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IntroductionIn considering the increase in unrest and protest marches against poor service delivery, the following question inevitably comes to mind: Do employees simply no longer care or take pride in providing a good service or are there other factors, such as the unfair treatment of employees, responsible for South Africa’s reputation for poor service delivery? According to the Global Competitiveness Report for 2010–2011, South Africa ranks 97th out of 139 in labour market efficiency, 135th for inflexible hiring and firing practices and 132nd for poor labour-employer relations.Problem statementOrganisations in today’s competitive world can perform at peak levels only if each employee is committed to the organisation’s objectives and all employees perform as effective team members. It is no longer sufficient for employees to come to work faithfully every day and to do their jobs independently. In the past, organisations secured the loyalty of their employees by guaranteeing job security. Recently, however, many organisations have responded to competitive pressures by downsizing, restructuring and transformation, and this has fostered a less secure organisational climate. A growing number of employees, therefore, feel that they are victims of broken promises. One of the challenges facing modern organisations is to maintain employee commitment in the current business environment. Anjani and Dhanapal (2012) reported on the importance of having committed employees to carry out the day-to-day business transactions of an organisation and to enable the organisation to deal with changes emerging from the environment.Key focusOrganisations are faced with ever-increasing competition and as they prepare for new challenges one of the key components of survival is the existence of a workforce that engages in certain types of behaviours. According to Yaniv, Lavi and Siti (2010), employee behaviour deemed to be essential for organisational effectiveness includes employees (1) entering and remaining with the organisation, (2) meeting specific role requirements and (3) engaging in innovative and spontaneous activity that goes beyond role prescriptions. Behaviour that goes beyond role prescriptions is referred to as organisational citizenship behaviour and plays a crucial role in promoting the effective functioning of the organisation (Parayitam & Guru-Gharana, 2011). The appointment of good workers is critical but of even greater significance is the organisation’s ability to create a committed workforce (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2010), hence the need for managers to...