The Level of Students' Commitment to the University - Research Paper Example

commitment to the al affiliation Literature review In the last two decades, most research has focused on employee attitude, as well as its cause and consequence. The success of an organisation is determined by the employees’ attitude towards achieving the goals of the organisation and being a true member of an organisation. Contrast to this leads to the reduction in retention rate, increase in operating costs, and the employees are non-committed, lazy and late in their duties (Jain, 2009). Attitude is significant in an organization setting since it might affect the employees’ acceptance, involvement and dedication towards achieving the goals of the organization. Attitudes were defined as ‘certain regularities of an individual’s feelings’ thoughts and predispositions to act toward some aspect of his environment (Secord and Backman, 1969). There are three main components of attitudes structure, that is, affective, behavioral (or conative) and cognitive. These three components are known as the “ABC model” of attitudes. Affective component involves a person’s feeling and emotion about the particular object. Behavioral component, is the attitude that we behave or act in certain ways toward something while cognitive component involves our thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Everyone holds an attitude, for instance, when applying the concept in the school environment, students could have a positive feeling towards their assignment through affective component, the cognitive component enables them believe that the assignment would aid them obtain good grades in the exam. Pratkanis and Turner (1994) suggest that attitude can help people act effectively within the environment, define and maintain their self-identity and good relations with others. Thus, attitude can be measured in several ways such as self-report or questionnaires (Arnold et al., 2010). Additionally, Thurstone scaling and Likert scaling are usually used to measure attitude. However, the limitation of this measurement is that the result is often affected by social desirability effect (Connel, 2011). The participant tends to respond according to how they think the researcher desires them to and not reporting how they truly feel, which can confound the results of the research. Additionally, researcher may find it difficult to measure performance since attitude may differently affect various kinds of performance. (Arnold et al., 2010) Guest (1997); Wright & Gardener (2003) argue the link between attitude and performance. People generally work harder if they like their job. The fact that someone may dislike their job does not mean that they will resign. Turnover is significant in the organization since it may costly for a company if the performance fall or the employee leave the company. Therefore, organizational commitment was used as a predictor variable in employee performance studies. This is because it consistent link to turnover (Cohen 1993). However, (Judge et al., 2002) suggest that such link may decrease over time. There are several definitions of the organizational commitment. The most widely accepted definition of organizational commitment was defined as “the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in an organization (Mowday et al., 1979). There are three dimensions of commitment; continuance commitment which is a person’s perception of the costs and risks associated with leaving their current organization, affective commitment which is an “employee’s liking for an organization” (Fields, 2002) and normative commitment, which based on a person’s felt obligation and responsibility to their employing organization (Allen and Meyer, 1996; Turner and Chelladurai, 2005). Of these commitment dimensions, affective commitment promises most as a predictor of individual performance (Brett et al., 1995 and Angle and Lawson, 1994). Mathiue and Zajzc (1990) suggest that intrinsic factors such as challenge and autonomy, are essential in promoting commitment than extrinsic factors such as pay and conditions. The significance of employee commitment is determining whether employees are likely to improve their performance or to quit their jobs. Employees, who are effectively committed to the organization tend to perform better than those who are not (Meyer et al., 1989, Mowday et al., 1974 and Steers, 1977). Based on this relationship, if a student has a strong identification with the school, one is more likely to study harder. However, Mathieu and Zajac (1990) meta-analysis indicated only a weak direct relationship between commitment and performance. Mowday et al. (1982) suggest employees who are highly committed should have stronger desire to stay with their employer than those who are low committed. However, such relationship could not be applied in our following study (student commitment) since the student will stay with their current school even they are low committed. The aim of this paper is to represent photo results to link commitment with Royal Holloway. Before the research project and findings are presented, a brief overview of photo elicitation technique is provided. Photo elicitation is defined by Harper (2002) as “the simple idea of inserting photograph into a research interview” There are four main versions of photo elicitation. These are when visual material are produced by the researcher, gathered by research, produced by the research participant or gathered by the research participant (Matteucci, 2012). In the education field, such data usually consist of photographs that students have taken during their university life. In this research, the photographs were taken by each research participant and were considered as primary data. This form of active and creative participation is termed “autodriving” by Heisly and Levy (1991). Heisyl and Levy (1991) also states that behaviour could be observed from the photo driven by participant. However, the limitation of such technique is the meaning of the photo might be misinterpreted and lack of scientific legitimacy (Bell et al, 2013). In addition, the following research that examines organizational commitment without considering it as a multidimensional construct such as commitment to the teacher, assignment, and exam. Therefore, further research is needed in order to obtain a better result and deeper understanding of how the Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL) students commit to their college. Prior the analysis of the result, methodology of this research will be introduced. In the third section of the paper, the major result of the research will be summarized and the direction for future research recommended. Method The aim of this paper is to find out how the RHUL student is committed to the college. There are several ways of measuring organizational commitment such as Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ), self-report and visual method. In this research, photo elicitation technique was used as a methodological tool in order to draw out ideas and themes based on the photo that wastaken by the student. At the basic level, photo elicitation is the process of including a single or a set of picture (Harper, 2002). Sometimes photo elicitation can help identify hidden meaning and experience. It often provides a richer set of date over other techniques such as interview or questionnaire (Harper, 2002). This technique has been used across a range of academic areas such as sociology, psychology and education. Photo elicitation has various advantages. For example, it enables the researcher grasp young people’s point of view of the social worlds (Mckeever & Baruchel, 2006), image can reflect the behaviour of the photo taker. However, photograph favour rich interpretation which could potentially challenge researchers’ analyses (Becker, 2002; Schwartz, 1989). As stated, there are a number of ways of presenting an image. The version used in our research is the photos taken by the participants. A photograph captured by participant can minimize the subject bias of the research. Given freedom for the participant to take a photo without any constraint, it may increase the difficulties of the interpretation for the photo. However, such result reflects the true meaning of the photo. Moreover, this method is time consuming and it is possible for the participant to misunderstand the question and present an inappropriate photograph. Data was obtained between 1st November and 13th December 2014 from 7 Royal Holloway, University of London students across departments such as Management, Psychology, Economic, Criminology and Computer Science. The list of the participants will be shown in appendix. Before the analysis, invitations were sent through the Internet (RHUL Facebook page), and the participants were asked to capture photographically what they consider RHUL means to them. The participants were required to send their photos to the researcher through email or Facebook before 30th November 2014. Detail of the participants and photographs can be found in Appendix. Initially, there were 10 participants of the research. Two of the participants were not be able to submit their photos on time for some reasons such as struggling to take a photo related to the question “what RHUL means to you”. Because of the limited time, it was impossible for the researcher to invite more students for the research. In the beginning of the analysis, the researcher compared the photographs carefully and tried to find the correlation of the photographs. In the next section of the paper, eight photos will be analysed and the themes across them drawn out. Analysis Eight pictures captured by every student across different departments. Only two out of seven pictures that were taken, were typically around the Founder’s Building while the rest of the pictures were taken in different places such as Bedford library, Medicine (Campus Pub), Picture Gallery and so on. A few of the results were surprising. However, it still worth to analysis the pictures that captured by the student. Each picture will be analysed individually as following: Picture 1 (refer to the appendix 1.1) was taken by Jenny at Picture gallery, which held some world-class paintings, sculpture and so on including works by William Powell Frith, John Everett Millais and Edward Burnes-Jones. From the picture that Jenny took, it can be observed that Picture gallery now provides a place for students to gather and chat. It can be assumed that Jenny usually spends her time interact with her friends in picture, moreover, we observed that there were two pair of students chatting over a drink, which might indicate that they are enjoying the environment that the university had provided. If students enjoyed the environment provided by the university, they were more likely to be committed than when they disliked the environment. Picture 2 (refer to the appendix 1.2) was taken by Leo in the Founder’s building unlike the others who had generally taken a photo outside the building, According to the time shown in the photo (2:09p.m.) We presumed that Leo could have just finished his lecture, or was heading for an appointment with his tutor or to the library. Dannels (2015) suggests that the more communication between the manager and employee (in this case, student and tutor), the students are more likely to be committed. Picture 3 (refer to the appendix 1.3) was taken at Bedford by Nicholas. Other than the Founder’s library, Bedford library is the only place that holds a course resource and private study. It can be interpreted that study is his first priority in his school life. Thus, based on the photo taken by Nicholas, there is only one book on the shelf on the top shelf and no book on the bottom shelf. It might mean that Nicholas thinks there are no enough textbooks in the library. It may indicate that he is dissatisfied with the resources provided by the school. Therefore, based on the photo taken by Nicholas, he can be considered as slightly non-committed with the school because of inefficient support of his study. Picture 4 (refer to the appendix 1.4) was taken by Wong Ho Lam in his room. From the photo taken, we observed that there were four committee hoodies in his bed. It means he is highly involved with the school community. This is supported by Kiesler (1971) that “commitment as being created when a person does a thing publicly, at their own free will, and that would be difficult to undo”. It also indicates that he is more likely to help others who are less committed in the school. (Arnold et al., 2010) supports the assumption that he is highly committed with the college. Picture 5 (refer to the appendix 1.5) was taken at Bedford library by Hanna. Rainbow outside the building was captured in her photo. It can be assumed that her life in RHUL is colourful and she is committed to the University. Picture 6 (refer to the appendix 1.6) was taken at campus pub by Maddi Grn. Based on the photo, everyone seems happy. It would be supposed that she is enjoying her life in RHUL, not only as a place of stay, but also for gathering, and clubbing with her schoolmates in RHUL. It has been suggested that commitment can be fostered by positive experience (Arnold et al., 2010) who supports the idea that she is committed to the university. Picture 7 (refer to the appendix 1.7) was taken at Founder’s building by Ricky. In his photo, we observed that he is smiling in the photo which means Ricky is enjoying his life in RHUL. He is proud of the exterior of the founder’s building. Therefore, can be assumed that he is quite committed to RHUL. Picture 8 (refer to the appendix 1.8) was taken at Egham Station by Raymond. In his photo, it can be observed that there is a sign board. It shows that he is quite dissatisfied with his life in RHUL. He may rather stay in Central London than in the University, This would point out that he is less likely to be committed with the university. Conclusion This paper seeks analysis of the student commitment to the university through the photo elicitation technique. This technique leads the researcher to explore the hidden meaning that traditional textual method could not be reveal. From the photograph shown in appendix, 4 different themes could be drawn out: Founder’s building (Building); Campus pub (Entertainment); Event (Community) and Library (Study). Such different proved that different people hold different attitudes and shows that “what RHUL means” to different student is different. Based on the analysis above, it can be concluded that the most of participants are highly committed to their university. From the photo taken by participants, the results were astounding since only one of the negative attitudes can be found from the photo. Most of the photographs show that the participants are happy and had a positive attitude towards their school. From the photographs shown, it can be observed that school is not only a place for them to study, but also a place interact with the schoolmates. Consequently, the school should be aware of the needs of the students other than study. Students were committed to the college not only because of the reputation of the school, but also how the college provides a nice place for them to study or out of the study time such as a place that allows student interact each other or a place for entertainment. Bibliography Allen, N.J., & Meyer, J.P.. (1996). Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment to the Organization: An Examination of Construct Validity. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 49, p252-276 Angle, H. L., & Lawson, M.. (1994). Organizational commitment and employees’ performance ratings: Both type of commitment and type of performance count. Psychological Reports. 75, p1539-1551 Arnold et al (2010) Work Psychology: Understanding Human Behaviour in the Workplace, : Financial Times Prentice Hall. Becker, H. S.. (2002). 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Wright, P.M and Gardner, T.M (2003). The Human Resource ‒ Firm Performance Relationship: Methodological and Theoretical Challenges, in The New Workplace: A Guide to the Human Impact of Modern Working Practices. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. p311-328. Appendix I Picture 1 (Taken by Jenny) Picture 2 (Taken by Leo) Picture 3 (Taken by Nicholas) Picture 4 (Taken by Wong Ho Lam) Picture 5 (Taken by Hanna) Picture 5 (Taken by Maddi Grn) Picture 7 (Taken by Ricky To) Picture 8 (Taken by Raymond) Read More