Organizational Commitment and Ethical Cognition Among Retail Pharmacist in Japan

This study reports the results of a survey which investigated the impact of organizational commitment on retail pharmacist in Japan. The authors examined whether organizational dependence facilitates unethical behavior by focusing on organizational commitment. Organizational commitment is a concept to measure an individual’s psychological attitudes toward his or her organization. Objectives of commitment have long recognized to be a multidimensional concept. Multidimensional model is widely recognized in the organizational behavior field. This study focuses on affective commitment and continuance commitment. The authors conducted multiple regression analysis analyzing the relationship between organizational commitment and behavioral pattern. The dependent variable in this study is “withholding the information to protect the company.” The major result suggests that the degree of continuance commitment has a substantial effect on the behavior of withholding information, while affective commitment does not have a significant effect. The results suggest that the continuance commitment has unique behavioral aspect, different from affective commitment. Continuance commitment measures the way of relating oneself to the organization on the basis of cost-benefit awareness. Based on this definition, it implies that the strength of continuance commitment is sensitive to the benefit from withholding information, or to the cost of disclosure. It is reasonable to suppose that continuance commitment lead to withholding information. In the context of organizational behavior, this is a behavioral aspect of continuance commitment. The impact of continuance commitment, both in research and practice, is discussed.