Personality characteristics and organizational commitment in Iranian employees

INTRODUCTION

The employees of organizations are the most effective index in the superiority of one organization than another one. Loyalty and commitment of employees because assigned assignment is to be accomplished by high quality. It leads to increase performance, efficiency and effectiveness in an organization. Upside down, unresponsive persons evade their responsibility and devolve it to others. It causes persons' performance to be decreased in quality and quantity.^1,2

Organizational commitment is the connection of people with an organization which is determined by strong believe interaction and accepting aims and values, “emotional commitment”, tendency to many efforts for organization, “continuous commitment” for staying in an organization “assignment commitment”.^3,4

A majority of researchers believe that commitment has two separate but linked attitudinal and behavioral components. Attitudinal commitment expresses loyalty degree of persons to an organization which is emphasized on persons’ cooperation and adaptation in an organization. Behavioral commitment expresses the process of persons’ connection to an organization. Assignment, continuous and behavioral commitment are some of the attitudinal commitment components. The accomplished researches show that individual, occupational, organizational and cross-organizational factors are effective on organizational commitment.^1,2

One of the effective factors on organizational commitment is based on individual studies which among them, one of the most important indexes is persons’ personality features. In fact the employees don’t have the same personality features. An employee may be taciturn and another may be talkative or active in verbal interactions. The other may be pessimistic, egoist and arrogant and another one may be optimistic, modest and interested to other people, therefore, the personality differences will have effective on behavior and performance of all employees. As if behavioral characteristics has a potential impact over organizational atmosphere shaping and the efficiency of an organization.⁵

The study of relationship between employees' personality characteristics and organizational commitment can help authorities in their decision- making process in order to careers promotions and enhancing their service quality to the community.^6-9 This research seeks to analyze the relationship between personality features and organizational commitment in the employees of South-Tehran oil areas national company. In general, this research tries to answer this key question: is there a relationship between personality features and organizational commitment.

METHODS

This research follows herein descriptive-correlation method. The population composed of 140 persons, by the use of Morgan table,¹⁰ 103 persons were chosen as the sample size. In this research, random sampling is used to select the sample size. The data have been collected through questionnaire. This research has been accomplished in national Iranian South oil - Tehran Company in 1393. In order to collect the primitive data, internal and external scientific journals are used and scientific sites are used too. Then among available models, the newest model is chosen as research conceptual model. The research method is descriptive-survey method with the aim of applied one. In order to collecting the data, field method and questionnaire are used. Two standard questionnaires are used in this research based on research hypotheses. Questionnaire instrument include Neo test which have hypothetical model obtained by factors analysis method over personality structure. 3 main scales were considered: Neurotic (N), Extroversion (E), and Openness (O).

The validity of this questionnaire is obtained by the use of Retest- test, for N, E, O, A and C factors, values 78.83, 80.0, 79.0, 0.0, %79 have yielded for 208 students respectively in 3 months period. In a research which accomplished by Mollazade (1381), the coefficients of retest-test in 37 days period of 76 martyr's children are 78.83, 73.0, 79.0, 0.0, %85 respectively for Neurotic (N), Extroversion (E), Openness (O) being agree and being commitment factors. Chronbach alpha is obtained for Neurotic (%86), Extroversion (%83), Openness (%74) being agree (%76) and being commitment (%87) factors and total alpha equals to %83.

In order to measure the organizational commitment of studied people, Moyeroalen organizational commitment questionnaire is used. It has three main dimensions: emotional, continuous and assignment.¹¹

This questionnaire composed of 24 questions, each of its 8 questions measure one of the above- mentioned three dimensions. The first 8 questions study the emotional commitment, the second 8 questions study the continuous commitment and the third ones study the assignment commitment. To analyze finding statistically, descriptive statistics include frequency, frequency percentage, mean, standard deviation and relevant charts are used. Also inferential statistics is used which include Freedman test to ranking personality features and the type of organizational commitment. In addition to these, Spearman test is used to find the relationship between items of personality characters and organizational commitment.

RESULTS

Employment status of persons composed of 88 employees and 15 persons of services company forces personnel. 88 of them were formal employees and the other 15 persons are employment contract. The number of men is 69 and the number of women is 34. 91 of them are married and 12 persons are single. 35 persons are between 25- 35 years old, 45 persons are between 35- 45 years old and 23 of them are between 45 and 55 years old. The education status of 15 persons is under diploma, 15 persons have diploma, 13 persons have 2 year certificate, 46 persons have bachelor of art or science and 14 persons have MA degree or MS. The service experience status of 56 persons are under 15 years, 47 persons have service experience more than 15 years.

Agreeableness personality feature (%19.5) is the dominant personality feature. Openness personality feature (%18.5), Neurotic personality feature (%17.5), being conscience personality feature (%15), Extroversion personality feature (%11.5) are dominant personality features respectively.

Freedman test results show that the mean of ranks are not the same (P = 0.02). Being conscience personality feature has the first rank by rank mean equals to 34.72, Agreeableness style has the second rank by rank mean equals to 30.61, Extroversion style has the third rank by rank mean equals to 29.19. Openness style has the forth rank by rank mean equals to 23.46.

Neurotic style has the last (fifth) rank by rank mean equals to 21.04. Also Freedman test results show that the mean of ranks are not the same (P = 0.01). Emotional style has the first rank by rank mean equals to 3.60, assignment style has the second rank by rank mean equals to 3.51, and continuous style has the third rank by rank mean equals to 3.07.

DISCUSSION

Organizational commitment high levels express the acceptance of value and organizational goals in personnel which cause more loyalty and efforts to achieve organizations’ goals. Therefore, organizations are interested to creating work places with high commitment for their personnel, because the accomplished researches revealed that, the high organizational commitment of organizations will achieve valuable results such as; decrease of changes, increase the employees' motivation, increase the organizational support and improve the behaviors levels and so.^10-12

The results show that there is a relationship between Extroversion character and assignment, emotional commitment, according to other studies^11,13 positive excitements and emotional commitment have a positive relationship with each other. Extroversion is related to emotional commitment, because the positive excitements are the core of this aspect of character. On the other hand, since, Extroversion persons are able to communicate to others; they receive rewards and various encouragements. It leads to be increased their dependency and commitment to their occupation and organization.¹⁴

Also, there is a relationship between Neurotic character and emotional, continuous, assignment commitment in employees. The results show that, although there is a negative relationship between Neurotic character and commitment, but statistically, there is no relationship between them

This dimension of a character has the last priority among all, it is possible the existence of little sample size is the main reason to being non meaningful of this relationship. It needs to more researches.

Generally, since neurotic characters are worried about their new work places. They think that it has difficult experiences for themselves. They face to more problems in national Iranian south oil company-Tehran in which more contracts of people is new. Neurotic people have tendency to be worried, they are worry about their supports by the company.¹⁵

There is a relationship between acceptableness character and emotional, continuous, assignment commitment in employees.

The results show that, acceptableness character only has relationship with continuous commitment. According to other study,^12,14 it can be expressed that because, the continuous commitment are impressed by external aspects like material and financial incomes, therefore, if the organization prepare financial requests of employees, their continuous commitment to organization will increased. Hence, acceptableness persons have a relationship with material and financial incomes and continuous commitment in their personality features.

Also, results showed that there is a relationship between conscience character and emotional, continuous, assignment commitment in employees. There is a relationship between conscience character and emotional, continuous, assignment commitment. These results have consistent with other findings.^10-14 Since, deontology creates public careers dependency and gave employees more opportunity to earn more formal and informal organizational rewards, people who have high deontology, they will have continuous commitment too, because values of organization are too worthwhile for them to leave.

In this study, there is a relationship between openness character and emotional, continuous, assignment commitment in employees. The results show that, there is no relationship between openness character and emotional, continuous, assignment commitment. Since, openness is related to divergent thinking, these people are not worry about problems which are important for the others (investments of an organization).

Generally, there is a relationship between conscience, acceptableness, extroverted character and commitment in employees. It is mentionable that since, the organizational commitment has psychic state which specified persons’ relationship with an organization and cause emotional and mental feelings to be created in person than an organization, this organizational behavior has a relationship with status and motions of people. It has originated from their characters; therefore it is defensible that character is one of the effective key factors on employees.

CONCLUSIONS

According to the obtained results and former research findings, it is clear that the more attention of organizations to persons’ personality features is, the more their performance and higher efficiency in organizations will be. This study shows that the common features of organizations are related to personality factors. Therefore, by attention to persons' personality features in workplace and even during employment of the employees, it is possible to prevent some complicated problems for employees which may impress their performance negatively.

According to the obtained results, there is a positive relationship between persons who are extroverted with positive excitements and emotional commitment. Also, extroverted is related to assignment commitment. It is suggested to selection authorities that pay more attention to personality features of people and put in the first priority extroverted persons.

According to the obtained results, there is a relationship between acceptableness character and continuous commitment. It is suggested that these persons appointed to contract projects.

According to the obtained results, there is a relationship between conscience character and emotional, continuous, assignment commitment. It is suggested that these persons appointed to sensitive and key posts, according to the relationship of this character feature with organizational commitment, authorities should respect to these persons in order to enhance the efficiency of their organizations.

According to the obtained results, it can be suggested that employees should appointed to their occupations based on their characteristics. The following more suggestions are presented to here:

• 1. By the creation of specialist teams, organizational commitment of employees at different levels evaluated periodically and present the necessary feedback.
• 2. Effective personal factors on organizational commitment have been examines and the reason of low level of commitment to providing solutions are studied and analyzed in.
• 3. By providing appropriate conditions in order to the entrance of committed persons to the organization through exams and organizational commitment questionnaires completion and expert interviews and, be provided.
• 4. In determining the goals and values of the organization, employees' opinions are used and relevant decisions with their career field have been applied.
• 5. Be recognized committed persons in organizations and in addition to their encourages, higher levels of responsibility entrusted to them and provide constructive and positive competition for other personnel.

Funding: No funding sources

Conflict of interest: None declared

Ethical approval: The study was approved by the institutional ethics committee

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