The relationship between psychological capital and organizational commitment

Akbar Etebarian, Samira Tavakoli, Mehdi Abzari

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between psychological capital and organizational commitment of employees in a trade organization in Iran. The survey type of research was applied and the research perspective is descriptive-correlational in nature. The population included all employees of the organization in 2011 which amounted to 200. Sampling was done randomly at 5% error level using the Mitchel (2007) table. A population of 132 was sampled. The data was collected using Luthan et al.’s (2007) psychology questionnaire and Allen and Meyer (1990) organizational commitment questionnaire. The reliability in this study was calculated as 0.82 and 0.88, respectively. The results showed that organizational commitment and hope (as one of the dimensions of psychological capital) correlate positively but organizational commitment correlates inversely with resiliency. No significant relationship was found between optimism and self-efficacy (confidence) with organizational commitment. Among the three dimensions of organizational commitment, which includes emotional commitment, continuous commitment and normative commitment, only the relationship between psychological capital and emotional commitment was significant at 0.05. Regression analysis showed that only hope among psychological capital dimensions with a coefficient of 0.335 and resiliency with-0.521 were able to predict organizational commitment.

Keywords: Psychological capital, organizational commitment, hope, resiliency, self-efficacy, optimism, emotional commitment, continuous commitment, normative commitment