Testing the norm of reciprocity and organizational commitment in a military pharmacist population.

Abstract

This study examined normative reciprocity and organizational commitment in Army, Navy and Air Force pharmacists. The entire population was surveyed electronically with an 83 percent response rate (390 responders). The primary purpose of this project was to determine if normative organizational commitment to the organization could be explained through the norm of reciprocity. While normative commitment has been negatively associated with turnover in past studies, there has been a close correlation with the affective commitment scale. This has lead to the questioning of the normative commitment scale and what value it adds. This study showed that the operationalized theory of reciprocity seems to predict the outcomes of self-assessed performance and the intent to turnover. However, reciprocity based obligation accounted for very little variance in the two outcome measures for this population (R<super>2</super> = .05 and .15, respectively). We also confirmed Meyer and Allen's multidimensional organizational commitment model in a military pharmacist population. Increased organizational commitment was positively associated with self-assessed performance. This positive influence was created by affective commitment, while normative commitment was insignificant and continuance commitment was significantly negative. Organizational commitment was also found have an extremely significant effect on the intention to quit. The affective and normative dimensions drove this effect. An exception to Meyer and Allen's model was the lack of influence by continuance commitment on the intent to quit. We also confirmed the importance of family support and tenure to the military member and discovered the powerful influence that career prospects, outservice training and balance of exchange (feeling the respondent owes the organization) have on organizational commitment. Returning to our main objective, this study found a significant relationship between normative commitment and the intent to quit. It also showed a Pearson correlation of .65 between normative and affective commitment (Table 4.66), less than past studies within military officers (.74) and pharmacists (.73). However, the correlation between the reciprocity based obligation and affective organizational commitment is only .47 in this study. This decreased correlation could mean that through the use of reciprocity based obligation we have pulled the obligation portion of organizational commitment away from the emotional aspects of organizational commitment.