Outline
- Introduction
- Background information
- Aim of the study
- Objectives of the study
- Methodology
- Research design
- Sampling techniques
- Data collection, measures, and data analysis
Introduction
The management of every company and organization usually faces the challenging task of implementing successful human resources policies. This is because organizations recognize the important roles their employees play in organizational performance (Beck & Wilson 2000; Zheng, Morrison & O’Neil 2006). Human resource strategies such as employee empowerment, team empowerment, participative management and strategic planning and their impact on employee commitment, employee satisfaction and the overall performance of the organization have been studied and documented by numerous researchers (Bambacas & Bordia 2009; Lee & Bruvold 2003; Meyer & Smith 2001). There is however a gap in the human resource literature concerning career development strategies adopted by organizations and their impact on their employees. This study aims to explore the effect of career development (in the form of training provided by the organization) on employees’ level of commitment. The study will be based on Meyer and Allen’s (1997) model of commitment. According to the model, commitment is of three types namely: affective, normative and continuance commitment. The focus of the study will be the Hilton Hotel.
Objectives
The main objectives of the study are:
- To study the effect of training on employees’ level of affective commitment
- To study the effect of training on employees’ level of normative commitment
- To study the effect of training on employees’ level of continuance commitment
Methodology
Research design
The study’s design will be a survey which will be used to investigate the employees of the hotel industry by selecting samples of a hotel within a certain region. To be specific, the hotel chosen for this study will be the Hilton Hotel which has various chains across the globe. The study will select the chains of the Hilton Hotel which are based in the United States only. This design will help the researcher to describe and explain (Zikmund 2003) how different training opportunities provided by the hotel affect employees’ level of affective, normative and continuance commitment.
Sampling techniques
The participants of the study will consist of employees from the chains of the Hilton Hotel based in the United States. The employees will first be selected using the purposive sampling technique which will enable the researcher to select only those employees who have worked at the Hilton Hotel for at least the last twenty-four months and who have participated in one or more of training programs provided by the Hotel. Once these two criteria have been met, random sampling will then be used to select the preferred sample size of the participants. The random sampling technique will help in the generalizability of the results to the general population (Leedy & Ormrod 2005).
Data collection, measures, and analysis
Data will be collected from secondary sources of data including the websites of the various chains of the hotel under study; the hotel chains’ annual reports; as well as employees’ performance reports. These reports will provide the researcher with data pertaining to the different training strategies the employees have undergone in the past two years as well as their level of commitment before and after the training programs. The main measures of the study are training, affective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment. Training will be measured by the type of training opportunities provided by the organization. The affective, normative and continuance levels of commitment will be measured by the Meyer and Allen’s (1997) scales. The data collected will be analyzed using both the descriptive analysis tools (mean and standard deviation) and inferential analysis tools (correlation analysis). The correlation analysis will depict the relationship between the independent and dependent variables of the study (Leedy & Ormrod 2005).
Reference
Bambacas, M & Bordia, P 2009, ‘Predicting different commitment components: The relative effects of how career development HRM practices are perceived’, Journal of Management & Organization, vol. 15, pp. 224-240.
Beck, K & Wilson, K 2000, ‘Development of affective organizational commitment: A cross-sequential examination of change with tenure’, Journal of Vocational Behaviour, vol. 56, pp. 114-136.
Lee, C & Bruvold, N 2003, ‘Creating value for employees: Investment in employee development’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 981-1000.
Leedy, P & Ormrod, J 2005, Practical research: Planning and design, 8th edn, Pearson, Upper Saddle River.
Meyer, J & Allen, N 1997, Commitment in the workplace: Theory, research and application, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Meyer, J & Smith, C 2001, ‘HRM practices and organizational commitment: Test of a mediation model’, Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 319-331.
Zheng, C, Morrison, M & O’Neil, G 2006, ‘An empirical study of high performance HRM practices in Chinese SMEs’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 17, no. 10, pp. 1772-1803.
Zikmund, W. 2003, Business research methods, 7th edn, Thomson/South-Western, Thousand Oaks, CA.