Determinants of organizational commitment of academic staff at Makerere University

Abstract

In the world all over today, organizations and companies are struggling to retain workers whose preferences or needs do not seem to be tracked down by employers. Several factors have been associated with such tendencies but few have been proven to affect employees and make them behave in such manner. Very many definitions have been adopted for organizational commitment such as this Organizational commitment refers to employee commitment to an organization regarding desire-based (affective commitment), obligation based (normative commitment) and cost-based (continuance commitment) Meyer JP, Allen NJ (2004) These form an ecosystem that encourages an employee to voluntarily continue working in an organization. Organizations often try to foster commitment in their employees, which provides an impetus to work harder and be more enterprising to achieve organizational objectives. Therefore, the academic staff’s commitment to their institution, students, teaching activities, occupation, and colleagues has a positive influence on the effectiveness of an academic institution. Bali R, Vaidya D (2012) Universities worldwide are aiming to retain committed academic staff in their system. Awang Z, Ahmad JH (2010). A comparative study on qualification and organizational commitment among the staff of private universities in Pakistan revealed that staff members with a master’s degree were more dedicated than those with either an MPhil or PhD degree. In Uganda’s context, the teaching profession has undergone changing levels of value, attention effects and benefit over years especially during pre-independence period, teachers benefited a lot in terms of respect from the public and a reasonable salary which made majority of teachers love the profession hence higher retention in schools was experienced and Uganda had one of the best education systems in the 1960’s in Africa. But along the way, the education system in Uganda has faced turbulent times which have seen very many strikes and demonstrations from teachers crying for salary increment, technological changes, deregulation and poor working conditions leading to a great amount of turn over who go abroad for greener pastures. Individual factors such as socio-demographic characteristics, health, academic qualifications and family greatly influence lecturer’s organizational commitment. Omolara (2010). And a lot of literature is available on factors associated with commitment of academic staff. A qualified and committed teaching institution is essential to sustain an education institution and deliver high quality education. However, there is no rigorous academic inquiry into organizational commitment among academic staff and its associated factors. This study was therefore aimed to determine the determinants of organizational commitment among university academic staff in Makerere, Kampala so that it can help the institution administrators and managers of various universities to find ways of improving organizational commitment among staff.