Organizational commitment of North Indian journalists

Abstract

For a journalist, credibility is explicably associated with his/her profession. The pressure of deadlines (at the organizational level) and of morality (from the reader's perspective) is immense. However, the work life of journalists is an area rarely discussed and so is their organizational commitment. Allegiance towards a journalists' organization may depend on several factors like impetus, monetary benefits, progress, opportunity to advance in career, fairness by superiors, among others. Organizational commitment is a barometer to test the faithfulness of an employee towards the organization. This in turn is instrumental in deciding his/her work output and efficiency. This paper was a rigorous exercise to get connected with practical problems of journalists and getting them to answer this structured questionnaire, with complete fairness and accuracy, was an arduous yet fruitful task. The study hence analyzes the organizational commitment of 81 journalists (56 males and 25 females) working in the print media section headquartered at Chandigarh (India) using a time-tested and structured questionnaire. The analysis was conducted viz-a-viz gender and monthly incomes of these journalists. The results of the study indicated significantly higher commitment levels among male journalists based in Chandigarh compared to their female counterparts (on affective and continuous organizational commitment dimensions individually). Commitment towards the organization had no impact across various income groups of journalists, which rules an important possibility of monthly salary (or monetary aspect) being a factor affecting commitment levels.