Organizational commitment of the sport experts of general youth and sport directorate

VI ABSTRACT ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT OF THE SPORT EXPERTS OF GENERAL YOUTH AND SPORT DIRECTORATE Hanifı UZUM A Study of Postgraduate Branch of Basic Sciences of Sports Management Thesis Advisor: Yrd. Doç. Dr. H. Birol YALÇIN January-2005, 161 Pages Recently, the concept of organizational commitment (OC) has gained a lot of emphasis in organizational psychology and organizational behavior. OC has been defined as a bond or link of the individuals to the organization. OC can be considered as the relative strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organization. According to the literature, OC can be divided into two divisions as; behavioral and attitudinal. Behavioral approach is concerned with the process by which employees come to develop a sense of commitment not to an organization, but to their own actions. On the other hand, attitudinal approach indicates thatVII commitment is an attitude which represents the bond between an employee and an organization. This can be characterized by at least three factors, (1) a strong belief in and acceptance of the organization's goals and values; (2) a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization; and (3) a strong desire to maintain membership. Research on organizational commitment revealed that OC is a future oriented attitude rather than job related attitudes. The refore, individuals with high level commitment tend to have a greater desire to remain in the organization and have better attendance than individuals with low level of commitment. Further, research also showed that individuals with high level commitment have greater desire to reach organization goals and adhere to organization policies. With this general thrust, the purpose of this study is to investigate commitment of sport experts that work at general youth and sport directorate. That is, the study (a) described selected demographics variables of sport experts; (b) identified organizational commitment components; and (c) investigated the differences in these variables among subgroups defined by gender, age, marital status, and type of school. Organizational tenure, intensity of job, institution, alternative job, level of education, desired job, the field of graduate. For the purpose of this study, cross sectional method of survey was employed to analyze relationships among variables. The subjects of the study were sport experts (n=98) who were employed at general youth and sport directorate in Turkey. The data were collected by using scale of 'Organizational Commitment of Teachers' (OCT) which was developed by Hosgorur in 1997. The previous study indicated that validity of this instrument is sufficiently high (Cronbah Alpha a=.82). In the study,VIII validity of the instrument was also found sufficient (