Factors affecting radiographers' organizational commitment.

A variety of factors influence an employee's relationship to work, and vice versa. Relevant issues include satisfaction, wages to the workplace. In the employees' commitment to the workplace is referred to as organizational commitment. This study focuses on radiographers' commitment to the organization in which they work and examines factors that significantly influence this commitment.

For this study organizational commitment was defined using Meyer and Allen's (1) conceptualization. They contended that, common to the various definitions of organizational commitment, it is a psychological state that characterizes the employee's relationship with the organization and has implications for the decision to continue employment with the organization. Thus, regardless of the definition, "committed" employees are more likely to remain with the organization.

Meyer and Allen's conceptualization differs from others in the nature of the psychological state being described. They contended that organizational commitment consists of 3 dimensions: affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. (1) "Affective commitment refers to an employee's emotional attachment to and identification with the organization." Individuals with high levels of affective commitment continue employment because they want to. "Continuance commitment refers to an awareness of the costs associated with leaving the organization." (1) Those with high levels of continuance commitment stay with the organization because they need to. "Normative commitment reflects a feeling of obligation to continue employment." (1) Those with high levels of normative commitment stay with an organization because they feel they ought to remain. An individual can have similar or different levels of all 3 types of commitment. They are not mutually exclusive.

Importance of Organizational Commitment

Despite the plethora of research already conducted on organizational commitment, there have been many discrepancies in both the way commitment has been conceptualized and defined (2) and the patterns of the relationships. (3,4) Additionally, the context of work and the culture of the profession might have different influences on employee commitment, and thus, there is a need to examine commitment for radiographers. It should not be assumed that the levels of commitment for other health profession groups are the same as those of radiographers. Additionally, the types of variables and their individual effects on commitment might vary considerably between radiographers and other groups because of the context of the job and the types of organizations and departments in which they work.

The literature reveals that employees' commitment to the organization (or lack thereof) has a variety of important organizational consequences. Several studies report negative correlation with organizational commitment and both employee intention to leave the organization and actual turnover. (4-7) Additionally, the literature indicates that employees with strong affective commitment to the organization work harder at their jobs and perform better than those with lower levels of affective commitment. (5, 8-11)

Radiographers' Organizational Commitment

Compared with the considerable research on organizational commitment, there has been little examining radiographers' commitment specifically. The etiology of commitment depends on the nature of the job and the organizational context; thus, job-specific research is warranted. A MEDLINE search from 1988 to 2006 indicated only 3 journal articles related to organizational commitment of radiographers. The first, a study by Akroyd et al, (12) examined the predictive value of selected intrinsic and extrinsic work rewards (ie, task involvement, task significance, general working conditions, supervision and salary) on organizational commitment. The population consisted of radiographers in North and South Carolina; thus, findings could not be generalized nationally. Additionally, the conceptualization of organizational commitment was that of Mowday et al (13) and measured commitment as a single-factor construct. The current consensus among commitment theorists and researchers is that commitment is a multidimensional construct. (5) Thus, the components of commitment can vary considerably among employees.

The second article related to radiographers' organizational commitment was a commentary by Vander Hoek (14) regarding the importance of the construct for improving retention of radiographers and suggestions for radiology managers to improve retention. The study did not measure commitment empirically for radiographers; thus, it did not provide insights into levels of commitment for radiographers.

A third study examined the impact of 6 aspects of organizational support on organizational commitment for a convenience sample of 119 South African radiographers. (15) Findings revealed that 5 of 6 factors of perceived organizational support correlated significantly with each of the 3 types of organizational commitment (ie, affective, continuance and normative). This study provided some preliminary support for the notion that organizational support significantly affects radiographers' commitment to the organization.

Statement of the Problem

Commitment to an organization has been demonstrated to have a major impact on employees' retention, intent to leave and job performance. Yet, there is a paucity of research on this construct for radiographers, especially using the newer conceptualizations of organizational commitment. There is some evidence that radiographers are relatively satisfied with their job-related tasks and their profession. (16-20) However, very little information discusses their attachment to the organization for which they work and factors that might predict or limit their commitment. Providing such data could offer radiology managers insight to better direct strategies for improving retention and, possibly, job performance.

Conceptual Framework

The dependent variables in this study consisted of the 3 components of organizational commitment (ie, affective, continuance and normative) conceptualized by Meyer and Allen. (1) In developing the model for this study, the recent meta-analysis of antecedents of affective, continuance and normative commitment by Meyer et al (5) guided the selection of some of the independent variables. The criterion used was selecting only those independent variables from the meta-analysis that had weighted average corrected correlation coefficients with affective and normative commitment between 0.20 and 0.63 (absolute value). Also, the percentage of sampling error in the standard deviation of the observed corrected correlation coefficients had to be less than 60%. The purpose of this criterion was to identify only those independent variables that seemed to account for the greatest percent of variance in commitment from the research over the past 15 years. In addition to the independent variables derived from this procedure, the following variables were added because of the nature of radiographers' work: number of hours on call per month, employment setting (ie, hospital or clinic), educational level and the number of years working as a radiographer. See Figure 1 for a conceptual framework for the study.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Purpose and Research Questions

The purpose of this study was to determine the predictive ability of selected organizational, leadership, work-role and demographic variables on organizational commitment for a national sample of radiographers. From the above-stated purpose, the following research questions were addressed:

1. What is the predictive ability of selected organizational variables (ie, organizational support, role ambiguity, role conflict and organizational type), managerial leadership (ie, transformative leadership behavior of the supervisor) and demographic variables (ie, years as a radiographer, educational level and hours on call per month) on affective commitment?

2. What is the predictive ability of selected organizational variables (ie, organizational support, role ambiguity, role conflict and organizational type), managerial leadership (ie, transformative leadership behavior of the supervisor) and demographic variables (ie, years as a radiographer, educational level and hours on call per month) on continuance commitment?

3. What is the predictive ability of selected organizational variables (ie, organizational support, role ambiguity, role conflict and organizational type), managerial leadership (ie, transformative leadership behavior of the supervisor) and demographic variables (ie, years as a radiographer, educational level and hours on call per month) on normative commitment?

Methodology

Research Design

Using Johnson's (21) conceptualization of nonexperimental quantitative research, this study used a cross-sectional predictive research design. This type of design is most appropriate when participant information will be gathered at 1 time and the goal of the study is prediction (ie, determining which independent variables are predictors of each of the 3 components of organizational commitment).

Population and Sample

The population for this study consisted of all full-time clinical radiographers registered by the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists (ARRT) in the United States. A random sample of 3000 radiographers was obtained from the ARRT for this study. The criteria for inclusion in the sample were that each potential participant was registered by the ARRT and worked full time in clinical radiography (ie, no managers, educators or part-time radiographers).