Perceptions of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational justice among local and expatriate employees. (c2007)

Abstract

Organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational justice are some of the most important work attitudes studied in the work literature because of their direct implications on work outcomes such as turnover, absenteeism, and job performance. In the Middle East, the study of these work attitudes is rather limited to date. With recent developments taking place in many Arab Gulf states labor markets- namely the implementation of job localization or nationalization policies- the study of these work attitudes represents a pressing and timely issue. The Sultanate of Oman is used as a case in point to assess levels of organizational commitment (affective commitment and continuance commitment), job satisfaction, and organizational justice (procedural and distributive) among Omani and expatriate employees. The basic research questions investigate whether or not there are significant differences in these three conceptualizations among Omani and expatriate employees, and whether a relationship prevails between each of organizational commitment, job satisfaction and perceptions of justice. Based on questionnaire results distributed to 154 employees in Oman, and using hierarchical regressions, the results show that while job satisfaction is significantly higher for expatriate employees, continuance commitment is significantly more important among Omanis. Further, procedural justice is reported to be significantly positively related to affective commitment. Also, both distributive and procedural justice significantly affect job satisfaction levels in the Omani labor market.