THE IMPACT OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS CLIMATE ON DUAL COMMITMENT AND INTENTION TO QUIT: EVIDENCE FROM FOOD AND BEVERAGES INDUSTRY

Abstract

Dual commitment of union employees to their unions and also to their employing organizations is a research area in which hardly any empirical research was carried out in Sri Lankan context. Therefore the research issue of the study was to empirically examine the association between industrial relations climate, dual commitment and intention to quit the organization and union of operational level employees in food and beverage industry in Sri Lanka. For the purpose of data collection three large scale highly unionized organizations in food and beverages industry were selected. A structured 7-point Likert scale questionnaire was administered to collect data from a randomly selected sample of 135 operational level employees representing all firms. Unit of analysis was at individual level. Scores were obtained separately for organizational commitment, union commitment,industrial relations climate and intention to quit. Correlation coefficient was used to test the hypotheses of the study. A significant positive correlation between the organization commitment and union commitment was evident indicating the existence of dual commitment. Industrial relations climate was positively related with organization and union commitment. Both organization commitment and union commitment were negatively correlated with intention to quit the organization. These findings revealed that harmonious industrial relations climate is a vital factor for existence of dual commitment and will reduce employees’ intention to leave the organization.

Key Words: Dual Commitment, Intention To Quit, Industrial Relations Climate

For full paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk