DEMOGRAPHIC AND ORGANISATIONAL ANTECEDENTS OF COMMITMENT AMONG SME EMPLOYEES IN IMO STATE NIGERIA
ABSTRACT
The study examined some demographic (gender, age, length of service, educational qualification and marital status) and organisational (level of job tension and perceived job characteristics) antecedents of commitment among employees of fourteen SMEs in Imo State of Nigeria. A total of 174 participants, comprising of 117 females and 57 males, aged between 18 – 40 years with a mean age of 24.99 years and SD of 4.56 were administered with three instruments: Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn and Snoek’s (1964) Job-related Tension Inventory; Hackman and Oldman’s (1975) Job Characteristics Scale and Meyer, Allen and Smith’s (1993) three dimensional Organisational Commitment Questionnaire adapted by Gbadamosi (2006). A One-Way MANOVA was used to analyse data collected. Results indicated that, employees did not significantly differ in their levels of job tension on the three dimensions of organisational commitment (F = 3.357, P> 0.05; F = 0.292, P > 0.05; F = 0.200, P > 0.05). Also, employees, except for the continuance commitment (F = 4.344, P < 0.05), did not significantly differ in affective (F = 0.122, P > 0.05) and normative (F = 0.011, P > 0.05) commitment. It was also discovered that gender and age were significantly different for affective commitment (F = 4.589, P< 0.05; F = 5.987, P < 0.005) but were not significant for continuance (F = 0.171, P > 0.05; F = 0.105, P > 0.05) and normative (F = 0.235, P > 0.05, F = 0.509, P > 0.05) commitment. However, the findings showed that length of service, educational qualification and marital status were not statistically significantly different across all three dimensions of organisational commitment. The results were discussed with particular reference to the commitment needs of SME employees in Nigeria.