Golden Research Thought
Impact Factor:0.1870
Dr.
Rama Devi .V is a Professor in KLU Business School, KL University, Guntur (Dt.)
– 522502, Andhra Pradesh, INDIA (corresponding author, phone: 09000453743; e-mail: ramadevi@klunivesity.in).
**Pujitha.
V has completed MBA from KLU Business School, KL University, Guntur (Dt.),
Andhra Pradesh.
Abstract
Now-a-days, business organizations
are giving more importance to human resources as they are the sources of
competitive advantage. To survive and excel in the competitive environment,
human resources are of crucial importance. The effective performance of human
resources to a greater extent depends upon HRD climate that prevails in the
organization. Employees’ expectations and demands are changing
and the organisations have to respond to meet their expectations and provide
elite experience to them by providing them good developmental environment. The
main objective of the study is to determine the relationship between HRD
climate and organizational commitment. The data was collected using a
structured questionnaire based on Likert rating scale. The data was analyzed using statistical tools such as correlation and
ANOVA. The results have shown that HRD climate has significant impact on
organizational commitment.
Developmental environment, HRD
climate, Human Resources, Organizational commitment.
INTRODUCTION
In these days of cut-throat competition,
organizations have realized that a firm can survive in stiff competition only
through their valuable human resources. Human resources are significant strategic forces and
sources of sustained competitive advantage. Competent employees are the
greatest assets of any organization. Undoubtedly attracting the talented work
force is a challenge but a greater challenge is their retention. In the recent
times, employees’ expectations and demands are
changing and the organizations have to respond to meet their expectations and
provide elite experience to them by providing them good developmental
environment. This will help the
individuals to exploit their potentials and achieve the goals of the
organization, thereby ensuring optimization of human resources. HRD climate plays a pivotal role in the success of
any organization because it directly or indirectly affects the performance of
the employees. If HRD climate is favorable, employees’ contribution will be the
best towards the achievement of the organizational goals. Therefore,
by
providing a congenial climate, an organization can have sustainable development
through committed work force.
Conceptual framework
A.
HRD climate
The term HRD was initially introduced
in the American Society for Training and Development Conference in 1969 and it
was confined only to individual training and development. Its scope gradually expanded
during the 1970s and 1980s encompassing other subsystems like career
development, OD etc. in addition to training and development. Later on
different experts have expressed their views regarding the concept of HRD.
Employees enable an organization to achieve its goals and the management and
development of these resources is critical to an organization’s success (Schuler,
1992). Desimone, et al., (2002) defined
HRD as “a set of systematic and planned
activities designed by an organization to provide its members with the
opportunities to learn necessary skills to meet current and future job
demands”.
B.
Organizational commitment
Organizational commitment has been
defined as “a psychological state that characterizes an employee’s relationship
with an organization and has implications for the decision to continue membership
of the organization” (Meyer and Allen, 1991). Organizational commitment has 3
components – affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative
commitment. Affective commitment refers to the identification of an employee
with the organization, or strong emotional bonding and involvement in the
organization. It represents employee's emotional attachment to organization and
its goals and it results when there is synchronization between individual and
organizational values and goals. The employees who have affective commitment
would like to continue as members of the organization as they develop
belongingness with the organization.
When the employees know the costs of
leaving the organization they develop commitment because the costs of leaving
organization outweigh the benefits. Such commitment is referred as Continuance
commitment. When they leave the organization the employees may incur different
costs such as losing a good pay, social network, other benefits, dislocation,
etc. They would have made some investments which are non-transferable and this
also may come in the way of leaving the organization. Another factor leading to
a sense of continuance commitment may be the employees' perceived lack of
better alternatives existing outside the organization.
Normative commitment reflects an obligation to
continue with the organization and it has an ethical dimension associated with
it. Employees feel that they ought to remain with an organization because they
would have received many benefits from the organization and it is their moral
responsibility to be with the organization. Commitment is a reciprocating
concept in the sense that if the organization is committed to the employees, the
employees will also be committed to their organization.
Literature review
As the business environment becomes more tumultuous,
“it becomes more pertinent to deliberately, consistently, strategically and
innovatively develop, optimize and utilize their major value adding resource,
i.e. human resource” (Benjamin, 2012). 'Human Resource Development' (HRD)
signifies an effort aimed at "qualitative improvement of human beings in
their specific role as assets of an organization". HRD essentially
recognizes that 'people' are the important and valuable resources and that they
need to be developed in terms of their knowledge, skill and attitude for
achieving their personal as well as organizational goals (Salokhe, 2002). Harrison and Kessels (2004) defined HRD as an
organizational process comprising “the skillful planning and facilitation of a
variety of formal and informal learning and knowledge processes and
experiences, primarily but not exclusively in the workplace, in order that
organizational progress and individual potential can be enhanced through the
competence, adaptability, collaboration and knowledge-creating activity of all
who work for the organization.”
Solkhe and Chaudhary (2011) proved that there is significant relationship between Job
Satisfaction and Human Resource Development Climate and any positive change in
HRD Climate and its components will bring about positive changes in Job
Satisfaction and in turn impact the Organizational Performance in a positive
manner. An improvement in HRD Climate is essential for improving the level
of job satisfaction of the managers, which in turn will bring positive changes
in Organizational Performance of the company. The study conducted (Jain and et al., 1997) had shown
encouraging results, that there exists a significant and positive relationship
between HRD climate, organizational effectiveness and productivity. Rohmetra (1998) found out that there exists a
positive relationship between developmental climate and the level of
satisfaction of the employees. As per the study of Kumar and Patnaik (2002),
HRD climate had a positive association with job satisfaction, attitude and role
efficacy.
Saxena and Tiwari
(2009) indicated that HRD climate plays a
very important role in the success of any organization because directly or
indirectly it affects the performance of the employees. If the HRD climate is
good then the employees will contribute their maximum for the achievement of
the organizational objectives. The results of the present study have shown that
the HRD climate in the public sector bank is average and there is lot of scope
for improvement in the HRD climate. The results also shown that there is no
difference in the perception of the employees on the basis of gender,
qualification, designation but the perception of the employees differs on the
basis of age. The management can improve the HRD climate by introducing the
changes in HR policies and practices
Giauque and et al., (2010) stated that ‘organizational support’,
‘procedural justice’, as well as the perception of the organizational
reputation seems to have strong relations to Affective organizational
commitment. Employees are more likely to stay in their organization if they
believe they are treated fairly, they are supported in their efforts, and they work
for an organization benefiting of a good image and reputation.
Commitment is a necessary variable that drives
individual action (Hakim
and Viswesvaran, 2005).
Employee commitment is aimed at developing organizational productivity and
efficiency by implementing working conditions that promote employees’ ability
to identify with the organizational objectives. The practices generally
associated with this second strategy include the evaluation of development,
fair, competitive salaries and skills management together with continuing
education (Whitener, 2001). Gvaramadze (2008) has observed that, in these increasingly
flexible conditions, human resource development (HRD) managers try to retain
workers by developing strategies that empower individual employees.
The role of HR for effective facilitation of
organizational commitment by providing learning capabilities and by
psychologically empowering managers becomes an imperative. It is
an antecedent of citizenship behavior and intention to stay with or leave organizations
(Podasakoff, 2000).
Objectives of the study
Ø To study employees' perception of Human resource
development (HRD) climate of the organization.
Ø To explore the relationship between
HRD climate and organizational commitment.
Hypothesis
There is no significant relationship between organizational commitment
and HRD climate and Organizational commitment is independent of HRD climate.
Methodology
The employees working in an IT organization
constitute universe for the present study. The sample size is 226 and is drawn using simple random sampling method.
Primary data was collected from respondents through a structured questionnaire
designed with 30 closed end questions using a Likert scale ranging from 1-5.
The first part of the questionnaire consists of demographic details of the
respondents. The second part of the
questionnaire includes questions addressing both HRD climate and organizational
commitment - 22 questions on HRD dimensions and 8 questions on organizational
commitment. The inputs for questions on HRD dimensions are taken from the
questionnaire on HRD climate developed by Rao and Abraham (1985). The questions on organizational commitment are based on the scale developed by Meyer and et al., 1993.
Results
The satisfaction of the employees with overall
HRD climate is studied. Seven HRD Dimensions - Performance management system,
training, reward system, career development, counselling, quality of work life,
communication are identified for the present study.
TABLE I
Overall HRD Climate
Table
I clearly state that majority (82.74) of the respondents are highly satisfied
with the developmental climate and only few are less satisfied. It implies that development climate is good
and HRD practices adopted by the organization are appealing to the employees. In order to study the relationship
between commitment and overall HRD climate, correlation is calculated.
TABLE II
Correlation Between
Overall HRD Climate and Overall Organizational Commitment
The
correlation between HRD climate and organizational commitment is very positive
with a score of 0.781 and is highly significant. This implies that, if the
employees’ perception of HRD climate is favourable, their organizational
commitment will be high.
TABLE III
Correlation Between HRD
Dimensions And Organizational Commitment
There is a positive
correlation between all HRD dimensions and Commitment. Individually all
dimensions have positive relationship with commitment at 0.01 significance level.
Of all the HRD Dimensions, Training has high positive correlation (0.725) with
Commitment.
ANOVA is calculated to
study the impact of changes in dependent variable i.e organizational commitment
due to changes in independent variable i.e. HRD climate.
TABLE IV
Relationship Between
HRD climate And Organizational Commitment
ANOVA analysis explains that the changes in organizational commitment are
explained by the changes in HRD climate. It is reflected by F value which is
highly significant. Hence the null hypothesis that organizational commitment is
independent of HRD climate is rejected. The empirical study also reveals that
there exists strong relation between commitment and HRD dimensions.
Conclusion
It is well established today that it is not just financial
and technological capital that provide companies with the competitive edge, but
people, or human capital give the edge for the companies. Without attracting
and retaining the right people, in the right jobs, with the right skills, an
organization cannot perform well. It is critical to sharpen the competencies of
people to meet the challenges posed by the constant change in internal and
external factors affecting the ability of an organization to successfully
achieve its goals. The success of an
organization requires competent and committed people. To improve the
competence and organizational commitment of the employees, congenial HRD
climate is imperative.
References
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Rama Devi. V. has received her Doctorate degree from Sri Krishnadevaraya
University. She was University topper in graduation and post-graduation. At
present she is a professor in KLU Business School, KL University, Guntur (Dt),
Andhra Pradesh, India. She has 16 years
of teaching experience along with 12 years of research experience. Her area of
expertise is OB & HR. She has published many papers in national and
international journals. She has organized seminars, workshops and conferences
and has presented many papers in national and international conferences.
