A Psychometric Assessment of the Malay Version of Meyer and Allen’s

Meyer and Allen’s (1991) model of organizational commitment conceptualizes it in terms of three distinct dimensions: affective, continuance, and normative. The purpose of this study was to examine its generalizability in Malaysia. Meyer and Allen’s esearch instrument was translated into Malaysian language and distributed to non-supervisory employees in 61 organizations in the government, semi- government and private sectors. Data from 672 respondents were analyzed using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The results generally support the cross-cultural generalizability of Meyer and Allen’s model and utility of their questionnaire. The results also support McGee and Ford’s (1987) proposal that continuance commitment may be better represented y two sub-dimensions: one associated with the costs of leaving and the other associated with the availability of alternatives.
INTRODUCTION Culture plays a dominant role in organizational studies. The importance of cross-cultural study in management was recognized by many researchers. Gill (1983) emphasized that “understanding cross-cultural personality differences can help management and government to achieve more harmonious adjustment of expectations where managers are transferred from one country to another”.Triandis (1980) suggested that “for a complete science of behavior we need to tie the characteristics of the ecology with the characteristics of humans”. Moreover, Bass and Barrett (1976) asserted that “generalizations about management and supervision in the cross-cultural context are limited …
concepts and constructs tend to shift in meaning as we move from one culture to another … cross-cultural investigations have considerable utility for industrial and organizational psychology”.Organizational commitment in recent years has become an important concept in organizational research and in the understanding of employees’ behaviour in the workplace. It reflects the extent to which employees identify with an organization and are committed to its goals. A meta-analysis of 68 studies and 35,282 individuals revealed a strong relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction (Tett and Meyer, 1993).

However, another study showed that only 38 per cent of employees feel any long-term commitment to their organization (Today, 1995). Yet greater organiz