
2.764
1.068
-2.850**
S<M
intrinsic .591 .741 .246 1.569 -.234 -.169
extrinsic 2.027 .268 2.631 1.033 .078 -1.337
in-role 2.622 1.293 3.088* n.s .118 -.619 -1.499
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individual 5.403**
2>1, 3>1
2.811*
n.s
7.758***
1>3
1.168
-.162
-1.698
OCB-org 13.116***
2>1, 3>1
3.415*
4>1
20.233***
1>2&3 2>3
.461
.681
-3.635***
S<M Note: (A) Age, 1= under 30, 2=31-40, 3=older than 41 years old.
(B) Working experience, 1=under 1, 2=1.1-3.0 3=3.1-5.0 4=more than 5.1years
(C) Position 1=upper level, 2=middle level, 3=operation level (D) Company size 1=few than 35, 2=36-150, 3=more than 151 people.
(E) Gender 1=male, 2= female.
(F) S= singular, M=marriage.
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
Conclusions
1. The result of this study showed that employee who is taking further education in the University
response high level score in variables in work stress, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and
organizational citizenship behavior. The correlation among variables is reach statistically significant by
employee self-report. In which all variables reach in positive correlation except job satisfaction to work
stress in role conflict. The result shows that the higher job satisfaction the less work stress in the
dimension of role conflict. That means employees who are taking further education in University would
endeavor to work harder and doing well performance if the organization provide a clear responsibility to
each job, task, or positions to reduce the role conflict in work setting.
2. Although almost all variables related to each other, an interesting result comes from this study. The
dimension continuance commitment in the variable of organizational commitment is not reach
statistically significant. The possibility of the result could be the employees who are taking further
education in University preparing to move or shift to other organization after employee graduated from
University, they eager to get promotion during studying in the University. Therefore the continuance
commitment did not have correlative to other dimensions of attitude variable of this study.
3. The older employee in age the higher organizational commitment and OCB they performed. But
employee would not have different performance in continuance commitment in variable of organizational
commitment, and in-role in OCB by age. The employee in different age would take responsibilities to
their own present job till a good chance to move, or to promote. In other word, no matter what age
employee who is taking further education, they will take the new job in other organization instead the
present work position if there is opportunity to promote.
4. In the whole, there is no statistic difference to all variables by the employees‟ working experience. But
this study shows that the longer the working experience, the higher score in normative commitment and
OCB-organization they did. Experienced employees, who are worked more than 5 years, would show
more moral in working.
5. In Chinese culture, working position which employee takes will normally consider the academic degree.
Sometimes organization rather chose the higher academic degree which employee possessed than real
abilities. Employee promote to higher working position is normally from the lower level following the
incentive systems, this result verified that incentive system can promote the employees‟ OC and OCB.
6. This study shows that there is no statistic significant difference at all variables by employees‟ gender
and who‟s working company size. This study has difference results from other researches, the reason
might be the respondents are all taking further education in Universities; most of them are waiting for a
good promotion chance.
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112
7. This result reveals that marriage groups reach higher score than single group in the variables of OC and
OCB, the works stress and job satisfaction is not statistically significant. Marriage employee normally
should take more responsibilities to their family, might be transfer to the commitment and the OCB
attitudes.
Suggestions
1. Life-long learning is now getting to be a major portion and main program in Universities. Employees
who are taking further education to get a degree also become a trend in Taiwan. Besides the professional
courses, this study suggests that professors and curriculum designers would consider infusing attitude
conception into the contents of courses to further education program for employees.
2. In order to keep employee to stay in organization, the incentive or motivation system should be
reviewed, especially to the employee who is younger, lees experience, lower position worker, or single.
The performance of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and OCB might be high, and work
stress might be lower, if organization concern about the motivation by difference backgrounds of the
employees.
3. The results should not generalized to other objects and countries, as researcher indicate (Spector, 2006)
that one must be cautious in generalizing organizational commitment findings to other countries.
4. In order to explore whether the same result comes out from respondent in special organization, this
study tries to do a further research to one of international hair-stylist companies.
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