Investigating the Effect of Trust , Work-Involvement , Motivation and Demographic Variables on Organizational Commitment : Evidence from IT Industry

The dynamic nature of the information technologies industry is one of the sectors whose employees’behaviors are obviously affected by work-related factors. This study aims to investigate the interaction between trust, involvement, motivation, demographic variables and organizational commitment of employees in information-technology (IT) industry. Data were gathered from the research sample of IT professionals (N=400) employed in Turkish high-tech industry. To investigate the relationship between trust, work-involvement, motivation and organizational commitment; factor analysis, correlation analysis and logistic regression were conducted. Empirical results reveal that organizational commitment of employees is influenced by trust, work-involvement and work experience. Identical models estimated with logistic regression provides no support for the presence of a motivation and commitment interaction.


Introduction
Since the effects of globalization are observed through several business corporations,various work-related factors that determine the employees'attitudes and behaviors continue to play an important role in organizations.Job outcomes have emerged as a major research theme that has been conducted during the past decades.
Companies have recognized that human resources are as critical as products in establishing a sustainable competitive advantage.Therefore, to acquireorganizational capability through qualified human resources is one of the main concerns of organizations.Organizational commitment, in this regard, emerges as one of the most critical job attitudes in the field of business and organizational behavior (Allen & Meyer, 2000).In the last three decades, increasing the organization commitment is being placed on top of the agenda of corporations, and the factors inducing high organizational commitment of employees are intensely investigated (Ozsahin et al., 2013, 364).Employees with high levels of trust,work-involvement and motivation are assumed to be more committed to their organization.Work-involvement is important since it is considered as the motivating forces behind an organization's overall performance.Trust, on the other hand, emerges as a driver in the workplace and plays a fundamental role in employees' commitment.Furthermore, since motivation is an essential factor in workplace there is a growing interest in the literature that have investigated the relationship between motivation and commitment.It is a common assumption that the employees, if motivated, tend to spend time and much more energy in the organization.
IT industry, compared to other industries, plays a significant role in the transition phase of information age.Because of its highly competitive and extreme nature, operating in information-intense environments allow the external process and internal process of firms to improve rapidly.IT industry, in this sense, serves as a model for other industries (Mendelson & Pillai, 2000).Furthermore, new information arrives at unprecedented rates in the IT-based organizations which requires the knowledge being processed quickly and efficiently (Mendelson, 2000).
Fostered by the increasing technological developments in the sector, Turkey appears as a developing country investing high-tech solutions.The Turkish IT industry has a labor and tecnhology-intensive dynamic due to the fact that the mobility in Turkey allows younger population to be employed in various numbers of IT based jobs (Aydın, 2012).One of the major challenges that IT industry has been facing recently is the ability to employ high-qualified human resources.As the literature reveals, high turnover rates in the IT industry (Chandna & Krishnan, 2009) are getting higher.Organizations are interested in finding out ways which can induce organizational commitment in IT sector and reduce turnover (Naqvi & Bashir, 2012).For a long time, several studies have mentioned thatemployee turnover is affected largely by employees' organizational commitment (Chandna & Krishnan, 2009).
However, despite some signs of development, the IT industry often relies on the case studies, and consultants' frameworks with limited empirical evidence.The lack of research appears in the field of IT with regard to information worker productivity (Koh & Venkatraman, 1991), the influence of job outcomes and the work behaviors of IT employees.This study is grounded on the contextual behavioral perspective to assess the relationships that have not fully been explored in the organizational behavior literature.
In this study, the main goal is to investigate the effects of trust in leader, work-involvement, job motivation and demographic variables on organizational commitment of employees working in various IT companies.In this respect, logistic regression for the variables of trust in leadership, work-involvement, motivation and organizational commitment was empirically tested.The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows: The first section lays the introduction.The next section consists of the conceptual framework to support the background of hypotheses within the review of literature.The research methodology including data selection, instruments and variables in the study is discussed in the third section.Finally, the fourth section presents the empirical findings and the further discussion.

Literature Review and Development of Hypothesis
In the following sections, methodology and the findings of the study.

Organizational Commitment
The increase of technological changes continue to influence the organizations' daily operations and employees' behavior in today's business place.Since decades, various studies reveal that an organization's success is highly dependent on the organization's capability to encourage employees within the organization (Cropanzano et al, 1997,162) and increase their commitment.Despite the fact that being specified by numerous researches, many researchers have defined and measured organizational commitment in different ways (Özutku, 2008;Mazayed et al., 2014).
The concept of commitment was firstly studied by Becker defining the concept as "a conscious bias behavior" (Becker, 1960;p. 32).Mowday et al. (1979), on the other hand, have defined organizational commitment in a broader perspective like; the relative power of individual's acceptance of organization's goals and values, putting effort on the organization and expressing willingness of membership to the organization by integrating him/herself to the organization.In this sense, the commitment is highlighted within attitudinal or behavioral perspective.When taken as an attitude, organizational commitment is perceived as a dedication to the organization in emotional /or sensation term (Özutku, 2008).Employees with affective commitment tend to be much more associated to their organizations as well as less likely to leave the organization (Cropanzano et al., 1997, p. 163).Although employees feeling commitment are less likely to quit, this lower turnover appears at the expense of employee engagement, job satisfaction, and particularly self-esteem (Sethi et al., 1996).
The literature presents many studies through this assumption.Kırmızı and Deniz (2009) investigated different aspects of organizational commitment and its determinants for IT professionals working in private banks.The results showed that affective commitment seems to be higher among IT professionals compared to the other types of commitment, whereas normative commitment appears at the lowest level.Naqvi and Bashir (2012) examined the interaction between compensation; training and development; supervisor support and retention among IT professionals in Pakistan.They found that compensation is significantly and positively related to organizational commitment.Chandna and Krishnan (2009) examined individuals' organizational commitment in IT and non-IT sectors.This study analyzed whether there is an impact that a transformational leader has on employees' commitment to their organization.According to scholars, the role of a transformational leader in the IT industries should be made more effective to modify work beliefs such that they enhance organizational commitment.Pai et al. (2012) examined to what extent the professional commitment of IT staff being affected by the amount of work stress and job satisfaction.According to the findings, job satisfaction has a significant positive influence on professional commitment.As the evidence can be expanded for the effect of various job outcomes, it is critical to underline that the demographic traits of employees play important role in organizational commitment.Based on the literature, we develop the hypothesis as; H 1 :There is a positive relationship between employees' work-experience and their organizational commitment.

Motivation
Fostered by the competition, today, organizations sem to expect from employees to exert more effort, to be motivated and taking initiatives towards sustaining the organization's goals (Cropanzano et al, 1997,162).An important predictor for the commitment is motivation, which encourages the employees to spend more time and energy in the organization.Because of this fact, there has been a growing interest in examining the relationship between motivation and commitment since today (Orpen,1997;Ingram et al, 1989).Choong and Wong (2011) examined the relationship between intrinsic motivation and organizational commitment of academics in Malaysian private universities.Orpen (1997) examined the relations between mentoring and the work motivation, organizational commitment and job performance of mentors in medium-sized manufacturing companies.Significant relations were found between interaction opportunities both motivation and commitment.Gu and Lai (2012) in their study indicated that the participants'motivation to teach and commitment to teaching are contextually, socially and historically linked to each other.Warsi et al ( 2009) indicated that the job motivation is strongly and positively associated with organizational commitment of the employees inprivate sectors.As Orpen (1997) suggests, greater motivation will only lead to greater ability or competence on the part of employees if they take the additional steps necessary to performbetter at their jobs.Within this frame, we develop the hypothesis as; H 2 : There is a positive relationship between employees' intrinsic motivation and their organizational commitment.

Trust
Trust is an integral part of the organizational culture if implemented effectively and sustained among employees in an organization.According to Johns (1996), to empower employees understanding the needs of employees, trusting them, and helping them to maximize their fulfillment are essential in order to reach corporate goals.Mutual trust is a primary component of this process.Managers must be willing to empower employees and employees must accept the challenge inherent in empowerment and commit to organizational goals (Laschinger et al, 2001).The impact of trust on organizational outcomes has widely been acknowledged in the organizational literature.Podsakoff et al (1990) found that organizational trust is significantly related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, role clarity, and in-role performance.Many studies also indicate that trust and commitment at the workplace are positively related (Laschinger et al, 2001;Farndale et al, 2011;Park et al,2005).Top et al (2013) investigated the relationships among employee organizational commitment, trust, job satisfaction and employees' perceptions of their immediate supervisors' transformational leadership behaviors in Turkey.The findings showed that organizational trust and two job satisfaction dimensions (contingent rewards and communication) were significant predictors for organizational commitment.Goh and Brian (2014) investigated the role of trust in leaders as a mediator between servant leadership style and organizational commitment in the context of market research firms in Malaysia.Results indicated that trust in leaders serves as a partial mediator between servant leadership and organizational commitment.Within this frame, the hyphothesis is developed as: H 3 : There is a positive relationship between trust in leader and employees' organizational commitment.

Work Involvement
Human capital has always been an indispensable source of competitiveness among enterprises or organizations fostered by increasing competitiveness.Work-involvementof employees apepars as one of the outcome of this competition making it one of the most studied areas in the field of organizational behavior.Employees feel attached to and involved in the organization if organizations can ensure that their work affects the organization (Chandna and Krishnan, 2009).Work-involvement is used to increase the productivity of employees as the outcome of involvement may provide the circumstances to employees to stay for a longer time in organizations (Mazayed et al., 2014).
In the given literature, there are various studies concerning the context of work involvement.According to Ongori (2007),work involvement characterizes the degree to which employees are associated with their jobs and the degree to which an employee recognizes with his job.It can be speficied as the degree to which a job is recognized to be the significant factor in fulfilling one or another need of an employee (Mazayed et al, 2014).Work involvement is also related to employees perception that how the job takes place in individual life.As much as an individual is positively influenced by his job, the readiness and accomplishment will significantly increase (Ekmekci, 2011).This means that it also creates the power of ownership within employees who are involved in decisions concerning their job.Today, the view of organizational commitment and work involvement are even more significant since they are considered as the driving forces behind an organization's overall performance.Researches have shown that the more organizations have work involvement culture more committed their employees will be within organization than those organizations who do not involve their employees and organizational commitment.This will irrevocably affect the ability of keeping the employees occupied in their jobs (Khan et al, 2011).Within this frame, it was suggested that; H 4 : There is a positive relationship between work involvement of employees and their organizational commitment.

Research Goal
The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between the trust, work involvement, motivation, demographic variables and organizational commitment of employees in information-technology industry.We propose that trust, motivation, work involvement and demographic variables have a notable impact on organizational commitment of employees.In order to analyze the propositions, a survey using questionnaires was conducted.

Survey Instruments
The research was conducted by online data collection.Scales in the survey were adopted as a result of a broad literature review, consisting of 4 parts.To measure the organizational commitment; the scale developed by Mowday et al (1979) was used.In the rest of the survey, to measure the trust in leader,the scale developed by Rich (1997); to investigate the work involvement, the scale developed by Warr et al(1979); to investigate the motivation, the scale developed by Lawler&Hall(1970) and used by Hackmanand Oldham (1975) were used, respectively.

Research Sample
A questionnaire was delivered to 400 people working in various information technology companies located in Istanbul, Turkey.After the deficiently and wrongly completed questionnaires were omitted, there were 304 completed questionnaires in total.

Variables
In the study, 8 independent variables that are assumed to influence the organizational commitment of IT employees.

Demographic Findings
Gathering data was firstly used to determine the demographical traits of the respondents.According to the results, 58,3 % of the participants are female, and 41,7 % of the participants are male.As we take a look at the age distribution, 28,9 % of the participants are aged between 20-30, 49,3 % of the participants are aged between 31-40, 15,5 % of the participants are aged between 41-50, 2,7 % of the participants are aged 51-60.According to the results considering the education of the participants, 10,2 % are high school graduates; 68, 8 % have a bachelor's degree; 13,2% have a undergraduate degree; 5,6 % hold a master's degree and 2,3 % of the participants have a Ph.D degree.Considering work experience of the participants, 53,0 % have a work experience of less than 5 year; 26,6 % have a work experience of 6-10 years; 12,2 % have a work experience of 11-15 years, and 8,4 % have been working for more than 16 years.

Factor Analysis and Findings
The construct validity of variables for trust, motivation, work-involvement was tested by factor analysis.For the measure, items which factor weight 0.45 and unique items in a factor, and items with close factor weights are leaved out of evaluation.As a result of the factor analysis demonstrate, it was found that motivation, trust in manager and work-involvement consists of one dimension just like in the original scale.Thus, it can be stated that the analysis show consistency with the given literature.All factors have passed the KMO Measure of Sampling Adequacy (0,9103) and Barlett Test of Sphericity (2508,802) which means that our data set is appropriate for factor analysis.Varimax method are used in analysis.The result of the factor analysis of research variables is provided in Table 2.Based on the factor findings, the research model is illustrated below: Figure 1.Research model

Correlation Analysis and Findings
The correlation analysis was used to analyze the relationships between the variables.As it can be inferred from Table 3, the mean score and standard deviations for each variable are listed in the same table.The Correlation Analysis indicates a significant relationship between the variables.There is a high negative relation between motivation and trust (r=,528**), motivation and work involvement (r=,653**).On the other hand, there is a highly positive relation between trust and work involvement (r=,559**).

Logistic Regression Analysis and Findings
Taking into consideration the data obtained in the survey conducted for purposes of determining those reasons, the logistic regression analysis has been used to specify positive and negative reasons influencing the relation between the work-related variables in IT sector.variable is categorical.Logistic conversion is the natural logarithm that indicates the rates of success and failure odds.The Hosmer-Lemeshow test is used for testing the goodness for fit.The model's strength to explain is determined using the Nagelkerke R 2 statistics.Additonally, the interpretations of parameters, obtained through logistic regression analysis, are made in the last stage to evaluate the correct percentage of classification (Kalayci, 2005, p. 292).

Logistic regression is an extension to the multi-regression analysis technique in cases where the dependent
When the Wald test for the parameters of the logistic model is considered (Table 8), the Chi-Square test, as shown in Table 6, is used for the model (based on the method of maximum likelihood principle) in order to test if the data were well represented in the theoretical model and to determine the model's suitability for the purpose (Altaş & Giray, 2005;Bircan, 2004;Egeand Bayrakdaroglu, 2007;Oğuzlar, 2005).After determining the model parameters, goodness-for-fit test is conducted to determine the model that will explain the dependent variable in the best way.Taking into consideration the logistic conversion of success state probability (P), as a correlation function within the framework of a generalized linear model, X i 's express the independent variables .In this respect the logistic model is obtained, as shown in"Equation 1" (Oğuzlar, 2005).
Despite various researches conducted on organizational commitment so far, there is limited scope of studies providing concrete evidence of employees'trust, work-involvement, motivation and organizational commitment.Amongst these studies, most of them have explored the relationships between organizational commitment and turnover (Somers, 1995;Cohen & Caspary, 2011), organizational commitment and stress (Zhan et al., 2013), organizational commitment and citizenship (Lawrence et al., 2012), organizational commitment and satisfaction (Top & Gider, 2013).Besides, as can be observed in the given literature, there is also a scarcity of empirical evidence predicting commitment throughlogistic regression.To fulfill this gap in the literature, this study aims to provide an holistic evidence.
The dependent variable of this study is "organizational commitment".Items are adopted from the scale of Mowday et al. (1979) which measures the commitment in 4 sub-items.As stated before, dependent variable in a logistic regression has to be a dichtomous variable, coded spefically as 0/1.Whereas in original scale, the organizational commitment is measured by 5 Likert scale, the mean scores of sub-items are obtained.For the purposes of logistic regression, the organizational commitment scores are transformed to 0 or 1.According to this, the mean score that indicates strong commitment (responses to the 4 sub-items as strongly agree/agree) to the organization is coded as "1", while weak commitment (responses to the 4 sub-items as neutral/disagree/ strongly disagree) is coded as "0".When the independent variables are concerned, the variables are illustrated in Table 1.
Empirical results of logistic regression are indicated below, in Table 4, Table 5, Table 6, Table 7 and Table 8 Examining the Omnibus values as an initial stage of logistic regression, the significance of variables in the model are tested (Table 4).It has been determined that a suitable model is obtained in the sixth step, having a significance of 5%.Looking at the relation between dependent and independent variables taking place in the model, it is observed that the existing variables explain 54,5% of the relationship (Table 5).The Hosmer-Lemeshow test has been applied to determine the goodness for fit in the model.The results are shown in Table 6 which demonstrate the model's effectiveness.It has been decided that the model is compatible with the data in consideration of the H 0 hypothesis, stating that there is no lack of compatibility in the model.According to the results, accurate classification rate of the model has been determined as 81,5% at the end ofthe sixth step (Table 7).As indicated in Table 8 below, based on the coefficients and the significance levels of variables in the model, it was decided that 3 variables in the logistic regression model are statistically significant in accordance with the Wald test.In this case, the logistic regression model obtained in the sixth and last step, taking into account the datas in Table 8, is established as follows: Looking at findings shown in Table 8, it can be stated that trust affects the commitment positively 0,599 , times more.This finding is consistent with the assumption that the commitment is highly affected by the level of trust in leader.Work involvement affects the commitment positively 0,671 , times more.
This finding can be supported by the fact that the employees tend to engage more in their jobs when they are satisfied in the organization.Additionally, work-experience affects the commitment positively 0,721 , more than other variables.Since seniority is an essential component of employee performance, we can state that the years spent in the organization is influential on commitment.Upon so far, it can be stated that the most effective variable is the work experience (the duration of employment in an organization) on employees' organizational commitment.Work involvement appears as the second most effective variable on organizational commitment.Therefore, based on the findings, hypothesis H 2 , H 3 and H 4 are accepted, whereas H 1 is rejected.

Conclusion and Further Discussion
Supported by various researches, many scholars claim that employees with high levels of trust, work-involvement, motivation and job experience are assumed to be more committed to their organization.As the technology has been a great challenge in business, today, the high-tech based corporations require even more specialized employees.Like in various sectors, the organizational commitment of employees in IT industry is affected by several factors.IT industry is an industry known by its highly dynamic renovating nature that deals with higher turnover rates.It can be assumed that lower commitment may lead to higher turnover intention since employee turnover issignificantly affected by internal and external factors in an organization.
In this study, we investigated the relationship between trust, work-involvement, job motivation and organizational commitment supported by demographic factors of employees in various Turkish IT companies.In this respect, this study introduces the theoretical framework with expansive literature to measure the variables of the construct.A confirmatory factor analysis of items is conducted to evaluate relations between the job-related measures.Logistic regression was used for the measures of trust in leadership, work involvement, organizational commitment, job motivation and demographic variables.According to the results of logistic regression model, 3 variables have been found to be statistically significant and the capability of 3 variables explain the model itself around 54,5%.On the other hand, it has also been determined that the suitable model has accurately classified the data at a high rate of 81,5%.Identical models estimated with logistic regression provided no evidence for the presence of a commitment-motivation interaction.
When the results of logistic regression are summarized, one unit of increase in the variable of work experience increases the probability of organizational commitment 0,721 times, one unit of increase in the variable of work involvement increases the probability of organizational commitment 0,671times andone unit of increase in the variable of trust increases the probability of organizational commitment 0,599 times.Therefore, it can be stated that the most effective variable is the work experience (the duration of employment in an organization) of employees in IT industrythat is effective on organizational commitment.Work-involvement appears as a second effective variable on organizational commitment.Additionally, trust appears as another influential variable on organizational commitment.Motivation provides no empirical support affecting organizational commitment.Within demographic variables only work experience is said to be effective on organizational commitment.
As the literature reveals, organizations that develop higher levels of trust function more efficiently and effectively.Likewise, work-involvement is considered to be another key factor influencing individual and organizational outcomes.Employees with high levels of work-involvement and motivation are likely to put more effort into their jobs and therefore display higher levels performance.Based on the empirical findings of the study, we can state that work-involvement, trust and the work-experience are effective factors on organizational commitment.The empirical findings of this study, in this regard, provide contributing support to the conceptual background and are consistent with the literature.

Limitations
The study extends previous theoretical and empirical research of organizational context with regard to organizational commitment.As empirical findings reveal, organizational commitment is influenced by trust in leader, work-involvement and employee tenure.Despite the fact that this study is a first attempt to investigate the work-related factors on IT professionals, it has some limitations.The study consists of the companies located in Istanbul.Nevertheless to obtain powerful results, the sample could be generalized to other cities in Turkey.

Table 1 .
Codes of variables

Table 2 .
Factor analysis of trust, motivation and work-involvement

Table 3 .
Means, standard deviations, correlations among variables

Table 4 . Omnibus tests of model coefficients Omnibus Tests of Model Coefficients Chi-square df Sig.
.

Table 5 .
Model summary

Table 7 .
Classification table

Table 8 .
Statistics of model variables