A STUDY OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE, HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES, COMMITMENT, AND WORK OUTCOME IN A LOCAL COMPANY

Abstract

Organizational culture could lead to corporate excellence, with mediating variables such as human resource practices and organizational commitment being used to reinforce this relationship. Consistent with this proposition, a conceptual model was developed to explain the relationships between organizational culture, human resource practices, organizational commitment and work outcome. The elements would be discussed in the context of a local firm, Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. and the issue of subcultures would also be discussed as a secondary topic. The purpose of this study is to show the application of theoretical concepts on a local corporation and to give an indepth understanding of such concepts. In the model, organizational culture is perceived as a product of the founder and top managers' core beliefs and values, as well as, the changes in the environment and the employees. It shares a reciprocal relationship with human resource practices, by being both a constraining and constrained variable for HR practices. HR practices could in tum influence organizational commitment through means such as rewards or training and development. Work outcome would then depend on the extent of organizational commitment being experienced by the employees. Statistical methods such as cluster analysis, one-way ANOVA and OLS regression had been used to prove the viability of these relationships. Results shows that culture was related to HR practices, commitment had an impact on work outcome and the existence of subcultures was proven. Commitment, on the contrary, was found to be unrelated to HR practices.