Relationship between work values and organizational commitment of public and private sector executives

Abstract

The present study explored the relationship between work va lues and organizational commitment of public and private sector executives. The study was completed in two phases. In the phase I, an indigenous questionn aire, namely. Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) was developed and empi rically tested on an independent sample of 150 male executives from different public and private sector organizations to measure the level of commitment. The results of phase I provided sufficient evidence for the rel iability of the questionnaire. Moreover, the correlation between sub scales of these measures and total scores were also high. The second phase of the study was concerned wi th hypotheses testing. The sample included 105 middle level executives from public sector and the same number of executives from the private sector. The age range of sample was between 25 and 56 years. Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) developed during the fi rst phase of the study and Survey of Work Values (Wallack. Goodal e. Wij ting & Smith. 197 1) were used as major data collection instruments. It was assumed that private sector executives will be more committed to their job and will show intrinsic orientation toward work compared to public sector execut ives. The results indicated significant differences between the two sectors on variables of work vaJues and organizational commitment. The executives of private sector had high mean scores on intrinsic work va lues. There was a significant positive correlation between intrinsic work values and organi zational commitment of private sector executives. The correlat ional analysis revealed that demographi c vari ables have a better relat ionship with work values compared to organizational commitment. The results have been di scli ssed in the context of prevailing social values in the Pakistani society.