PREDICTING ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT: THE ROLE OF RELIGIOSITY AND ETHICAL IDEOLOGY

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the relationships between religiosity, ethical ideology, and organizational commitment. Organizational commitment has received enormous attention from researchers in the management field. However, few studies in a Muslim context, have explored this organizational attitude from both religious and ethical perspective. The purpose of this research is to investigate the link between Islamic religiosity (Islamic intrinsic religious motivation), ethical ideology (idealism versus relativism), and the three components of organizational commitment. More particularly, it seeks to show that religiosity and ethical ideology affect these three components differently. It is hypothesized that people with high Islamic intrinsic religious motivation will be more idealists and less relativist. Additionally, they will have higher normative commitment and lower continuance commitment than people with high extrinsic religious motivation. It is also hypothesized that idealists engage more in normative commitment and less in continuance commitment than relativists. Regarding affective commitment, it is postulated that the relationships between religiosity, ethical ideology, and affective commitment depend strongly on organizational factors. A conceptual model is proposed to show the relationships between these variables.