초록 열기/닫기 버튼
This study aims to explore the differences in organizational commitment and employee effort levels between Islamic and Buddhist countries in the ASEAN region. Organizational commitment was defined as three dimensions, namely affective, continuance, and normative commitment. Employee efforts consisted of active in-role and extra-role behaviors contributing to the success of the organization. For this inter-cultural study, survey questionnaires based on previous studies were translated into Thai, Myanmar, Lao, Cambodian, Indonesian, and Malay language by the two local university professors and/or industry experts per each country. The data were collected from 4,202 employees working at 92 firms in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. Specifically, the data consisted of 2,268 from Malaysia and Indonesia, and 1,934 from the other 4 countries. Analyses of the data revealed that all three components of organizational commitment were higher among the employees in Islamic countries than those in Buddhist countries, before controlling the differences among the 6 countries. But the differences vanished except continuance commitment after controlling national differences by using dummy variables. Continuance commitment remained significantly higher in Islamic countries than Buddhist countries. The results seem to reflect Islamic religious values and work ethics allowing secular behavior pursuing economic interests. Employee effort level was significantly higher in Buddhist countries than in Islamic counterparts, but the difference also vanished after controlling between-nation differences. In addition, the analyses showed the moderating effect of religious groups on the relationships between the three components of organizational commitment and the employee effort level. The positive relationships between affective, continuance, and normative commitment and the employee effort level became stronger among employees in Islamic countries than in Buddhist countries. From these empirical findings, theoretical and practical implications for managing organizational commitment were derived and several agenda for future research were suggested.
