Contribution
Description: Commitment has long since been in the centre of interest of those who work in the field of organisation management and design.Employees who have shown a high commitment have proven to be the base for organisational efficiency, as long as they are motivated to contribute their time and energy to pursue the organisational objectives. Ideally, organisational and individual goals correspond to high level.Today, man is forced to be flexible and efficient. A long-term relationship with an organisation is rather exceptional. With regard to this development the question has been raised whether commitment is relevant or still relevant (Meyer & Allen, 1997). Consequently, individuals will tend to reduce their commitment to an organisation whereas the career commitment will be strengthened. Furthermore, job involvement and work group commitment show further aspects to optimise that the commitment research has yet to give attention to.In the course of research, several approaches to commitment can be observed. One perspective focuses on the organisational behaviour which has to be in accordance with individual values to increase commitment. The other approach adopted the perspective on rational choices the individual makes when his performance is tangibly rewarded.Commitment has to be distinguished from identification. While identification is a rather holistic bond, that implies joy and pride, and supports the employee's self-definition (Brown, 1969), commitment is the result of many criteria that make a job interesting (diversity, climate etc.) and is also based on exchanges, i.e. one is committed to an organisation because the organisation provides certain essentials.Commitment has been examined scientifically towards its correlation with several different aspects, such as performance and fluctuation.One aspect that has been neglected so far is competence development. For this reason the following questions will be subject to investigation:(1) To what extent can commitment be regarded as antecedent for competence development?(2) Which correlation can be observed between competence development and commitment?(3) Is it possible to forecast the success of an individual action by measuring the commitment?(4) What kind of commitment, i.e. which focus is especially decisive? Rather the organisational or the career-centred one?The following empirically based study wants to answer these questions and uses a heterogenic group of participants of a certification class held by a third party organization and being certified by the German Project Management Association (GPM).
Methodology: According to our evaluation design, the first step will be to measure the commitment of the individuals by means of Cohen's (2003) commitment inventory before the course (1). Special attention will be put on the different foci, such as organisational, occupational, work or job commitment. It will later be observed if and to what extent the different foci can be held responsible for a certain outcome.Afterwards, a personal evaluation of the training will be collected by (2) means of so-called happiness sheets. Also, the trainer himself will (3) evaluate the development of the participants.The examination results (4) form the fourth step. These will be gathered and held against the commitment results.Finally, forming the last phase, an interview (5) with the participants will be held after a certain time, to gain information on whether and to what extent the content of the training has become manifest in the individual's competence, in that case the personal project management competence. This measure shall illuminate the process of transfer in relation to commitment.
Conclusions: After completing the above mentioned evaluation steps, we expect several noticeable results from our investigations: 1. We expect that the commitment is highly correlated to the results, signifying that a person who is highly committed also garners better exam results.2. The commitment will be reflected in the happiness sheets, meaning that a high commitment supports a positive perspective on the course itself.3. A high commitment will be reflected in the individual participation throughout the course and thus become evident in the trainer's individual assessment, meaning that a committed person will show progress and brisk attendance.4. Finally, a person who is highly committed will transfer and implement the new information to its methodical competence to a higher degree than a person with low commitment.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.