Organizational Commitment of Teachers: A Meta-Analysis Study for the Effect of Gender and Marital Status in Turkey

In its simplest form, organizational psychology deals with employees' perceptions that they develop over time for their organization. More specifically, most studies that attempt to understand the nature of an organization intend to identify the perceptions of the employees, who are considered the most important component of the organization. This is because the perceptions that the employees hold for their organization motivate their behaviors, which consequently plays a major role in the efficiency of the organization. Within this scope, organizational commitment is one of the most studied types of employee perceptions in the field of organizational psychology. Despite the fact that the studies related to organizational commitment try to clarify its (i) nature, (ii) priorities, (Hi) results, and (iv) relations, its recent popularity demonstrates that agreement has not yet been reached. This discontinuity in the literature makes the organizational commitment an intriguing research topic.Due to the variations in the literature, it is not possible to give an agreed upon or exact definition of organizational commitment. Wiener (1982) defines organizational commitment as the sum of the normative pressures which are internalized to behave according to the purposes of the organization. Organizational commitment is also defined as the employee's desire to stay in the organization, desire to work hard for it, and the adoption of the values and purposes of the organization (Morrow, 1983). Organizational commitment is a concept which expresses the psychological approach of the employee to his or her organization and the relative desire necessary for integrating into the organization (Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982). Meyer and Allen (1991) describe this term as a behavior that forms the employee's relations with the organization and encourages the employee to make the decision to become a permanent member of the organization. Bateman and Strasser (1984), define organizational commitment as a concordance level which is perceived within the employee and the organization. If all these definitions are considered, it can be summarized that the term "organizational commitment" comprises qualifications such as the employee's desire to stay in the organization, the quality of their relationship, and the internalization of their purposes, loyalty, interest and endeavors. Within the literature, there are two main classifications used (Tak, Erdur, & Kitapci, 2011) with the first being described by O'Reilly and Chatman (1986). These researchers examine organizational commitment in three perspectives: (i) Accordance: this expresses a superficial dependence related to external awards in which employees believe they can achieve in the organization by their behaviors. From this perspective, the loyalty of the employee to the organization is pragmatic and compulsory in order to reach the awards and escape punishments (Balay, 2000; Lee, 2000, Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001). (ii) Identification: this is based on building sincere relationships among the employees. The employee defines him or herself as a member of the organization and takes pride in that. These employees internalize the successes of the organization as his or her success and the failures of the organization as his or her failure (Bagaran, 2000; Lee, 2000). (Hi) Internalization: this expresses the highest level of loyalty in which the employee defines him or herself as an important component of the organization. It is entirely based on the agreement between the individual's values and those of the organization. In internalization, it is critical that the employee sincerely accepts and internalizes the values and norms of the organization as his or her own without coercion. This occurs when the employee makes his or her inwardness cohesive with the value system of the other people in the organization (Balay, 2000; Bursahoglu, 2005). The second mostly accepted classification of organizational commitment is the Allen and Meyer's (1990) classification. …