Aspects of Organizational Culture and the Impact on Affective Commitment, Absenteeism, and Turnover: a Study of the United States Poultry Industry

Abstract

Modern-day manufacturing industries (e.g., the poultry industry as the context of this study) has fully implemented the earliest rounds of Taylorization (scientific) and Gilbrethian (time-motion) methods to become a very detailed oriented algorithmic data-driven industry. In fact, current manufacturers are exemplars of revamped ergonomic work environments and improved work conditions. Still, what is compelling, despite having great market positioning, improved analytics, and better work environments, is that current manufacturers suffer from heightened labor disruptions, systematically driven by employee perceptions of informal norms that exist within organizational cultures. It is puzzling that current literature does not effectively illustrate how employee perceptions of informal norms influence labor disruptions such as absenteeism, affective commitment, and turnover. Therefore, I argue that informal organizational norms are ubiquitous and that it influences affective and behavioral outcomes. Informal organizational norms, despite being unofficial customs, group beliefs, and casual behaviors that generally conform to interpersonal relationships they are sometimes in direct conflict with corporate culture and workplace control policies. This is interesting because organizations equip leaders with administrative controls to influence labor disruptions; however, on the other hand, leaders sometimes experience conflicting events wherein control policies are not used to ameliorate disruptions in labor. Therefore, this study examines the disproportionate levels of labor disruptions within critical US manufacturing industries by investigating the influence of informal norms, workplace culture, control polices, and social relationships that determines the level of affective commitment which employees align.