The Effects of Employee Training on Organizational Commitment in Millennials - Research Methods Final Paper

Running head: TRAINING AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT 1
The Effects of Training on Organizational Commitment in Millennials
Joaquin Van Thienen
Florida International University

TRAINING AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT 2

Abstract
Millennials have been labeled as uncommitted and entitled employees. Past research has
reviewed the ways in which these new young professionals have changed previously established
organizations. The purpose of this study was to test how different types and quality of
organizational training could affect the sense of Organizational Commitment in millennial
employees. Two-hundred and thirty-two currently unemployed millennials were randomly
selected to participate in two different types of inductive training at the same organization. At the
end of this 15-days training, each individual in both groups completed the questionnaire for the
Allen & Meyer scale for Organizational Commitment. This study found that Millennial
participants had statistically significant lower Organizational Commitment levels (M = 61.71, SD
= 4.21) at the end of a basic training program vs. after a coaching based training program
(M=84.99 ± SD=4.61), t (230) = -40.159, P < 0.001. The results of the present study are
particularly relevant in today’s economy, which is marked by a recovery from the recession and
the immersion of Millennials in the workforce.
Keywords: Organizational Training, Organizational Commitment, Millennials, Human
Resources, Rotation


The Effects of Training on Organizational Commitment in Millennials
The field of Human Resources is challenged every time a new generation of workers
emerges. Managers are faced with the need to adapt to the different behavioral and cognitive
traits brought by the new hires, which often means re-strategizing current models of recruitment,
development, and retention of talent. Because of the recent economic recession, and the
emergence of the Millennial generation in the global workforce, rethinking recruitment and
retention strategies has been particularly relevant in the past decade. Most studies define
Millennials (often referred to as “Generation Y”) as those who were born between 1978 and
1995 (Kultalahti, & Viitala, 2015). They have entered the workforce in 2004, and will continue
to do so until 2022, (Hershatter & Epstein, 2010). Within the next decade, more than half of the
U.S workforce will be comprised by Millennials (Thompson & Gregory 2012).
When it comes to the process of hiring them, both businesses and academic researchers,
are concerned with the influence that these young professionals may have over other employees
from different generations and the overall established culture of a company (Myers &
Sadaghiani, 2010). In their analysis of this generation’s traits, Thompson and Gregory (2012)
identified common stereotypes associated with Millennials at work, and noted that they were
perceived as disloyal, needy, entitled, and casual. Other studies labeled them with a lack of
loyalty and work ethics, mainly presenting self-confident and self-absorbed behaviors (Myers &
Sadaghiani, 2010).
However, beyond this impatience, self-importance, and disloyalty, they have been known
to be more accepting of diversity, more capable with advanced tools of communication, and
more predisposed to work in teams than previous generations (Myers & Sadaghiani, 2010).
These are workers who expect to find a work-life balance, where their jobs have meaning and


purpose, and where clear opportunities to advance their careers through training and
development are available (Kultalahti, & Viitala, 2015). Because they had mostly good
experiences in their educational institutions, and were raised in a technological era, they are
coming into the workforce with high demands, which presents a challenge and an opportunity to
managers who want to hire, motivate, and retain them (Hershatter & Epstein, 2010).
Past research has focused on organizational culture and communication (Myers &
Sadaghiani, 2010), in order to get a better understanding of how to balance Human Resources
structures with the needs and expectations of these Millennials. One of the most important
factors to keep in mind is the perceived relationship between the employee and the employer.
Kultalahti and Viitala (2015), explain this relationship within the “psychological contract”, that
is, the employee’s perception of how well the employer fulfills its promises. When this contract
is perceived as “relational” is because there is a focus on long-term relationships, and in this
case, if the employee senses that the employer is not complying with their part, then they will
experience a decrease in commitment and loyalty. The opposite end of the spectrum presents a
situation where the employee senses a great deal of organizational citizenship and trust,
(Kultalahti, & Viitala, 2015). Developing trust and supportiveness with Millennials, enhances
their sense of involvement and commitment, which leads them to perform better in the
organization, (Myers & Sadaghiani, 2010). Furthermore, because this generation places great
value in learning and development, managers who wish to keep them motivated and engaged
should approach a coaching style leadership, which aims to maximize potential through positive
development, (Thompson & Gregory 2012).
These aforementioned studies agree on the fact that to retain talent and accelerate
productivity, companies should focus on developing a strong sense of commitment among their


employees. When both parties are loyal to each other, employers gain passionate and enthusiastic
workers who push the company forward, and employees gain opportunities to grow personally
and professionally through training and personalized coaching offered by the organization,
(Hershatter & Epstein, 2010). The type of commitment that should be fostered by employers
upon employees, is called Organizational Commitment, which Bulut and Culha (2010) define as
“the relative emotional strength of employees’ identification with and involvement in a particular
organization.” Here, identification and involvement refer to the employee’s adoption of the
organization’s mission and values as their own, and the level of psychological immersion in their
work role. The concept also encompasses a sense of loyalty, which is attributed to the affective
and emotional attachment to the organization, (Bulut & Culha, 2010).
In his revision of the term Organizational Commitment, Cohen (2007) tied the origin of
the term to research done by Becker (1960), and Porter, Steers, Mowday, & Boulian (1974). At
first it seems as if the term had been around for quiet a while, but in reality, Cohen explains, all
the latest publications on this topic have extended from research done by Meyer and Allen
(1984;1997), which, as recent as it is, stands as the dominant approach. A revision of the
multiple approaches to Organizational Commitment and how to measure it was done by Tayyab
in 2007. In 2011, Owoyemi, Oyelere, Elegbede, and Gbajumo-Sheriff, argued that not having
committed employees can hurt the company’s creative potential because it makes it harder to get
employees to bring new ideas and implement them. Developing a strong commitment strategy
can impact every major area related to human resources, from recruitment to performance
evaluation, but most importantly, it can enhance employees’ productivity and keep the company
competing through innovation.


Research by Boon and Arumugam (2006), and Owens (2006), has shown that one of the
variables that impacts the strength of Organizational Commitment, is Organizational Training.
However, it is not entirely clear weather it is the quality, the quantity, or a combination of the
two, that has the most direct effect on commitment. The first experiment, conducted by Boon and
Aranguren (2006) targeted six major organizations from the semiconductor contract
manufacturing industry in Malaysia. They measured the independent variable “corporate
culture”, which included the factor “training and development”, against the dependent variable
“Organizational Commitment”. Their results, obtained through factor analysis and hierarchical
regression, revealed that employees’ perception of corporate culture does affect their
Organizational Commitment. The authors argue that when preparing employees’ well for their
tasks from the beginning, they are able to perform better and feel more efficient, thus increasing
their sense of commitment to the task and ultimately the organization.
As mentioned above, another experiment that measured the relationship between
commitment and training was the one conducted by Owens (2006), where 218 employees from a
local state subdivision in southeastern United States were studied. In this case, the independent
variable “training” was tested against the dependent variable “Organizational Commitment” with
the assessment of seven-point Likert questionnaires during personal meetings. The results,
obtained through independent t-tests, showed that employees who received training reported
higher means for Organizational Commitment. These findings are key evidence which supports
the positive relationship between training and commitment in organizations.
There is a high demand for research in this field. Companies over the world are in need of
information related to commitment and job satisfaction, and even though research has been done,
the field is still relatively new and some of the studies conducted were not able to use valid and


reliable scales to measure their findings. When it comes to Millennials and their relationship to
the workplace, much of the research is qualitative. These studies have created a clear framework,
which presents us with the opportunity to start developing more experimental studies.
The findings of this literature review revealed that, beyond the common stereotypes,
Millennials can be passionate and committed employees if they find a working environment
where their job has a purpose and if management focuses on developing supportive relationships
(Hershatter et al. 2010; Kultalahti et al. 2015; Myers et al. 2010; Thompson et al. 2012). Other
studies have shown that organizational training has a positive impact on Organizational
Commitment (Boon et al. 2006; Owens, 2006; Owoyemi et al. 2011), and that this training
should be imparted through coaching and a leadership style that values long term relationships.
Companies who want to keep their Millennial employees, and keep them happy, should focus on
making training available through coaching style leadership. Based on this literature review, the
present study aims to test if Millennials who perceive more access to training and development
through coaching, will show higher levels of Organizational Commitment. In order to test this,
current students who belong to the category of Millennials, should be presented with two
different types of training and then measure their Organizational Commitment to see how the
training affected their perception of commitment.
Methods
Participants
The sample of 232 participants was 50% male (N = 116) and 50% female (N = 116),
where 20.7% self-identified as White American (N=48), 20% as Black/African American
(N=46), 20% as Native American (N=46), 20% as Asian American (N=46), and 20% as Native
Hawaiian (N=46). Participants’ ages ranged from 19 to 29 (M = 24, SD = 3.50).


Materials
The independent variable in this study was the type of training, more specifically “Basic”
and “Coaching-based” training. Basic training refers to imparting the minimum set of
instructions needed to succeed in performing the tasks for a specific position. For example, if the
targeted position were to be “coffee barista”, individuals who receive this type of training would
only be provided with the recipes for the different preparations of coffee beverages. On the other
hand, Coaching-based training is a personalized type of instruction, which adds to the set of
basic instructions the component of one-on-one sessions with a supervisor, who in turn also
teaches the trainee about the values, mission, and vision of the organization.
The present study was interested in organization commitment as the dependent variable,
which was measured using Allen & Meyer’s Commitment Scale. This scale presented a
questionnaire composed of 18 items divided into three sections: Affective Commitment,
Continuance Commitment, and Normative Commitment. In the first section participants were
asked questions such as “I would be very happy to spend the rest of my career with this
organization,” and they responded on a scale from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely
agree). This Likert-type answer was also used in the remaining two sections. Questions to
measure Continuance Commitment included: “It would be very hard for me to leave my
organization right now, even if I wanted to,” and “It wouldn’t be too costly for me to leave my
organization now.” Lastly, an example from the scale of a question to measure Normative
Commitment would be: “I do not believe that a person must always be loyal to his or her
organization.”
Procedure


Participants where recruited from the Florida International University pool of students.
Those who fit the criteria after completing a demographic questionnaire, were invited to
participate in the study. Two-hundred and thirty-two currently unemployed millennials were
randomly selected to participate in two different types of inductive training at the same
organization. Participants where told they were going to go through two weeks of training at an
an academically related organization and then they would be able to decide whether they wanted
to stay and work for the organization or not. The organization presented was the “Honors
College” at FIU, which for the sake of this study, pretended to be hiring for the following
positions: Front Desk, Office Clerk, Admissions Intern, Scholarships Intern, Student Programs
Intern, Honors Research Program Intern, and Communications Intern.
One group of 116 participants was assigned to receive basic training, and the remaining
116 were assigned to receive coaching-based training. Both training programs lasted two weeks.
At the end of this 15-days training, each individual in both groups completed the questionnaire
for the Allen & Meyer scale for Organizational Commitment.
Results
The appropriate statistic to analyze the data was an independent t-test. This analysis was
appropriate for this data because there was one categorical independent variable with two
independent levels and the dependent variable was measured on a continuous scale. For all
comparisons, an alpha level of 0.05 was adopted as the criterion for establishing statistical
significance.
This study found that Millennial participants had statistically significant lower
Organizational Commitment levels (M = 61.71, SD = 4.21) at the end of a basic training program
vs. after a coaching based training program (M=84.99 ± SD=4.61), t (230) = -40.159, P < 0.001.


Discussion
The present study confirmed our initial hypothesis, which stated that Millennials who
perceive more access to training and development through coaching, would show higher levels
of Organizational Commitment. These findings fall in accordance with those by Boon and
Arumugam (2006), and Owens (2006), which showed that Organizational Training affected the
strength of Organizational Commitment. The results of the present study are particularly relevant
in today’s economy, which is marked by a recovery from the recession and the immersion of
Millennials in the workforce. Understanding how these new professionals behave, react, and
modify existing cultures in both big and small organizations, is crucial to those in the field of
Human Resources and Industrial Psychology. Even though Millennials have been stereotyped
with negative labels (Thompson and Gregory, 2012) that present them as lazy and uncommitted
(Myers & Sadaghiani, 2010), this study shows that with the correct training, Millennials can
experience high levels of commitment to the organizations to which they belong. Developing this
commitment in employees is key because, as stated by Myers and Sadaghiani in 2010, it
translates into more productivity for the organization as a whole.
As mentioned in the literary review, some of the limitations to this field of research
include a lack of quantitative data (most of the previously done studies are descriptive and
present only qualitative data). As a clearer framework is developed by current research, the
opportunity to conduct more experimental studies is presented.
Even though we were able to recruit a very diverse sample for this study, we recommend
researchers around the world to replicate this experiment in order to test its validity across
different cultures. Since these findings revealed a possible solution to retaining talent in modern


organizations, more research in this field is highly encouraged in order to rethink previously
stablished strategies in Human Capital Management.


References
Boon. Ooi Keng and Arumugam. Veeri (2006). The influence of corporate culture on
Organizational Commitment: case study of semiconductor organizations in Malaysia.
Sunway Academic Journal, 3, 99-115.
http://sunway.edu.my/university/sites/default/files/webmaster/sunway_academic_journal/
volume%203/25178361-The-Influence-of-Corporate-Culture-on-Organizational-
Commitment-Case-Study-of-Semiconductor-Organizations-in-Malaysia.pdf
Bulut, C., & Culha, O. (2010). The effects of organizational training on Organizational
Commitment. International Journal of Training and Development, 14 (4), 309-322.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2419.2010.00360.x
Cohen, A. (2007). Commitment before and after: an evaluation and reconceptualization of
Organizational Commitment. Human Resources Management Review, 17, 336–54.
Hershatter, A., & Epstein, M. (2010). Millennials and the world of work: An organization and
management perspective. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25(2), 211-223.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10869-010-9160-y
Kultalahti, S., & Viitala, R. (2015). Generation Y—Challenging clients for HRM? Journal of
Managerial Psychology, 30(1), 101-114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JMP-08-2014-0230
Myers, K. K., & Sadaghiani, K. (2010). Millennials in the workplace: A communication
perspective on millennials' organizational relationships and performance. Journal of
Business and Psychology, 25(2), 225-238. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10869-010-9172-7
Owens, P. L. (2006). One more reason not to cut your training budget: The relationship between
training and organizational outcomes. Public Personnel Management, 35(2), 163-172.


Owoyemi, O. A., Oyelere, M., Elegbede, T., & Gbajumo-Sheriff, M. (2011). Enhancing
employees’ commitment to organization through training. IJBM International Journal of
Business and Management, 6(7).
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijbm/article/viewFile/11204/7976
Tayyab, S. (2007). An empirical assessment of Organizational Commitment measures. Pakistan
Journal of Psychological Research, 22(1-2), 1-21.
http://ezproxy.fiu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/621881274?accounti
d=10901
Thompson, C., & Gregory, J. B. (2012). Managing millennials: A framework for improving
attraction, motivation, and retention. The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 15(4), 237-246.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10887156.2012.730444


Appendix A
Demographic Questionnaire:
1. Age
i. _____
2. Gender
i. MALE – FEMALE – OTHER
3. Ethnicity
i. White American | Black/African American | Native American | Asian
American | Native Hawaiian | Hispanic
4. Zip Code
i. _____
5. Level of education (degree)
i. High School | Associate’s | Bachelor’s | Master’s | PhD | Other
6. Year of graduation (or expected)
i. _____
7. Are you currently a student at Florida International University?
i. YES - NO
8. What is your major or double major?
i. _____ _____
9. Are you complimenting it with a minor?
i. YES – NO
10. If yes, what is your minor in?
i. _____


11. What year are you on?
i. Freshman | Sophomore | Junior | Senior
12. How many classes are you currently taking?
i. _____
13. Are you looking for a job?
i. YES - NO
14. If yes, why?
i. _____
15. Are you planning on going to grad school immediately after graduation from your
Bachelor’s Degree?
i. YES – NO
16. Are you planning on going to grad school eventually after you receive your
Bachelor’s Degree?
i. YES – NO
17. Have you had a paying job in the past?
i. YES – NO
1. Briefly describe your role:
2. Reason for leaving:
18. Have you had any type of unpaid jobs in the past?
i. YES – NO
1. Briefly describe your role:
2. Reason for leaving:


19. Would you be willing to engage in a two-week inductive training at the Honors
College at FIU?
i. YES – NO
20. Are you interested in training for any of the following positions?
i. Front Desk | Office Clerk | Admissions Intern | Scholarships Intern | Student
Programs Intern | Honors Research Program Intern | Communications Intern


Appendix B

The Effects of Employee Training on Organizational Commitment in Millennials - Research Methods Final Paper

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