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This research examined the moderating role of age in the relationship between four organizational factors namely training, communication, rewards, and teamwork on the levels of affective commitment of bank employees. The sample consisted of 200 bank employees (149 males, 51 females) from Lahore and they were divided into three groups based on their ages: Below 31 years (n = 117), between 31 and 44 years (n = 56), and above 44 years (n = 27) to examine if the levels of commitment varied across these groups. This study applied Affective Organizational Commitment Scale (Allen & Meyer, 1990) and Employees' Perception of Organizational Factors Scale (Lau & Idris, 2001). Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis showed that age played a partial moderating role in determining the relationship between organizational factors and affective commitment. Findings showed that commitment for older employees increased with high levels of rewards, whereas, communication and higher levels of training lead to increase in affective commitment in younger workers. Teamwork did not have a significant relationship with any of the workers' three age groups' level of affective commitment.
Keywords. Bank employees, affective commitment, age, teamwork, training, communication.
In the face of current business environment which is characterized by cut throat competition and influx of multinational firms, organizations around the globe are continuously making efforts to increase the employee efficiency and productivity levels. Researchers and practitioners (e.g., Allen & Meyer, 1990; Costa, 2003) acknowledged the influence of human capital as being critical for value creation and goal achievement for organizations and yet human resource faces negligence in some parts of the world (Nakra, 2006). However, some renewed efforts by managers have been focusing on policies to transform the working conditions, whereas, others have focused on strategies like increased worker participation or development of work teams (Vallas, 2003). These efforts may lead to positive behavioral outcomes such as organizational commitment, which has been directly related to positive outcomes such as, lower operating costs, lower absenteeism, higher productivity, and efficiency (Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002).
Employees' commitment to his/her organization has been dubbed as a major determinant of positive organizational outcomes, such as, increased productivity and lower levels of turnover (Morrow & McElroy,1986; Porter, Crampon, & Smith, 1976). Other studies have linked organizational commitment...