Organisational Commitment in Public and Private Universities in Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of employee demographic characteristics and a bundle of eight human resource management practices on multidimensional organisational commitment in a non- Western context. Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data from 446 academic and 486 administrative employees from three public and three private universities in Kenya. In addition, semi-structured interviews with 15 academic and administrative employees were conducted. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent samples t-tests, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis. The results show that (a) HRM practices were stronger predictors of multidimensional organisational commitment than demographic characteristics; (b) the independent variables were stronger predictors of organisational commitment in private universities than in public universities; (c) HRM practices had stronger influence on affective and normative commitment than on continuance commitment; and (d) age, education, participation in decision making, promotional opportunities and distributive justice were the strongest predictors of multidimensional organizational commitment. This paper contributes to existing knowledge by testing the predictors of multidimensional organizational commitment in a non-Western context. Conclusions, recommendations and limitations are also discussed in the paper. Keywords: HRM practices; affective commitment; normative commitment; continuance commitment; universities; academics; administrative employees; Kenya

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