Final Project

Walden Sports, Inc.

by

Sandra Andrews

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirements for the course

Job Attitudes, Measurement, and Change

Walden University

Introduction

Background:

Walden Sports, Inc. is a small retail company specializing in everything adventure travelers require such as sleeping bags, tents, maps, guide books, and even insurance. The company employs over 70 part-time and full-time workers distributed over a variety of departments. The company opened twelve years ago and most recently began expanding their product base to include Earth Travelers, a tour operator specializing in package vacations. The acquisition of Earth Travelers allowed Walden Sports the opportunity to diversify and grow into another industry in an effort to increase revenue. Overall, Walden has been successful in their acquisition with Earth Travelers in that their six-month post-acquisition showed increased sales of vacation packages and insurance policies (Laureate Education, 2012b).

Problem Statement

Despite their success, Walden Sports is also experiencing some organizational challenges with their employees that resulted in sharp decreases in productivity, increases in turnover and absenteeism with their employees. Currently, their employees have lost their work motivation and, in addition to missing work and quitting, have also stopped working extra hours and neglected corporate sponsored social events (Laureate 2012b). There is no longer a level of pride and loyalty among the employees at Walden and it has become of grave concern with leadership. As a result, Benjamin Jones, the Chief Executive Officer of Walden Sports, Inc. has hired me as their consultant to measure the job attitudes of their employees in an attempt to help understand and recommend solutions to their growing problem of negative employee attitudes.

Theoretical Framework

In addition to job attitudinal effects, Walden Sports, Inc. employees may also be experiencing perceived trust issues and role conflict dilemmas. Perceived Organizational Support (POS) is derived from the theory that states employees create an emotional, human-like affection for their job and will impart work effort if it is perceived that the organization values their work, well-being and fulfills socioemotional needs (Shanock & Eisenberger, 2006). In other words and with respect to Walden Sports’ employees, a social exchange between work efforts and rewards are expected and must take place if it is perceived that the company values their employees (ie. effort-outcome expectancy) (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchinson, & Sowa, 1986). Walden employees are being promised roles and responsibilities by managers that go undelivered building a lack of perceived trust and support among their employees.

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of organizational change on the attitudes (job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment) of Walden Sports employees with the intent of providing constructive feedback and resolutions to leadership.

As the contractor, my goal is to conduct observations, focus group interviews , and surveys with randomly selected Walden Sports’ employees to gather data and gain some insight into why there was a shift in employee morale and attitude since the acquisition with Earth Travelers; are employees being treated unfairly? Are employees being overworked resulting in burnout? Are employees unclear of their roles with the organization creating frustration and confusion? The reason for their lack of motivation may be multidimensional and as the consultant, a plan is to identify the rationale behind it all to increase organizational effectiveness. Uncontrolled observations will be conducted within the organization and with full and part time employees to study and collect data of the behaviors firsthand as it occurs in real time. Observations will also occur at the corporate as well as Walden retail locations.

Additionally, focus group interviews will be conducted with employees to obtain supplemental data on why employees lack work motivation since the acquisition with Earth Travelers. The interview approach is able to gather a group representative of full and part time employees aimed to discuss topics of commitment, job involvement, and satisfaction. The focus group technique is effective in providing more in depth and useful details when incorporated with employee observations.

Lastly, a survey consisting of questions designed to measure job attitudes will be compiled and distributed to a sample of Walden Sports, Inc. employees to gather data and then measure the variables that affect job attitudes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement) along with selected antecedent variables (perceived organizational support, organizational trust, and role conflict).

Literature Search Methods

Literary data search of relevant information on job attitudes (job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment) and its antecedents (perceived organizational support, trust, and role conflict) was performed using a five-year timeframe primarily between 2011 and 2017. The main database utilized for peer-reviewed literary search was Thoreau Multi-Database attained from the Walden University Library. The database allows a literary search to be conducted across many library records throughout the identified timeframe. Additional databases used were Google Scholar and several industry specific textbooks. The quest for research on the topics, the Journal of Applied Psychology appeared to have been an important journal of well-documented topics on the understanding of psychology outside of the clinical realm. Therefore, systematic searches in specific databases such as the Journal of Applied Psychology was also conducted for literary documents. Within both databases, search items included ‘job attitudes’, ‘organizational commitment’, ‘job satisfaction’, ‘job involvement’, ‘job attitudes and job satisfaction’, ‘job attitudes and organizational commitment’, job attitudes and job involvement’. Other key words included ‘job attitudes and perceived organizational support’, or ‘relationship between job satisfaction and role conflict’, ‘antecedents of job attitude’, ‘Meyer-Allen’, ‘survey of perceived organizational support’. The extensive literature research produced many articles in which only articles specific to my search were identified and used for research. Outside of the specific key words, research and search methods were also conducted in combination on ‘change management and job attitudes’. Additional search methods included cross referencing the bibliographies of other literature reviews as well as the reference section of recent studies on similar topics.

Literature Review

With the changing world of work comes increase in technology, globalization, and changes in acquiring talent in the workplace. However, predictable effects such as mergers, acquisitions, and downsizing are also a part of work transformation that can prove to be either beneficial or detrimental to organizations (Cascio, 2003). Research indicates that 75 percent of all mergers and acquisitions in the United States fail with only 15 percent achieving their financial goals and creating value internally (Guerrero, 2014). Though one may believe the main contribution to the failure of mergers and acquisitions is due to a lack of transformation management on behalf of company executives, it is actually reported to be associated to the feelings of insecurity among employees (Guerrero, 2014). Employees are unsure of the motives of organizational leadership during corporate reorganizations and question whether or not they should trust that their employers value them enough to commit to keeping their jobs available for work, or if they should expect changes to their role (i.e. increase responsibilities). All of the changes that accompany a business reorganization generates a stressful environment for employees, ultimately altering their attitudes by producing a decrease in job satisfaction, commitment, perceptions of trust, and increase turnover (Cascio, 2003).

Job attitudes as it relates to job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment have been the subject of I/O research over the last few decades (Yousef, 2017) particularly because of their impact on employers, employees, and organizational change. Job attitudes, defined by Hulin and Judge (2003), are feelings or beliefs an individual has about his or her job. A consequence of work attitude is job satisfaction and organizational commitment, two constructs that have been researched to be correlated to job performance, turnover intention, and attitudes toward organizational change (Yousef, 2017). In addition to the above, job satisfaction is identified to affect employee absenteeism, organizational commitment, overall health and life satisfaction while organizational commitment also impacts job satisfaction. Job involvement is another result of job attitude, and unlike job satisfaction and organizational commitment to which a vast amount of research has dominated the I/O field, minimum research has been conducted to determine the discriminant validity between all three variables (Brooke, Russell, & Price, 1988). It is posited that Walden Sports’ organizational change because of their acquisition has caused a change in the organizational atmosphere.

Literature suggests that “affect and motivation are associated in that affect sets motivation into motion, and the outcomes of motivation help to set the stage for affect (attitudes and emotions)” (Kanfer, 2009 pg. 119). Job satisfaction is recognized as an affective behavior or outcome to one’s job according to situational factors at work such as work conditions, work environment, or the nature of work (Boswell, Shipp, Payne, & Culbertson, 2009). Many organizations deem the first 90 days of a job as a crucial period for any new employee (Maurer, 2015). Not only is the employee attempting to assimilate himself to the job, but he is also trying to adjust to the organization and its culture, forming new relationships, and going beyond their level of expectations to impress his boss. Organizations must ensure the first few weeks of hiring a new employee comprise of a high level of job satisfaction and not of weakened patterns of false promises and indentures (Bowell et. al., 2009).

Walden made several promises to their new and tenured employees in transition to which they did not fulfill. Not only did the failed promises jeopardize the employer-employee psychological contract (Cascio, 2003) and create a negative perception of the company and a level of distrust, but role conflict and ambiguity built tension and consequently, affects job satisfaction (Palomino & Frezatti, 2015). Walden employees currently are unsure of their tasks and responsibilities and are also uncertain to whom to raise this issue of ambiguity (Laureate Education, 2012). As a result, many workers do not know who they are to report to regarding inquiries or issues on the job. Consequently, employers should understand antecedent variable such as POS, trust, and role conflict should be address to mediate job attitudes. Failure to keep promises to employees is a key factor of organizational indifference (Levy, 2006), job dissatisfaction and poor performance (Aselage & Eisenberger, 2003). In order to remedy, it is essential organizations form a relationship of trust, begin to value their employees’ contributions by clarifying roles and issuing rewards, and care about their overall well-being. A positive perception of organizational support is considered to reduce withdrawal behaviors such as employee turnover intentions, tardiness, absenteeism, and increase job attitudes by way of satisfaction (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986).

Survey Instrument

The topic of organizational commitment is not new to organizational psychology. Psychologists have been assessing the attitudes and behaviors of employees in the workplace in an attempt to understand their commitment levels for the purpose of reducing turnover and increasing productivity. Relentless research conducted on the attitudinal and behavioral aspects of commitment initiated new research and insights on this topic. Meyer and Allen (1991) were the first to argue that employee commitment goes beyond the personal values and goals of an individual and incorporate their psychological obligation to an organization. As a result, they developed the Meyer and Allen Model of Organizational Commitment that accepts organizational commitment as a uni-dimensional construct but delved deeper into the nature of the construct (Meyer, Allen, & Topolnytsky, 2001). Though the model recognizes the independent, yet significant role attitudinal and behavioral commitment play on an employees’ work, Meyer & All en (1991) expresses the need of having them examined together to obtain the most accurate measure of commitment.

The Meyer-Allen Three-Component Organizational Commitment Scale was implemented to measure employee’s organizational commitment according to the affective, continuous, and normative commitment levels. The scales are categorized according to commitment and include six items per scale. Items in each scale are scored using a 5-point Likert Scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagreed) to 5 (strongly agreed) (Övgü Çakmak-Otluoğlu & Ünsal-Akbiyik, 2015). After listening to the employees at Walden Sports, Inc. some sample questions to incorporate into the survey to gain deeper insight from all employees are: (Meyer & Allen, 1990):

Affective: “This organization has a great deal of personal meaning to me.”

Continuous: “It would be very hard to leave my organization right now, even if I wanted to.”

Normative: “If I got another offer for a better job elsewhere I would not feel it was right to leave my organization.”

Organizational commitment is an affective type of attachment between an employee and their work organization (Jaussi, 2007). Jaussi (2007) defined this form of commitment as ‘having an overall liking for the organization and feelings of happiness about it’ (pg. 55). This employee fully believes in the organizations’ values and goals, is satisfied with their work, and feel personally responsible for the company’s overall success. Behavioral commitment, on the other hand, is when individual employees engage into a particular organization (i.e. performance, productivity, job satisfaction, social participation). Though Meyer and Allen’s model acknowledges the intimate level of commitment; it also realizes a multidimensional psychological influence employees face with their work (Meyer, Allen, & Topolnytsky, 2001). Therefore, the objective of the model identified three common psychological themes of commitment: affective commitment, continuous commitment, and normative commitment.

Continuous commitment has a cost associated with their commitment (i.e. retirement, benefits, pay) (Meyer & Allen, 1990). Employees with this undertaking exert work effort only if the organization met its commitment. An employee working with an organization because it pays for his tuition may feel obligated to stay with the company providing the tuition is paid.

Employees committed normatively experience a moral obligation to their organization creating a need to ‘have to’ stay in oppose to ‘want to say’. An employee at a small company with the only knowledge of specific skills may feel a level of guilt if they left the company.

The model is favorable amongst researchers because of its high validity and coverage of all psychological aspects of commitment. In the early 90’s, Meyer and Allen (1990) tested their model and resulted in internal consistency estimates of ranged from .74 to .89 for affective commitment, .69 to .84 for the continuous commitment, and .69 to .79 for the normative commitment. Another study conducted on job satisfaction and organizational commitment by Valaei and Rezaei (2016) in 2015 also illustrated high validity and reliability. All constructs received an alpha value of more than 0.7 making the three-component instrument an important model in measuring commitment constructs.

Method

The variables selected to help predict the job attitudes at Walden Sports, Inc. are role conflict, trust, and perceived organizational support. According to the details provided in the various literature on Walden Sports, Inc., the employees lack work motivation as a result of the Earth Travelers acquisition (Laureate Education, 2012). The company is currently experiencing employee absenteeism, increased turnover, as well as low employee representation at company sponsored social events. Tenured employees anticipate leaving the company but feel some level of commitment to the company. Moreover, newer employees and those who have transferred within departments since the acquisition have since developed a negative perception of Walden Sports due to its absence of organizational support. Overall, the employees at Walden Sports have a shift in job attitude potentially because of its organizati onal changes. It is important that as their consultant, I am prepared to diagnose the cause and implement intervention techniques to help successfully manage the human dynamics at Walden Sports, Inc. (Laureate Education, 2012).

Variable #1: Perceived Organizational Support (POS)

To measure perceived organizational support, the Survey of Perceived Organizational Support (SPOS) scale developed by Celep (2000) is most effective (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, & Soma, 1986) and will be used to assess just how well Walden employees think their organization supports them. The SPOS is a 36-item questionnaire which incorporates a 7-point Likert scale with 1=strongly disagree, and 7=strongly agree. The survey requires employees to answer statements such as ‘The organization values my contributions to its well-being’ or ‘The organization takes pride in my accomplishments at work.’ The scale is effective because of its reliability coefficients of .93 on the long version and .89 on the short 8-item. The original 36-item long version carries a very high internal validity being close to 1.00 and also mirrors that with its short version. For this diagnostic survey, either version would be credible in de monst rating the POS for Walden Sports employees.

Variable #2: Trust

Trust is a crucial factor in human relations and behaviors as well as an important aspect of organizational life (Yilmaz, 2008). Employees must perceive a level of organizational trust in order to feel satisfied and committed to the organization (Fard & Karimi, 2015) and Walden employees appear to have a feeling of mistrust toward their employer. Trust falls in line with POS in that if employees do not perceive a psychologically and physically safe environment, it will ultimately affect their level of faith and expectations in their employer (Celep & Yilmazturk, 2012). The Organizational Trust Inventory (OTI) will explore Walden employees level of organizational trust. The OTI closely measures what is understood to be the clear definition of trust on three dimensions; keeping commitments, negotiating honestly, and not taking excessive advantage (Vidotto, Vicentini, Argentero, & Bromiley, 2008) and has an internal validity of 0.84 (dimension 1), .78 (dimension 2), and .88 (dimension 3) respectively (Nyhan & Marlowe, 1997). It is a 12-item, and 7-point Likert scale that inquire on ‘The organization I work for conducts business in an ethical manner’ and ‘There are processes in place to handle complaints and problems within the company’.

Variable #3: Role Conflict

The role conflict variable involves having to confirm to incompatible work demands such as conducting multiple roles simultaneously (Steyl & Koekemoer, 2011) while role ambiguity is not having a clear understanding of a person’s responsibility, both of which are evident at Walden Sports. Employees are confused and frustrated on who to turn to for questions and answers on work issues and complaints. Human resources instruct employees to reach out to their immediate manager, but for some, identifying that person has become a task. Managers are unclear on who are their subordinates and vice versa. The scale is composed of 14-items of which eight measures the strength of the role conflict variable while the others measure role ambiguity on a 5-point Likert scale (1=totally disagree to 5=totally agree). This scale has been utilized in other studies and was shown to measure each construct satisfactorily. The Cronbach’s alpha indicates coefficients of .60 or .70 which is considered as adequate in exploratory research (Palomino & Frezatti, 2015). Walden employees will be asked to rate role conflict statements such as ‘I have to do things that should be done in a different way’ or role ambiguity statements such as ‘It is clear what the objectives of my job are.’

Procedure

For the purpose of obtaining adequate data to construct an appropriate questionnaire survey question, a focus group will be conducted with random Walden Sports employees. The individuals were recruited using an employee email listing provided by human resources. The goal was to obtain at least 5-8 people for the focus group interview. In an effort to remain ethical in the realm of research, individuals were asked to respond via email directly to the contractors if they were willing to participate. The recruited attempts produced five employees of which information collected were used to gather initial data for further research. Beyond the focus group, data for the present analysis were collected using full-time and part-time Walden employees to include individual contributors and management. The results of the focus group interview were done to establish the antecedents predicted of job attitudes at Walden Sports.

Sample

The sample size of 68 was estimated by factoring the confidence level at 95% with a confidence interval 1.96 and a N= 70 which may yield an average response rate of 35 percent for online surveys (Baruch & Holtom, 2008) producing a sample of 24 employees. A total of 70 emails were distributed to Walden employees using the simple random sampling technique containing instructions and consent forms. The simple random sampling technique ensures that each member has an equal chance of being chosen to be included in the research (Babbie, 2001). As with the focus group, ethical standards were met in the realm of research since individuals were asked to respond via email directly to the contractors if they were willing to participate.

Measures

To measure job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment, multiple item survey measures were utilized. To measure job satisfaction, the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) scale provided the validity and reliability for this survey. The JDI, a common index of 72 items used to measure five factors associated with job attitudes, is a heterogeneous scale available for all industries. The scale measures employee’s pay, promotion, supervision, co-workers, and the work itself providing unique responses within each category (Ironson, Smith, Brannick, Gibson & Paul, 1989). The JDI yields a .88 in internal consistency and has been revised a few times due to the ever evolving nature of technology and work (Lake, Gopalkrishnan, Sliter, & Withrow, n.d ).   The JDI has 72 items with response levels of Y for ‘yes’, N for ‘no’ and NA for ‘cannot decide.’

The Meyer-Allen Three-Component Organizational Commitment measures the extent to which employees identify with organizational goals and values while intending to stay with the organization (Brooke, Russell, & Price, 1988). It was implemented to measure employee’s organizational commitment according to the affective, continuous, and normative commitment levels.

Job involvement involves the cognitive psychological process of being fully engaged with one’s job. To measure job involvement, the Lodahl and Kejner’s job involvement scale will be used. It is a five-item scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree, to measure the psychological aspect of job involvement in which participants are asked questions such as “I am very much involved personally in my work”. The psychometric measures for this scale were .82 (Stoner & Gallagher, 2010).

Results

Data was collected using several instruments of measure to understand the job attitudes (overall job satisfaction (JS), affective (AC), normative (NC), continuance (CC) organizational commitment, and job involvement (JI)) and its antecedent variables (trust (TR), perceived organizational support (POS), and role conflict (RC)) at Walden Sports, Inc. Each variable from the instruments and antecedents selected to evaluate Walden Sports was consistently measured using a seven-point Likert scale with 1=strongly disagree and 7=strongly agree to determine the most significant variable cause of job attitude. Table 1 revealed the reliability consistencies within each scale. According to the Table 1, the job attitude variables and its antecedents are all reliable variables in predicting job attitudes with the highest correlation variable of affective commitment at (α = .956).

The coefficient alpha estimate of reliability is suggested to fall within the .7 and .8 range in which AC, NC, CC, and JI all fall beyond those ranges (6 items; α = .956), (6 items; α = .931), (6 items; α = .933), and (6 items; α = .944) respectively. Table 1 reveals that the antecedents of job attitudes also have very high reliabilities; antecedents Cronbach’s alpha is (9 items; α = .892), (7 items; α = .952), and (7 items; α = .924), indicating that perceived organizational support (POS), trust (TR), and role conflict (RC) have a relatively high internal consistency with employee job attitudes or that they are closely related to job attitudes.

According to the Table 2 frequency tabulations, Walden Sports, Inc. employees (N=155), are unsatisfied with their jobs (25%) (JS1 “All in all I am satisfied with my job”) and feel no emotional connection to the organization (20%) (AC3: “I feel ‘emotionally attached’ to this company”). Many respondents feel forced to stay with the company because they feel that they are obligated to do so (23%) (NC6: “I owe a great deal to this organization”). As stated by a member of the focus group, Walden Sports have paid for a portion of her tuition and fees to complete a degree. When responding to NC4, (18.1%) agreed that normative commitment plays a role in their pledge to their organization. Additionally, though employees are uncertain of whether or not having few employment options is a primary reason for staying with Walden (CC4: “I feel that I have too few options to consider leaving this company”), most agree (21%) (CC5: “One of the few negative consequences of leaving this organization would be the scarcity of available resources”) that a negative consequence of leaving would be due to limited alternatives. Walden Employees (26%) (JI4:“I live, eat, and breathe my job”) are not actively involved in their job and in agreement that there are more to life than just work (20%) (JI6: “Most things in life are not more important than work”).

The Pearson correlation coefficient measures the relationship between two variables (Frankfort-Nachmias & Leon-Guerrero, 2007). The mean of each variable and its antecedent is produced in Table 1 to give an indication of which variables are strong predictors of job attitude. Correlations range between -1 to +1 with .6 to .8 considered to be acceptable ranges of correlation (Field, 2013). The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was computed and displayed in Table 1 to assess the relationship between job attitude measures and job attitude antecedent variables. There are moderately acceptable positive correlations between POS and JobSAT, and POS and AC (r(155) = .580, p = .00) and (r(155) = .530, p = .00) respectively consistent with other research studies (Arshadi & Hayavi, 2013) indicating a significant relationship between perceived organizational support and job attitudes in the form of job satisfaction and affective commitment.

In an effort to obtain a clearer picture of the data, the variable descriptive and results are presented in Table 1. The average mean score of most respondents to questions in the survey instrument are in slight disagreement indicating an unhappiness with the organization. For instance, POS (M=3.9434, SD=1.21830) reveals that many employees responded as ‘slightly disagreed’ on survey questions with a deviation that shows most responded between 2.72 and 5.16 or moderately disagree and slightly agree.

Table II

Frequency Tabulations

Recommendations

To combat the negative consequences of job attitudes (decreased job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement), the antecedents, or precursor of job attitudes (perceived organizational support, trust, and role conflict) must first be assessed to implement recommendations. As a small company, perceived trust was prevalent at Walden Sports, and employees felt that the organization provided a ‘family-like’ environment where the leaders valued their employees. Since the acquisition, employees no longer feel the trust that brought them together and created highly motived workers. One reason for this is due to the change in Walden’s organizational culture and climate.

The culture and climate of an organization have a great impact on a company particularly during transformational change and is the foundation of all change efforts (French, Bell, & Zawacki, 1989). Walden’s acquisition of Earth Travelers allows them to capitalize on opportunities to grow the business and remain competitive within their market. However, leaders introducing change management should be careful in how it affects their organizational culture and climate for they must both be balanced to produce an effective transformation that aligns with the strategic objectives of the company (Zolghadr & Asgari, 2016). Positive correlations between organizational culture and organizational effectiveness demonstrate that leaders are to address a culture consistent with its new change efforts (French, Bell, Zawacki, 1989). Corporate culture involves the values, myth, beliefs, and norms; whereas executive leadership, organizational structure, standards of behavior, trust, commitment, communication, are all determinants of the organizational climate (Kennedy Group, 2015). A recommendation is to establish a clear mission for the change, ensuring alignment with organizational culture and climate.

Research also indicates that a challenge for leaders during an organizational change is communication (Nicol, 2014). Walden Sports, Inc. employees are unclear of their roles and the roles of others in the organization (Laureate Education 2012c) so my first recommendation as their consultant to facilitate increased motivation and job attitudes is to develop an effective communication plan to help implement the changes. Leaders are required to set the tone for any changes in their organization, achieved by enabling clear communication of the organization’s overall mission, vision, goals, and priorities to influence employees to follow the same guiding principles on how the organization will need to operate, moving forward post-change (Husain, 2013). Communicating the change process face to face within Walden Sports to their employees may impact the decrease in motivation among employees. Though more time intensive, employees are more accepting to change management conducted in person, initiated and hosted by leadership, than any other method of communication. Genuinely communicating to the unit as a start builds a perception of trust for organizational leaders increasing job satisfaction (French & Bell, 1984), eventually breaking communication needs into managerial subgroups with their teams.

Another recommendation to increase job attitudes at Walden Sports come by of the job analysis. Walden employees are questioning their roles at the organization. Therefore, the job analysis can be used to gather data on existing jobs to help define and clarify the roles of each employee. The analysis will explore the general descriptions and the primary purpose of the job by observing and discussing with employees to gain a clearer understanding of the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA’s) of what each role entails (Whetzel & Wheaton, 2007). The information gathered will prepare well-documented job descriptions for existing and new employees alike and provide a level of expectation within roles for workers.

Lastly, team-building interventions are necessary to increase the effectiveness of the company as a unit. Team-building is the most significant intervention in any organizational change (French & Bell, 1984). It is critical that new and existing employees, managers, and leaders are presented in team related events in an attempt to build intergroup relationships. The purpose is to increase the communication and interaction between the groups to minimize any misperceptions or miscommunications and avoid dysfunction among the groups.

Overall, the study revealed that perceived organizational support has a high correlation with job satisfaction and organizational commitment. It indicates that Walden employees have to feel that the company values their contributions and general well-being (Shanock & Eisenberger, 2006) to be happy with their jobs. Perceived organizational support is the main antecedent in which it builds trust ultimately increasing job satisfaction and commitment (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchinson, & Sowa, 1986).

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