The Relationship between Organizational Commitment, Organizational Identification, Person Organization Fit and Job Satisfaction: A Research on IT Employees

IntroductionRetaining highly effective employees is important for an organization to create a competitive advantage (Niederman et al. 2007; Joshi and Agarwal, 2011) and long term organizational success regardless of the sector in which an organization operates (Groves, 2011; McDonnell, 2011) The Information Technology (IT) field is no exception (Hsu et al. 2003) Information technology is a dynamic and essential part of every business organization. IT professionals with organization specific knowledge and skills acquired through experience and training referred to as intellectual assets and human capital are delivering a fastgrowing contribution to corporate competitiveness that can go beyond the operation of the business. The capacity to capitalize these assets is reduced when IT professionals become dissatisfied with their work environments and lose motivation to perform successfully. Their commitment to the organization becomes less and they may leave the organization accordingly. In order to protect these intellectual assets, IT professionals should be in work environments that positively affect their organizational attitudes and behaviors. The purpose of the present study is to determine the impact of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, identification and person organization fit on the organizational performance for IT employees working in a Turkish government organization. The study also aims to examine the relationship between job satisfaction, organizational commitment, identification and person organization fit. The Information Technology sector in Turkey, demands for highly knowledge based resources and it is one of the fastest growing industry, leading to a significant increase in the demand for skilled workforce. Employee retention is a very important challenge for organisations due to the need for talented employees who seek to satisfy their own individual demands. The IT field in particular is confronting brazenly high turnover (Allen et al. 2009;  2009; Ghapanchi and Aurum, 2011) This high turnover causes the costs for recruitment and selection, but also hidden costs such as low motivation and the loss of distinctive skills and tacit corporate knowledge (Holtom et al. 2008; Moore and Burke, 2002; Owens and Khazanchi, 2011) The IT field is remarkably challenging given the existing discrepancy between supply and demand of skilled individuals in the IT job (Owens and Khazanchi, 2011) Research aiming on the retention of employees in the IT environment has received great attention over the past 20 years (Gqubule, 2006; Ramakrishna and Potosky, 2002; Van der Merwe, 2008) This has contributed to researchers to review the factors that influence individuals' job satisfaction and organisational commitment within the IT environment (Lumley, 2010).Spector (1997) states that job satisfaction as powerful motivator effects on people's attitude towards their jobs and various aspects of their jobs. It is affected by personal and organizational factors, which cause an emotional reaction affecting organizational commitment (Mowday, Steers and Porter, 1979) Besides, the consequences of job satisfaction include better performance and a reduction in withdrawal and counterproductive behaviours (Morrison, 2008) Since job satisfaction encompasses employees' affect or emotions, it influences an organisation's well being with regard to job productivity, employee turnover, absenteeism and life satisfaction (Sempane,  Spector, 2008) Motivated employees are vital to an organisation's competitiveness, and therefore understanding people in their jobs and what motivates them could be a driving force in strengthening organisational commitment (Schein, 1996) Couger and Zawacki (1978) identified the different forms of motivation as well as other appearances among Information Technology personnel such as IT managers in general have both lower social needs and higher growth needs than other managers (Couger, Zawacki, and Opperman, 1979)