Organizational Commitment and Determinants of the Commitment in the context of Changing Working Conditions: Turkey Example*

There are 3 aims of this study. These are 1) to determine whether there is a significant difference between affective, normative and continuance commitment of the academicians in foundation and state universities against the universities where they work or not, 2) to determine whether the affective, normative and continuance commitment of the academicians at foundation and state universities differs or not according to the perception of age, gender, marital status, academic title, wage, total working year in the organization, type of assignment, quality of work life and perception of protectiveness of the organization, 3) to present which variable and/or variables are more effective on the affective, normative and continuance commitment of the academicians working at foundation and state universities. The sample of the study is consisted of 570 academicians who work at foundation and state universities and are selected by using random sampling method. The data of the study was collected by using questionnaire form and Organizational Commitment Scale revised by Meyer, Allen and Smith (1993). The ‘t’ test was applied in order to test the relationship between the type of university and organizational commitment level and the ‘correlation analysis’ was made in order to determine the relationship between the type of university, social-demographic characteristics, working conditions, perception of protectiveness of the organization, quality of work life and affective, normative and continuance commitment. The ‘Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analysis’ was made in order to determine the effect of quality of work life, working conditions, perception of protectiveness of the organization and socio-demographic characteristics on the affective, normative and continuance commitment and the level of this effect. It was revealed that there is not any difference between academicians working at both types of university in terms of affective, normative and continuance commitment and the affective, normative and continuance commitment of the academicians working at both foundation and state universities differs according to the age, gender, marital status, academic title, wage, total working year in the organization, type of assignment, quality of work life and perception of protectiveness of the organization. On the other hand, it was also determined that the quality of work life is the most effective variable on the affective, normative and continuance commitment of the academicians working at both foundation and state universities and there is a low but negative relationship between quality of work life and continuance commitment of the academicians working at both foundation and state universities