THE MODERATING EFFECT OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT ON THE OCCUPATIONAL STRESS OUTCOME RELATIONSHIP

The study attempted to examine the effect of organizational commitment as a moderator of the stress-outcome relationship. In all, 106 (39 ma le, 67 female) professional and administrative officers from various d epartments of a public sector organization each completed a set of que stionnaires which consisted of the Occupational Stress Indicator (OSI) which has six subscales relating to stressors, six relating to coping strategies, three relating to Type A, three to locus of control as we ll as three outcome measures: mental health, physical health and a fiv e subscale job satisfaction measure. The Organizational Commitment Que stionnaire (OCQ) and a single item for intention to quit was also comp leted. According to previous findings (Begley & Czajka, 1993), individ uals with high organizational commitment suffered less negative outcom es in terms of job satisfaction, mental and physical health, and inten tion to quit as compared to those who were less committed. Therefore i t was predicted that commitment buffered the relationship between occu pational stress and stress outcomes. Regressions showed commitment as a main effect, but not in interaction overall. Stress was a significan t predictor of all four dependent variables: job satisfaction, mental ill-health, physical ill-health and intention to quit. Results showed that commitment was significant only in the relationship between stres s due to factors intrinsic to job, and mental ill-health. Therefore, t here was little evidence for the moderating effect of commitment in an y of the outcome variables. Commitment was found to affect the outcome variables directly while occupational stress was only found to predic t mental and physical health.