Organizational Commitment Recall in Times of Crisis

INTRODUCTION An organization is not simply the physical and financial assets structure, but also the people who are committed to work and integrate within the organization on the basis of a mutually dependent relationship. The focal point of every organization therefore is its human resources. The management of the actions and interactions of the individuals across all levels within both the micro as well as the macro environment, will affect the performance of the organization, and its ability to cope with both favorable and unfavorable events. The word crisis is derived from the Greek word "krisis", meaning decision, or judgment (Preble, 1997). When a crisis occurs within an environment/organization, it usually disrupts daily activities and can generate fear of financial loss (Ren, 2000). The impact on the organization could be immediate or long-term (Paraskevas, 2006); thus coping measures i.e decisions and judgments, must be formulated in advance in order to minimize its negative effect. According to Fink (1986) an organization should plan for a crisis by artistically eliminating a great deal of the uncertainty and risk in order to have more control over its fate. Unfortunately, not all potential crises can be planned for as they can be created by unpredictable outside forces or events which no amount of planning can foresee. The Lebanese economy witnessed favorable economic conditions prior to the "July War" referring to the 2006 Lebanese-Israel conflict which lasted 33 days (July 12-August 13). Even though the first two quarters of 2005 witnessed slow growth, seven percent increase in GDP was reported between July 2005 and June 2006 which stimulated both European and Arab investment as well as tourism (InfoPro, 2006). Lebanese foreign direct investment had increased as Arab investors have been looking for non Western opportunities and Lebanon seemed like a good prospect for investing their cash surpluses. Cash surplus also quadrupled in the country during the first half of 2006 compared with the same period of 2005 reaching $2.5 billion by June 2006 (InfoPro, 2006). The Tourism Minister at the time had anticipated 1.6 million visitors to Lebanon during 2006 double that of 2005 and expected to generate more than $2 billion in revenues from this sector alone. Hence, businesses such as retailers, hotels, residential buildings and beach resorts invested billions of dollars in anticipation for a 'booming' summer (Lebanon Wire, 2007). However, the "July War" caught Lebanon by surprise, incurring unforeseen financial loses and disrupting daily activities thus decreasing revenues and potentially causing major job losses, and general disruption. The impact of this unexpected war, which has created both an economic and a cultural crisis, is expected to last for a long time. LITERATURE REVIEW Employees' commitment to their organization may be affected following a crisis. With Commitment literature telling us that job performance and commitment are positively related (Riketta, 2002;Chen, Silverthome, Hung, 2006), it is then imperative that we examine the effect of a crisis such as war on the employee's commitment defined in the current research as the employee's goal to remain with the organization (Meyer & Allen, 1997). Meyer & Allen (1997) suggested a three-component model of commitment and developed a scale to measure them which is generally representative across different cultures (Ko, Price, & Mueller, 1997; Sulimand, & ILes, 2000). (a) Affective commitment involves the recognition, participation and emotional attachment with the organization leading to the sentiment of wishing to remain employed in the organization; (b) Continuance commitment, founded on the bases of profit coupled with continued participation on one hand, and the cost coupled with leaving on the other hand (Kanter, 1968) creating a desire for wanting to continue employment; (c) Normative commitment, involves an emotional obligation towards the organization i. …