The relationship between quality of work life factors and organizational commitment within the pulp and paper industry in the Durban Metropolitan Area

Abstract

It has become imperative for organisations to create family-friendly work-environments, where employees can effectively balance work and family life, in order to ensure employee satisfaction and increased productivity. A critical review of the quality of work life factors and organizational commitment literature was therefore conducted, in order to ascertain their psychometric applicability to knowledge workers within the Pulp and Paper industry in the greater eThekwini Metropolitan Area. A total of 450 questionnaires were distributed to employees in the pulp and paper industry within the eThekwini metropolitan area. The employees were randomly selected, while the organisations were stratified selected. A questionnaire was used to measure the different dimensions of quality of work life factors as well as the different dimensions of organisational commitment. The gathered data was processed through an SPSS program. A number of statistical tests were then performed on the collected data, where biographical variables were compared with the independent variables. The questionnaire was considered moderately reliable because the overall coefficient alpha was 0.525. The Pearson’s value indicated that there was a positive relationship at 0.01 level of significance between the majority of the quality of work factors (organizational climate, task characteristics, job satisfaction, role behaviour, utilization and future orientation) and the organisational commitment. No relationship was found between remuneration and organizational commitment. There was no significant difference in organizational commitment across the biographical variables of marital status, age, length of service and span of control. There was, however, a significant difference in organizational commitment across different levels of education. The Analysis of variance indicated that there was no significant difference in organizational commitment across marital status group. There was however a significant difference in organizational commitment across length of service. There was a significant difference I organizational commitment across supervisory span of control. The results from the hierarchical multiple regression indicated that with the exception of age, education and experience, all other demographics variables do not have an impact on affective commitment. The results also indicated that age, education and experience had an impact on continuance commitment. Similarly, age and education contribute significantly to normative commitment. The structural equation model comparative technique was performed to all constructed models and indicated that all models had a good fit in relation to the data based on the GFI. The best-fitting model for consequences demonstrated that organisational citizenship behaviour and procedural justice were important variables. Apart from that, affective, continuance and normative commitment were also found to be part of the model.