The Fundamental Determinants of Dual Commitment of Employees: Evidence from the Public Sector of Sri Lanka

Abstract

Dual Commitment is an interesting phenomenon that gained research focus starting from mid-60 especially in the US academia. It was a longstanding stagnating deadlock for managers whether the employees should be forced out of unions to increase their commitment to the organization or should they ignore the militancy of trade unions under pseudo legal covers. Therefore researchers were in a mission to find out whether employees could commit to the organization and to the union simultaneously. In a path-breaking milestone research this was achieved by researches and established that dual commitment is possible in organizations and that harmonious labor-management relationship climate positively influenced the level of dual commitment of employees. It was further confirmed in a very handful of empirical researches in Sri Lanka. But this research purported to reconfirm those findings and add to the literature in establishing that Charismatic Organizational Leadership and Democratic Union Leadership too could influence the level of dual commitment of employees. This research finally purported to establish that not each individual fundamental determinant determines dual commitment but that the integration of the three fundamental determinants could achieve sustainable dual commitment of employees.