The impact of age and gender diversity on oganisational commitment

Abstract

Establishing the relationship between managers and employees' age and gender differences and the level of commitment could be of benefit to the organisations in the sense that these demographic differences can be used as predictors of employees' organisational commitment. The main purpose of the study was specifically to examine the two relational demographic differences (age and gender differences) between manager and employee and the role they play on employees' organisational commitment. A raosoft sample size calculator was used to calculate the recommended sample size; therefore an interval or systematic random sample of 100 lower level employees. A self designed biographical and occupational data questionnaire, and to measure Organisational Commitment, Meyer and Allen (1997) which consists of 18 - item Likert-type rating scale was used. Data analysis was done by means of descriptive statistics, analysis of variance and the t-test. The results indicated a significant differences in the unexpected directions in affective commitment and continuance commitment between male employees supervised by male managers and male employees supervised by female managers; male employees were found to have higher levels of affective and continuance commitment when supervised by female managers. Female employees were found to have a higher level of normative commitment when supervised by male managers than when supervised by female managers which was also in the unexpected direction. Managers should be encouraged to apply the principles of workforce diversity in personnel selection and continue to provide diversity training in the workplace so as to dispel any vestiges of resistance to diversity which may have accounted for the partial support for the similarity/attraction paradigm that was demonstrated by the results. This study provides insights and information on age and gender differences as components of diversity which play an important role in the quality of manager-employee relationship in an organisation.