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ISSN: 2249-7196

IJMRR/Feb 2017/ Volume 7/Issue 2/Article No-3/82-98

Aminu Yusuf Dikko et. al., / International Journal of Management Research & Review

*Corresponding Author www.ijmrr.com 82

MODERATING ROLE OF POWER DISTANCE ON PERSONALITY TOWARDS

AFFECTIVE COMMITMENT OF LECTURERS IN NIGERIA

Aminu Yusuf Dikko*1, 2

, Rozita Abdul Mutalib1, Sabarani Ghazali

1

1School of Government, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Malaysia.

2Department of Public Administration, Umaru Musa Yaradua University Katsina, Nigeria.

ABSTRACT

The study was conducted to ascertain the role played by power distance on the relationship

between personality and affective commitment of lecturers in Nigerian universities. Analysis

for the study was conducted from a sample of 355 respondents, through cross sectional

design with university lecturers of different category in Nigeria. Data was analysed with the

Smart PLS-SEM path analysis and items were all adopted. The finding reveals that three

(NAE) personality traits where found significant within the context and power distance

played crucial role in hierarchical society such as Nigeria, thereby strengthening the

relationship between personality and affective commitment. Furthermore, building on

Hofstede and McCrae (2004) it is found that context plays a role in revealing traits feet for

certain environment as well as occupation. However, no significant relation was found from

OC because employee with such feels more frustrated and dislike abiding to rules guiding

their place of work, such flexible environment as university set up. Hence, institutions are

advised to focus on such traits (NAE) to ensure retention and maintain stable workforce and

regulate power to ensure voice of other is had.

Keywords: Personality, affective commitment, lecturers, Nigeria.

INTRODUCTION

Organizational commitment has become one of the most studied variable in organizational

research(Dunham, Grube, & Castañeda, 1994; Aghdasi, Kiamanesh, & Ebrahim,

2011;Aydin;, Sarier;, & Uysal;, 2013; Ali, Jan, & Tariq, 2014;Giauque, Resenterra, &

Siggen, 2014; Syed, Saeed, & Farrukh, 2015),because of its impact on job attitude, various

literatures as well as several meta-analyses focus on the construct (Cooper-Hakim &

Viswesvaran, 2005; Yahaya & Ebrahim, 2016; Mathieu, Fabi, Lacoursière, & Raymond,

2015; Dwivedula, Bredillet, & Müller, 2016). This is because individuals who are not

committed and performing higher to their jobs are likely to quit. One of the reasons why

organisational commitment is so well studied is because of its impact associated with work

outcomes such as turnover, absenteeism, performance, motivation, and job withdrawal

behaviours (Klein, Becker, & Meyer, 2009;Kumar& Bakhshi, 2010; Khoeini & Attar, 2015;

Mathieu et al., 2015).

However, with the advent of democracy in 1999 which Nigeria records its fourth republic

after long military rule, the country witness development in its educational sector with state

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Copyright © 2017 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 83

and federal government as well as individual establish more institutions (Universities) in the

country. The number of universities in Nigeria as at 2013 was 129 which include 40 federal,

39 state and 50 private universities (NEEDS REPORT, 2014). Nonetheless, despite

increasing number of qualified manpower joining the institutions, employers have difficulty

in retaining their staff for a long period of time. Hence, the profession needs to impact on

their lecturers commitment to include allocating challenging as well as interesting jobs.

Moreover, issues relating to lecturers commitment in Nigerian universities poses serious

threat to the development of sound educational system in the country (Mustapha, 2015),

thereby producing unproductive graduates due to poor commitment of lecturers to students,

teaching and their profession (Ologunde, Akindele & Akande, 2013; Peretomode &

Chukwuma, 2012). Therefore, a major concern is to improve student performance through

their mentors’ ability to effectively train and impact positively on them. Hence, the study

seeks to investigate how lecturers’ personality affects their organisational commitment.

Whether individual lecturers’ personality significantly predicts their commitment to the

organisation?

Research has indicates that commitment is dependent upon organisational factors like the

nature of work and employee personality which has being predicted to influence their

commitment to their organisation as well as profession (Dwivedula et al., 2016). However,

despite several aspects of this construct are overemphasized in the body of literature. One

deficiency in literature is the possible role of personality characteristics as predictors of

commitment and researches focus more to extraversion, conscientiousness and neuroticism

(Akhtar, Boustani, Tsivrikos, & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2015), which affects person

psychological state. Literatures on personality towards organisational commitment are limited

and reports mixed findings (Klein, et al., 2009; Kumar & Bakhshi, 2010; Spagnoli &

Caetano, 2012; Panaccio & Vandenberghe, 2012; Akhtar et al., 2015). Moreover, a

comprehensive framework is needed to explain the relationship between personality traits

using the big five factor model and organisational commitment. Accordingly, literatures

affirm that these conflicting findings are due to possible mechanisms to explain the

relationship between personality and organisational commitment (Zimmerman, 2008; Kumar

& Bakhshi, 2010; Panaccio & Vandenberghe, 2012; Spagnoli & Caetano, 2012).

In line with the above, these mixed findings create a void which needs to be studied.

Therefore, the study employs national culture as a moderating mechanism to explore the

relationship between the two study constructs. Studies have supported that organisations

needs to focus on culture due to its esteem importance to the management (Budin & Wafa,

2015; Inju, 2016). This current research seeks to develop a framework to steam the body of

literature on organisational commitment, personality trait and national culture to test the

relationship between the constructs.

The primary objective of this research is to determine the effect of individual personality

traits and national culture as moderating variable on organisational commitment.

Furthermore, organisational commitment will be assessed from affective commitment

dimension, because of its emotional attachment to the organisation. According to the

attachment theory, individual employee level of commitment is reflected through their



attachment to the organisation (Maxwell, Spielmann, Joel & MacDonald, 2013). On the other

hand, the study will focus on power distance as adimension of national culture because,

Nigeria is defined as a hierarchical society were age and position is respected (Bamgboje-

ayodele & Ellis, 2015)and base on Hofstede’s rating the country is rated high on power

distance index (80) (Hofstede, 2002). Hence, the study intends to contribute to literature by

examining the role of national culture between the study constructs.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The objective of these study is to examine the relationship between personality traits on

affective commitment and how national culture moderates between personality and affective

commitment.

Organisational Commitment

Organisational commitment is defined and well known from Mowday and others (1982)

perspective as “the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in

a particular organisation”. Literarily, these definition postulates:

A strong belief in acceptance of the organisation’s goals and values.

Willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organisation.

A strong desire to maintain membership in the organisation.

According to Meyer (2009, p.54) opined that “employees as human beings have a natural

inclination to make commitment to and expect commitment from others”, and also argues

that organisational commitment is crucial even in the changing environment of work. Studies

on organisational commitment have been employing the concept from Allen and Meyer

(1990)dimensions of affective, normative and continuance commitment, which are clearly

distinct from one another (Gonzales & Guillen, 2008).

Organisational commitment is perceived more clearly as “the psychological bound created

between the employee and his organisation” (Nicol, Rounding, & MacIntyre, 2011). This is

because strong psychological attachment and loyalty to the organisation by the employees

only played a passive and static form. Hence, these enhances employee stability within their

jobs and to the productivity of the organisation, therefore, organisational commitment

postulates the feelings of employees towards their organisation (Ifie, 2014). Individuals

within the organisation align their duties with that of the organisation to fulfil their

psychological contract and perceive that the organisation cannot fulfil their future goals, thus

affects their commitment when trying to balance between the two (Guerrero, Bentein, &

Lapalme, 2014).

Affective Commitment

Affective commitment is define as employee’s emotional attachment to his organisation.

Individual employees with high affective commitment are committed to their organisation

because they feel is the right thing to do. In the earlier work of Kanter (1968) affirm that

commitment is “the attachment of an individual’s fund of affectivity and emotion to the

group”, on the other hand, Buchanan (1974) sees it as “a partisan affective attachment to the



goals and values of the organisation” and Mowday et al. (1979) perceive it as “the relative

strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organisation”.

Previous researches has indicates the validity as well as reliability of organisational

commitment constructs with promising results (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Meyer, Allen, &

Smith, 1993). Nevertheless, controversies on such reliability and validity of specific

constructs (continuance and normative commitment) across various cultures remain

questionable (Liao, Toya, Lepak, & Hong, 2009)and lacks clear distinction between

normative as well as affective commitment construct (Bergman, 2006; Meyer, Stanley,

Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002). Therefore, the problem is on normative commitment

(Bergman, 2006) and these study focus on affective commitment to explore the level of

commitment in Nigerian universities. A study indicates that employee’s characteristics as

antecedent of affective commitment is evaluated from demographic and dispositional

differences (Allen & Meyer, 1996).

Affective Commitment and Job Behaviour

Studies reveals that employees with high level of commitment will have high performance

and productivity (Dalal, 2005), highly motivated (Darolia, Kumari, & Darolia, 2010), low

turnover (Lee & Liu, 2006) and highly satisfied with their work (Brown & Peterson,

1993).However, those with low commitment harm the organisation by increase cost of

employing new staffs as well as training them which invariably affects the institution

(Mowday et al. 1982). Accordingly, a study reveals that affective commitment is positively

related with work behaviour like attendance and performance (Meyer et al., 2002) and

employee health and wellbeing. Furthermore, same correlation was found with normative

commitment but relatively weak compared to affective commitment and continuance

commitment has negative correlation with job behaviour and individual wellbeing.

Empirically a study reveals that affective commitment dimension predicts most jobs related

behaviour of individual employees against other two dimensions (Chen & Francesco, 2003)

and these may include engagement on your duty which measures performance. The

importance of these construct as against other two in predicting employee commitment is

proved empirically (Darolia et al., 2010; Wasti, 2002), enhances individual willingness to

relate and share with colleagues (Randall, Fedor, & Longenecker, 1990). Hence, employees

with such characteristics put more effort, enhance organisational effectiveness and maintain

their esteem relationship with the organisation (Allen & Meyer, 1991).

Previous studies findings reveal that employee committed to their organisation by his

willingness will contribute towards organisational success, his duties and beyond all be part

of the system. Therefore, this study will evaluate the role of affective commitment on

lecturers in Nigerian Universities.

Personality Traits

Extraversion

Extraversion is one of the five personality traits which connote an individual to be sociable,

cooperative, affectionate, outgoing and talkative (Lounsbury, 2012). Individual on this

dimension indicates satisfaction level with relationship. Highly extrovert people have more



energy, outgoing and dominate social situations (Peeters, Rutte, Tuijl, & Reyman, 2006),

decision making, looking for power and taking risk (Barry & Stewart, 1997) and social skills

(Beatty, Mayer, Coleman, Reynolds, & Lee, 1996) in determining the role of individual

employee in the organisation. Furthermore, individuals with this trait are affected by anger

and dissatisfaction which could affect the organisation and their problem solving technique

(Rajiv, Scott, Weaven & Baker, 2013). Nonetheless, individuals low on this trait possesses

low energy, integration with people and quiet even when they are not necessarily depressed.

Openness to Experience

Individuals on this trait are analytical, original, cultured, imaginative, curious, independent

and scientific thinkers (Yang & Hwang, 2014; Hasso, 2013). They employs unique method so

they become more productive and creative in their organisations and more so they are open

minded, easy going and healthier (Yahaya, Bon, Ismail, & Noor, 2012). Employees’ low on

this trait is close minded who tend to confront issues from a complex situation in a

straightforward way. They prefer to be traditional in nature and don’t accept innovations

easily (Ames & Bianchi, 2008).

Neuroticism

Neuroticism is seen as one of the important trait in personality literatures. This is sometimes

referred to as emotional stability, individuals who are emotionally stable adjust easily to new

environment, remain stable in difficult situations, confidence and peaceful (Robert R.

McCrae & Costa, 2004), and high on this trait poses; anger, depression, moodiness and

anxiety (Hasso, 2013). Hence, employees with this trait lack concentration and emotions if

they are faced with stress (Barling & Boswell, 1995) and lack trust as well as social skills

(Yahaya et al., 2012), thereby getting it difficult to relate with his co-workers and other

individuals (Lounsbury, 2012). This leads to individuals interpreting normal situation as

threat and overstress slight frustration difficult and have issues controlling their emotion

(Terracciano, Löckenhoff, Zonderman, Ferrucci, & Costa, 2008).

Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness is perceived as dependability, perseverance, reliable and has sense of

responsibility (Harris & Fleming, 2005). According to Digman (1990) this trait is related to

educational success, hard work and goal oriented which depicts the need for success. Costa

and McCrae (1992) reported that “Conscientious” individuals in organisations often tend to

avoid making mistakes and aim for high standards of commitment through structural

planning and Conscientiousness is referred to positive affectivity (PA) trait disposition.

Agreeableness

Agreeableness trait is seen as social interaction among individual members, interpersonal

relation, mixing with people (Yang & Hwang, 2014). This trait has attributes like; kindness,

likeability and thoughtfulness which could lead to successful relationships (McCrae & Costa,

1991) and increase performance and motivation among employees. Agreeable individuals are

kind, cooperative, attentive, flexible, forgiving and courteous (Hasso, 2013; Connolly &

Viswesvaran, 2000).



Power Distance

National culture is defined as a set of values and beliefs which guide individuals in making

decision and distinguishes them (Hofstede, 2001). National culture may include among others

norms and values which forms the informal organisation. Accordingly, “informal

organisations (Culture) at this level change very slowly, on the order of centuries or

millennia” (Williamson, 2008). This imposes pressures on the top-down and implies that

culture impact on organisations practices within a country. Hence directly affects individual

actions and decision making.

To contribute to the existing literature, universities should start considering the differences of

their workforce (Ng & Burke, 2005). Existing literatures expose our understanding of

managing differences in workplace; prior studies focus more to Anglo-American regions

(Jonsen, Maznevski, & Schneider, 2011; Shore et al., 2009). Nonetheless, previous studies

suggest that context plays an important role (Boehm, Kunze, & Bruch, 2013), and started to

study the influence of cultural context on management of diversity in workplace, such as

absenteeism and turnover (Peretz, Levi, & Fried, 2015).

Furthermore, this study will contribute personality and organisational commitment literature.

Taking to account the role of culture (Peretz et al., 2015; Dunham et al., 1994; Toh &

Leonardelli, 2013), it indicates that national culture influences organisations management of

diversity (Toh & Leonardelli, 2013), hence this study argues that national culture will

strengthen the relationship between the study construct. For example, high power distance

societies pose greater challenge than feminine culture. Therefore, this study develop a

conceptual model to acknowledge the contribution of cultural tightness (Gelfand, Nishii, &

Raver, 2006), in the framework proposed for the study.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE STUDY

The study will adapt the trait activation theory to explain the study framework. The theory

focuses on person-situation contact to evaluate behaviour on the bases of trait relevant cues

explore in situations (Tett & Guterman, 2000). The observe behaviour serve as the basis for

evaluating behaviour on the various assessments as performance evaluation (Tett & Burnett,

2003). Trait activation is very important to evaluate and understand individual personality

trait which evolve in person’s behaviour. This theory assumes that fit between an individual

personality characteristics and his occupational environment.

Therefore, the current study come with the framework depicted below;



Relationship between Personality and affective commitment

Personality traits have been demonstrated by studies to influence affective commitment.

Previous studies has indicates that literatures on personality and organisational commitment

are still needed (Erdheim, Wang, & Zickar, 2006; Zettler, Friedrich & Benjamin, 2011), and

so important in understanding human behaviour which easily affects individual performance

as well as productivity. The more employees are affectively committed to organizations, the

more they will help others (Pare & Tremblay, 2007). Besides helping behaviour, other

dimensions, such as conscientiousness, civic virtue, courtesy and sportsmanship, are also

found to influence organizational citizenship behaviour affected by organizational

commitment (Joo, 2011).

Employees high on agreeableness easily associate with members and develop relationship

(Yang & Hwang, 2014), those high on conscientiousness do better job by committing

themselves to achieve the desired state due to their hardworking, carefulness and reliability

(Barrick & Mount, 1991). Moreover, job that requires teamwork needs emotional stable

employees to adjust to difficult situations, pressure and control their temper (Salgado, 1997)

and a study indicates that sociable, active and talkative employees are free minded individual

who hold no issues with others and exhibits high performance in their workplace (Hurtz &

Donovan, 2000). Finally, those on openness to experience accept new innovations and try

working with them to improve standards, thereby committing high to their organisations.

Literatures have indicates finding are inconsistent (see, Syed et al., 2015; Spagnoli &

Caetano, 2012; Panaccio & Vandenberghe, 2012; Kumar & Bakhshi, 2010; Erdheim et al.,

2006).

Therefore, the study came with the following hypothesis:

H1a: There is significant relationship between agreeableness and affective commitment

among university lecturers.

H1b: There is significant relationship between conscientiousness and affective commitment

among university lecturers.

H1c: There is significant relationship between extraversion and affective commitment among

university lecturers.

H1d: There is significant relationship between neuroticism and affective commitment among

university lecturers.

H1e: There is significant relationship between openness to experience and affective

commitment among university lecturers.

The moderating role of power distance

According to Hofstede (2001) power distance is seen as the level of acceptance of inequality

within a given cultural setup. Societies with low power distance involve their subordinates in

decision making and rank plays a little role, while societies high on this dimension are

divided into superior and followers and rank play crucial role as well as recognised (Koc,

2013). Hence, interactions in such high power distance societies is influenced by hierarchical

relationships and rank or status is highly respected among groups (Oudenhoven, Mechelse, &



Dreu, 1998), as such due to importance of status as well as hierarchy, groups insist on status

quo and relinquish exclusive advantages. This is likely to bring about social stratification that

supports discrimination of members within the groups. As such this is expected to be less in

societies with low power distance.

Nevertheless, the study propose that in high power distance societies, inequality in power and

poor inclusion in decision making process affects the workplace which also contribute to

employee poor commitment and turnover. This is related to exchange between and among

different status groups (Koc, 2013) and indicates privileged to certain members within a

group. Hence, the privileged took power at the disadvantage of the minorities. Therefore, the

study hypotheses:

H2: Power distance moderates the relationship between personality and affective

commitment: high power distance societies, personality will have stronger effect on affective

commitment.

METHODOLOGY

The study is quantitative by use of questionnaires to generate information from respondents

and the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) Smart PLS is used to analyse the relationship

between the study constructs as well as testing the moderating effect of national culture. The

study is cross-sectional in nature due to time constraint (Sekaran & Bougie, 2010), with a

sample size of 375 (Krejci & Morgan, 1970) were the study adopts the simple random

technique to give every respondent opportunity to participate and measurements of the

construct were adopted; national culture (Yoo, Donthu, & Lenartowicz, 2011), affective

commitment (Meyer et al., 1993) and personality traits (John & Srivastava, 1999). Important

to note is, the use of Smart PLS for this study is because of its ability to predict existing

theory and its applicability in the settings (Hair, Sarstedt, Ringle, & Mena, 2012).

RESULT INTERPRETATION

The study received 355 questionnaires to the respondents from the initial 400 distributed,

after deleting outliers which stands to be 26.4%, the valid sample for data analysis is 261

which represent a total of 73.6%. The result indicates that 76.6% represent male and 23.4%

female, greater percent of lecturers have Master degree 44.4%, Bachelor 27.6% and 28%

PhD. Hence, greater proportion of lecturers holds Mater followed by PhD and then those with

Bachelor, known as Graduate Assistant.

Assessment of the measurement model

Field (2009) affirm that item loading with at least 0.5 is acceptable to analyse data. In the

current study all items from the factor analysis are substantially higher than 0.5, which

include all the five personality traits, culture and organisational commitment respectively.

The constructs, convergent and discriminant validity as well as composite reliability were

measured to determine the acceptability of the model and measurements. Accordingly,

constructs indicators that have loadings of less than 0.4 were deleted (Hulland, 1999) and the

composite reliability and discriminant validity have a value ranging between 0.70 to 0.80

respectively (Hair et al., 2012; Bagozzi & Yi, 1988).



Moreover, the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) for the entire construct met the criteria

threshold of 0.5 (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988), to determine the discriminant validity square root of

AVE is equated with that of the path coefficient of the interrelated constructs and this

indicates a value of more than 0.70 which is above all the correlated coefficients of the

construct. This reveals that the constructs have sufficient discriminant validity. The tables

below depict the cross loading of the construct and the discriminant validity:

Table 1: Cross Loadings

Items Cross Loadings Composite Reliability AVE

AFC1 0.51

0.51

AFC3 0.79

AFC4 0.86 0.84

AFC5 0.61

AFC6 0.75

AGRS4 0.89

0.55

AGRS6 0.72 0.78

AGRS8 0.58

CONS3 0.68

0.51

CONS5 0.52 0.75

CONS8 0.89

EXTV1 0.75

0.55

EXTV2 0.72 0.78

EXTV7 0.75

NEUM1 0.78

0.51

NEUM4 0.70 0.75

NEUM5 0.65

OPNS1 0.77

0.53

OPNS3 0.83 0.76

OPNS6 0.54

Table 2: Discriminant Validity

VARIABLE AFFEC AGREE CONSC EXTRA NEURO OPENN

AFC 0.72

AGRRS 0.66 0.74

CONS 0.55 0.63 0.71

EXTV 0.41 0.32 0.45 0.74

NEUM -0.56 -0.29 -0.46 -0.28 0.71

OPNS 0.33 0.59 0.23 -0.21 -0.23 0.73

Structural Model

The structural model tries to measure the path coefficient to each study construct to the

dependent variable. According to Hair and others (2014) path coefficient measures the

greatness as well as significance of the model. Therefore, indicates the strengths or weakness

of relationship direction between and among the study variables. Hence, the study tests its

hypothesis through the structural model using the t-value of above 1.96 (Hair et al., 2014) to



show the significance level. The table below indicates the relationship between the study

variables:

Table 3: Path Coefficient

Hypothesis Beta Standard Error T Statistics Decision

AGRS -> AFC 0.55 0.05 11.02 Accepted

CONS -> AFC 0.00 0.03 0.05 Rejected

EXTV -> AFC 0.11 0.03 3.56 Accepted

NEUM -> AFC -0.38 0.04 10.62 Accepted

OPNS -> AFC -0.06 0.04 1.59 Rejected

From the table above, it indicates that three out of the five hypotheses were significant and

accepted, while two were rejected. Agreeableness, Extraversion and Neuroticism are

significant at 1% one tail, Openness to experience is significant at 10% but the study reject

because it is not acceptable in social science research and Conscientiousness was not

significant.

Testing the moderating effect

The research employs the Smart PLS-SEM to measure the moderating effect of power

distance on personality towards organisational commitment. According to Preacher, Zhang

and Zyphur (2015) moderators are interacting predictors that allow for investigation, thereby

yielding a significant contribution to the existing body of research. Therefore, the table below

shows the moderating effect;

Table 4: Moderating effect

Hypothesis Beta Standard Deviation Standard Error T Statistics Decision

Personality *

CULTURE ->

AFC

0.2426 0.0252 0.0252 9.5852 Accepted

Therefore, the study establishes the moderating role of power distance between personality

and affective commitment at 1% significant level with a T value 9.5852 (1-tail). Statistically,

the intervening variable significantly predicts and supports the hypotheses of the study. This

is in line with previous study findings that high power distance societies are hierarchical and

gave more preference to rank and people in authority (Hofstede, 2001; Koc, 2013).

DISCUSSION

The study investigates the moderating role of power distance on the relationship between

FFM personality model and affective commitment of lecturers in Nigerian universities,

building on Hofstede and McCrae (2004) linking personality traits to cultural dimensions.

The current literature found three FFM traits are significantly related with affective

commitment which reflects lecturer dedication, integrity as well as social interaction

(Extraversion, Neuroticism and Agreeableness) (e.g., Panaccio & Vandenberghe, 2012;

Zimmerman, 2008). However, openness to experience and conscientiousness are not related

to affective commitment which explains the target similarity of social exchange theory

(Lavelle et al., 2007; Masterson et al., 2000). Additionally, the study reveals significant effect



of the moderator in strengthening the relationship between personality traits and affective

commitment.

The study reveals that those with lower levels of NEA tend to exhibit lower level of

commitment and shows the likely hood of engaging in turnover which is detrimental to the

institution and employees. NAE are traits associated with high level of commitment,

cooperation and dedication which are likely to influence and affect positively individual

engagement to his position and job (Frei & McDaniel, 1988; Hall, Schneider, & Nygren,

1970). NAE employees tend to achieve high level of performance leading to higher

organisational support (Barrick & Mount, 2000) and strengthen their commitment through

removing elements that affects individual performance in the organisation. Furthermore,

agreeable and neurotic employees are supportive, friendly and get along with others.

However, Erdheim et al., (2006) opined that agreeableness is “related to getting along with

others in pleasant and satisfying ways” and helping others within the organisation leads to

high level of commitment, thus removing the willingness of employees to harm the

organisation or its members.

On the other hand, openness to experience and conscientiousness are not related with

affective commitment. This is because, openness to experience is weakly related to

performance due to its complexity (Griffin & Hesketh, 2004; Barrick et al., 2001) and job

attitude (Bruk-Lee et al., 2009; Judge et al., 2002). Moreover, individuals high on this trait

demands rewarding features (Tziner et al., 2008) which further results in quitting their jobs

due to low level of management acceptability to increase welfare packages. Interestingly to

note, within the context of the study, openness to experience and conscientious employee

does not feet the career for teaching, hence demand a change in their jobs.

Nonetheless, understanding the hierarchical nature of Nigerian society with high power

distance (Hofstede, 2001) individual possessing such traits as openness to experience and

conscientiousness feels more frustrated and are likely to quit the organisation (Spagnoli &

Caetano, 2012). In other words, employees who possess these traits are likely to experience

no affective commitment but may have on continuance or normative commitment in the long

run. Drawing from previous studies (e.g. Peretz et al., 2015; Boehm et al., 2013; Jonsen et al.,

2011; Shore et al., 2009) this finding is important in considering the role culture played in the

development process of affective commitment.

The research reveals that by acquiring information on how power distance in societies is

experienced higher, affect employee commitment to their organisation and work-related

values. Therefore, study provides confirmatory analysis to the exploratory work of Hofstede

and McCrae (2004), but only to the predicted correlation of extraversion and power distance.

For example, this study found significant correlation t= 9.5852, (p<0.001) between

personality and affective commitment of employees employing the moderating role of power

distance. However, Hofstede and McCrae study indicates negative correlation 0.57 and 0.001

significance for extraversion and power distance. The two other predicted correlations of

agreeableness and neuroticism with power distance are not confirmed in their study.

Therefore, it is of concern to management literature to understand the dimensions of culture

in developing higher level of employee commitment through their context of study. It is very



interesting to note that when occupation is dominate by certain personality traits might give

rise to different cultural practices (Hofstede & McCrae, 2004), as such understanding

organisational problems within the realm of individuals, personality traits play an important

role.

CONCLUSION

Retaining employees in the workplace become a major challenge for educational institutions

more specifically in developing nations. A university as an organisation hired professionals

from different fields to develop manpower and maintaining them becomes a daunting task.

Here we need to understand that individual traits playing a vital role in motivating and

engaging workforce to exhibit certain responsibility, thereby fitting the right object in the

right direction. It is notwithstanding that certain traits within individuals predict level of

commitment than others, thus issue pertaining to individual differences come to the fore.

Furthermore, culture appears to be a strong predictor of employee level of commitment to

organisation. Therefore, organisational management need to understand the role culture play

in enhancing employee commitment, dedication as well as retention.

IMPLICATION AND FUTURE RESEARCH

The importance of this research is manifold. To literature, the study contributes by testing the

role of culture in management studies. As institutions battle with retaining expertise from

different fields, it is quite important for organisational literatures to explore how contextual

factors affect organisational employees. In society like Nigeria were they experience high

power distance, it is very important for the institutions to consider that exercising too much

authority on expertise can affects his productivity where he feels side-lined and not

encouraged to partake in organisational decisions. Secondly, given that organisations of today

need to cope with the problem of job hopping and employee attrition, the research reveals the

type of traits that most predict commitment to organisations.

Future research should focus on exploring the dimension of continuance and normative

commitment, how such may contribute to employee retention. Also, collective relationship

among peers can be investigated so as to understand the level at which individual personality

trait can enhance employee commitment and performance.

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