The Moderating Effect of Organizational Commitment on the Occupational Stress Outcome Relationship

The study attempted to examine the effect of organizational commitment as a moderator of the stress-outcome relationship. In all, 106 (39 male, 67 female) professional and administrative officers from various departments of a public sector organization each completed a set of questionnaires which consisted of the Occupational Stress Indicator (OSI) which has six subscales relating to stressors, six relating to coping strategies, three relating to Type A, three to locus of control as well as three outcome measures: mental health, physical health and a five subscale job satisfaction measure. The Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) and a single item for intention to quit was also completed. According to previous findings (Begley & Czajka, 1993), individuals with high organizational commitment suffered less negative outcomes in terms of job satisfaction, mental and physical health, and intention to quit as compared to those who were less committed. Therefore it was predicted that commitment buffered the relationship between occupational stress and stress outcomes. Regressions showed commitment as a main effect, but not in interaction overall. Stress was a significant predictor of all four dependent variables: job satisfaction, mental ill-health, physical ill-health and intention to quit. Results showed that commitment was significant only in the relationship between stress due to factors intrinsic to job, and mental ill-health. Therefore, there was little evidence for the moderating effect of commitment in any of the outcome variables. Commitment was found to affect the outcome variables directly while occupational stress was only found to predict mental and physical health.