Gender and work ethics culture as predictors of employees' organisatiional commitment.

Abstract

This article investigates the predictive value which gender and work ethics culture have for organisational commitment, which has taken centre stage due to disruptions posed by global economic hardship, the proliferation of new legislation regarding corporate governance, and unrelenting organisational change. This turbulence has resulted in high levels of employee anxiety, mistrust in leadership, and a steep decline in employee loyalty and commitment. To investigate the relationship between gender, work ethics culture and employees’ commitment, a purposive sample (n = 839; females = 32%) was used from employees permanently employed in a public railway entity in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Data were collected by means of a biographical and demographic questionnaire, including the Ethical Corporate Virtue model and the Organisation Commitment Scale. The researchers analysed the data using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The results indicate that only work ethics culture acted as a predictor of the affective, continuance and normative commitment variables. These findings could guide management practitioners, human resource and other stakeholders who rely on the engagement and commitment of employees, to consciously and creatively use these leverages to compete more effectively for particularly the affective commitment of employees in organisations.