Educational, experience disparities may affect worker's commitment

Disparities in experience and education among younger supervisors and older subordinates may influence a worker's commitment toward their organisations, finds an interesting study.

According to the study conducted by the Naveen Jindal School of Management at UT Dallas in the US, older workers reporting to younger supervisors may negatively affect the leader's ability to foster attachment to the organisation among their subordinates.

"Status incongruence -- which occurs when a subordinate is older or has more education, work experience and organisational tenure than their supervisor -- negatively affected transformational leaders' ability to foster attachment to the organisation among their subordinates," said Orlando Richard, Associate Professor at the Naveen Jindal School of Management.

In the study published in the journal Personnel Psychology, the researchers found that status incongruence weakened the relationship between transformational leadership and affective commitment.

While transformational leadership inspires subordinates to work for the good of the organisation by motivating, affective commitment is an attachment that an employee would have toward an organisation.

"If employees feel that the wrong person is in charge, there could be negative consequences for the organisation down the road. It also affects the level of commitment you have to the organisation because you feel you are more qualified than they are," Richard added.

--IANS

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