Does Employee Age Moderate the Association Between HR Practices and Organizational Commitment? An Application of SOC Theory to Organizational Behavior

• Main Author: Mackay, M.M (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2018
• Subjects: employee age; high commitment human resource practices; moderation; Organizational commitment
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 Drawing hypotheses from Selective Optimization with Compensation theory (SOC), we explored the degree to which employee age moderates the relationship between employees’ satisfaction with high-commitment human resource practices (HCHRPs; e.g., providing training, work–life balance) and organizational commitment. Customer-facing employees (N = 6,360) from an international transportation company completed the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) and rated their satisfaction with various HCHRPs offered by their organization. Results show that although there was a strong overall correlation between organizational commitment and satisfaction with various HCHRPs (r = .66), employee age was a significant moderator of only the relationships between organizational commitment and maintenance-related HCHRPs (e.g., work–life balance) and not of development-related HCHRPs (e.g., training opportunities). Furthermore, moderation effects had small effect sizes, suggesting that employee age is not a characteristic organizations need to consider when making strategic decisions about HCHRPs. © 2018, © 2018 Eastern Academy of Management.