The concept of employment commitment lies at the heart of any analysis of Human Resource Management. Really, the rationale for introducing Human Resource Management policies is to increase levels of commitment so positive outcome can result. Such is the importance of this construct. Yet, despite many studies on commitment, very little is understand of what managers mean by the term ‘commitment’ when they evaluate someone’s performance and motivation. Development of organizational commitment is basically by major theoretical approaches emerge from previous research on commitment: Firstly, commitment is view as an attitude of attachment to the organization, which leads to particular job-related behaviors. The committed employee, for example, is less often absent, and is less likely to leave the organization voluntarily, than are less committed employees.
Secondly, one line of research in organizations focuses on the implications of certain types of behaviors on subsequent attitudes. A typical finding is that employees who freely choose to behave in a certain way, and who find their decision difficult to change, becomes committed to the chosen behavior and develop attitudes consistent with their choice. One approach emphasizes the influence of commitment attitudes on behaviors, whereas the other emphasizes the influence of committing behaviors on attitude. Although the ‘commitment attitude behavior’ and ‘committing behavior attitude’ approaches emerge from different theoretical orientations, and have generated separate research traditions, understanding the commitment process is facilitated by viewing these two approaches as, inherently, inter-related. Further by virtue of commitment the human recourse management department can fully utilized their talent, skill, and efficiency of the employee in productive way to fulfill the personal goals of the employees and organizational goals. More over commitment helps in fulfilling the purpose of training imparted to the employees because in spite of increasing the level of skill through training without commitment these cannot be maintained. After all existence of adequate commitment amongst employees create an work culture environment and there by all employees can be motivated and encourage towards the excellent performance of their duties.
3.5 Social Support ‘ its Concept, Purpose, Types, Relations with Social Network and social Integration
3.5.1 Concept of Social support
The concept of social support is strategic which defined as the belief that one is cared for and loved, esteemed and valued. It is a strategic concept in not only giving understanding to the maintenance of health and the development of (mental and somatic) health problems, but also their prevention. Types and sources of social support can vary. Four main categories of social support are (i) emotional, (ii) appraisal, (iii) informational and (iv) instrumental support. Social support is closely related to the concept of social network, the ties to family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and others of significance to a person. Within this context, social support is the potential of the network to provide help.
It is important for organizations to collect information on social support in the employees, to enable both risk assessment and the planning of preventive interventions at different level such as:
a) Lack of social support increases the risk for Organizational Commitment:
Lack of social support is shown to increase the risk of both mental and somatic disorders, and seems to be especially important in stressful life situations. Poor social support is also associated with enhanced mortality. Social support may affect health through different pathways i.e. behavioral, psychological and physiological pathways.
b) Social support is determined by individual and environmental factors:
Social support is determined by factors at both the individual as well as the social level. Social support in adulthood may be to some extent genetically determined. Personality factors that might be associated with perceived social support are interpersonal trust and social fear. The position of a person within the social structure, which is determined by factors such as marital status, family size and age, will influence the probability of them receiving social support. The occurrence of social support depends on opportunities that an organization creates to commitment with employees.
c) Preventive interventions stimulate social support at different levels:
There are three types of preventive interventions aimed at stimulating social support: universal, selective or indicated interventions. The ultimate goal of universal interventions is to promote health. They are aim at providing social support at the group or community level. Selective preventions aim to strengthen social skills and coping abilities with, for example social skill training. Social support groups and self-help groups are other examples of selective prevention programs. Indicated prevention programmes aim to reduce the risk of people who already have symptoms of psychological stress, developing a mental disorder.
Social support is defining as help in difficult life situations. Social support is a concept that is generally understands in a spontaneous sense, as the help from other people in a difficult life situation. It is social support as ‘the individual belief that one is cared for and loved, esteemed and valued, and belongs to a network of communication and mutual obligations’. In spite of these widely accepted definitions of social support, there are very few consensuses in the literature about the definition and consequently the operation implementation of the concept. There is a need for further research, especially about what kind of support is most important for organizational commitment. Researcher tried to the applied social support score is the sum of the raw scores for each of the items. In the Guwahati Metro region, the sum-score of the Social Support Scale ranges. A score is classified as poor support, intermediate support and strong support.
3.5.2 Purpose of Social Support
Researcher thinks that in defining social support the qualities of support perceived (satisfaction) and provided social support for the managerial employees are significant here. Most of studies are constructed on the measurement of subjectively perceived support, whereas others aim at measuring social support in a more objective sense. One could also distinguish between the support received, and the expectations when in need, and between event specific support and general support. The definition in terms of a subjective feeling of support raises the question whether social support reflects a personality trait, rather than the actual social environment (Pierce et al., 1997). Most researchers will agree that the person as well as the situation affects perceived social support, and that the concept deals with the interaction between individual and social variables. In the present study researcher has tried to observe percentage of male and female managerial employees with poor support, intermediate support, and strong support in Public and private organizations of Guwahati Metro region.
3.5.3 Types of Social Support
Types and sources of social support may vary. Mainly four major categories of social support such as emotional, appraisal, informational and instrumental are in the use of research work. Researcher tried to observe it in her study.
a) Emotional support generally comes from family and close friends and is the most commonly recognized form of social support. It includes empathy, concern, caring, love and trust.
b) Appraisal support involves transmission of information in the form of affirmation, feedback and social comparison. This information is often evaluative and can come from family, friends, coworkers, or community sources.
c) Informational support includes advice, suggestions, or directives that assist the person respond to personal or situational demands.
d) Instrumental support is the most concrete direct form of social support, encompassing help in the form of money, time, in-kind assistance, and other explicit interventions on the person’s behalf.
3.5.4 Social Support & Concept of a Social Network
Social support is closely related to the concept of a social network, or the ties to family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and others of significance to the person. However, when the social network is described in structural terms, like size, range, density, proximity and homogeneity, social support normally refers to the qualitative aspects of the social network within this context, social support is the potential of the network to provide help in situations when needed. However, the social network may also be the cause of psychological problems.
Halle and Wellman present the interplay between social support, the social network, and psychological health in a model: The social network as a mediating construct. This model shows that social support can be seen as resulting from certain characteristics of the social network, which are in turn caused by environmental and personal factors. The model suggests that it is important to distinguish between the structural and quantitative aspects of the social network on the one side, and social support on the other. In this study researcher has correlated stress and social support with organizational commitment taking in to consideration managerial employees of Public and private sector in Guwahati Metro region.
3.5.5 Social integration and Social Support
Whereas the concept of social support mainly refers to the individual and group level, the concept of social integration can refer to the community level. A well-integrated community refers to well developed supportive relationships between people in the community, with everybody feeling accepted and included. A related concept is social capital, which is often used as the sum of supportive relationships in the community. Social capital may, however, also be used in a somewhat different meaning, such as solidarity’. It is an important for the development of organizational commitment.
In the fields of Organizational Behavior and Industrial/Organizational Psychology is, in a general sense, the employee’s psychological attachment to the organization. It can be contrasted with other work-related attitudes, such as job satisfaction, defined as an employee’s feelings about their job, and organizational identification, defined as the degree to which an employee experiences a ‘sense of oneness’ with their organization. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said that the sense of oneness in every individual should he ‘dynamic’ and not confined within the narrowness of a single identity. People have to judge contextually as to what oneness means in several aspects of our life. A person cannot have just one identity of oneness based on one’s nationality or religion.
Encompass the systematic study and careful application of knowledge about how people act within organizations. Organizational studies sometimes are considered a sister field for, or overarching designation that includes the disciplines like industrial and organizational psychology, organizational behavior, human resources, and management.
However, there is no universally accepted classification system for such subfields. Beyond this general sense, organizational scientists have developed many feelings especially in creative expression of organizational commitment; the present study is combination of the higher level employees stress and social support, which effects on organizational commitment. Researcher have selected Guwahati Metro region for their study. The study is design based on types of organizations i.e. Public and private organizations.