Quality of Work Life and Its Relation to Organizational Commitment According to Teachers in Secondary Schools

Year 2010, Volume: 4 Issue: 4, 511 - 537, 01.05.2010

Mustafa Erdem

Abstract

Background. The thought of the quality of work life emerged in 1950's and developed in Great Britain and USA. Later on this thought spread out to Norway, Netherlands, India and Japan. The concept of the quality of work life was firstly used in an international conferences organized by The Association of the Quality of Work Life in New York. The quality of work life was treated together with the concept of democratization in this conference. There has not been a consensus among the scholars in the field of organizational sociology on the definition of the quality of work life. However, the concept was previously used to imply the quality of the relationship between employees and work environment. At the same time quality of work life emphasizes on human sides in organizational life that is mostly forgotten part of the work. Purpose. This study aims to determine the perceptions of the public and private secondary school teachers on quality of work life, total life environment, secure and healthy work conditions, development of employee capacity, social responsibility, social integration, and democratic work environment, appropriate and fair wage. In addition, teachers' commitment to their school is examined at compliance, identification and internalization dimensions and organizational commitment is tired to be regressed from the quality of work life. Moreover, to determine the perceptions of the public and private secondary school teachers, predictivity level of the quality of work life on organization commitment. Method. This is a descriptive survey and the population of the study composed of 84321 teachers working in public secondary schools and 8888 teachers working in private secondary schools in Turkey. Study sample comprises of 410 teachers of public secondary schools and 391 teachers of private secondary schools in 17 provinces. Multistage research sampling method was used in order to determine the research sample. In order to determine the quality of work life the secondary school teachers “The Quality of Work Life Scale” which was developed by the researcher and the Organizational Commitment Scale which was developed by Balay (2000) were used to collect data. During the process of data collection support from the Educational Research Support Program of Department of Educational Research and Development in Ministry of National Education was received. Support of copying, sending and receiving the instruments are provided by Department of Educational Research and Development. During the analysis of the data gathered by the research instruments the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) program was used. To find out the percentages, frequencies, means and standard deviations simple descriptive analysis techniques; In order to determine predictivity level of the quality of work life on organization commitment Regression analysis technique was used. ?=.05 was used as a cut of significance level. Findings. The main results of the study indicated that teachers working in private secondary schools appreciated their schools more positive on all dimensions of the quality of work life (total life environment, secure and healthy work conditions, development of employee capacity, social responsibility, social integration, and democratic work environment) than teachers working in public secondary schools. The results revealed a negative relationship between the dimensions of the quality of work life and the compliance dimension of organizational commitment. However, quality of work life positively correlated with identification and internalization dimensions of organizational commitment. Taking into account all the subdimensions of quality of work life, quality of work life predicts 28 percent of the compliance dimension; 63 percents of the identification dimension; and 34 percent of the internalization dimension of organizational commitment. Conclusions. Compliance dimension is the highest predicted democratic work environment and social integration. The results revealed a negative relationship between the dimensions of democratic work environment and social integration and the compliance dimension of organizational commitment. If democratic work environment and social integration are increase, teacher's force compliance will be decrease. If social integration, social responsibility, democratic work environment, development of employee capacity, secure and healthy work conditions are increase in school, teacher's internalization commitment will be increase. In addition to if teachers can receive enough salary for their services, internal commitment will increase.

Keywords

quality of work life , organizational commitment , secondary school teachers.

Öğretmen Algılarına Göre Liselerde İş Yaşamı Kalitesi ve Örgütsel Bağlılıkla İlişkisi

Abstract

Bu araştırmada öğretmenlerinin iş yaşamı kalitesi algılarının örgütsel bağlılık algılarını yordama derecesi belirlenmeye çalışılmıştır. Betimsel tarama modelindeki araştırmanın evrenini, Türkiye'deki kamu ve özel genel liselerde görev yapmakta olan öğretmenler oluşturmaktadır. Araştırmanın örneklemini ise 17 ilde görev yapan 801 kamu ve özel genel lise öğretmeni oluşturmaktadır. Lise öğretmenlerin iş yaşam kalitesini belirlemek amacıyla araştırmacı tarafından geliştirilen İş Yaşamı Kalitesi Ölçeği, örgüte bağlılıklarını ölçmek amacıyla da Balay'ın (2000) geliştirdiği Örgütsel Bağlılık Ölçeği uygulanmıştır. Veri analizinde, regresyon analizi uygulanmıştır. Anlamlılık testlerinde ?=.05 anlamlılık düzeyi esas alınmıştır. Araştırma sonucunda, iş yaşamı kalitesinin alt boyutlarıyla örgütsel bağlılığın uyum boyutu arasında negatif ilişki görülürken, özdeşleşme ve içselleştirme boyutları arasında pozitif bir ilişki görülmüştür. İş yaşamı kalitesi, örgütsel bağlılığın uyum boyutundaki varyansın %28'ini yordarken, özdeşleşme boyutundaki varyansın %63'ünü, içselleştirme boyutundaki varyansın ise %34'ünü yordamaktadır.

Keywords

iş yaşamı kalitesi , örgütsel bağlılık , genel lise öğretmenleri.

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