The Relationships between Career-related Human Resources Management Practices and Perceived Organizational Support on Affective Organizational Commitment: Evidences from Higher Educational Institutions of Sri Lanka

Abstract

Affective organizational commitment is defined as the employee's positive emotional attachment to the organization. Perceived organizational support (POS) is the degree to which employees believe that their organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being and fulfills socioemotional needs.[An employee who is affectively committed strongly identifies with the goals of the organization and desires to remain a part of the organization. Career-related Human Resource Management Practices and Perceived
Organizational Support are factors that influence Affective Organizational Commitment. The objective of this study was to identify the level of influence of four career-related human resource management practices such as career development opportunities, supervisory support, internal promotion and pay satisfaction and Perceived Organizational Support on affective organizational commitment in Administrative and Financial employees in 15 national universities, 8 postgraduate institutes and 9 other institutes in Sri Lanka. The primary categories of the sample were Administrative Officers and Financial Officers. A questionnaire survey was conducted to procure data. Pearson correlation analysis and the linear regression analysis were used to analyze the results. According to the results, there is a positive relationship between affective organizational commitment and the career related human resource management practices (career development opportunities, internal promotion, supervisory support and pay satisfaction) Further a positive relationship was also
observed between perceived organizational support and the affective organizational commitment individually as well as in combination with the career related human resource management practices. Therefore, it is
recommended to give a high priority to promote ‘perceived organizational support’, to make employees feel that they are supported by their institutions, encourage more support from the superiors, and promote the Internal Promotional schemes.

KEYWORDS: Perceived Organizational Support, Affective Organizational Commitment, Career Development Opportunities, Internal Promotion, Supervisory Support