Gender, Organizational Commitment and Job Performance in the Ugandan Local Government

The purpose of this paper was to establish the association between gender, organizational commitment and job performance of sub-county chiefs in the Ugandan local government. Most of the literature review indicates the effect of gender on organizational commitment, the effect of gender on job performance and the relationship between organizational commitment and job performance. A total of 320 sub-county chiefs were involved in the study and were selected using multi-stage stratified random sampling. A self-administered questionnaire used to collect data measured the following variables: Organizational commitment, job performance, and demographic variables of gender, age, educational level and tenure (years of experience). Data was entered into the computer using SPSS program. Factor analysis was carried out to establish different components of job performance, which were: cooperation, time consciousness, organization citizenship behavior (OCB), and communication. The already established components of organizational commitment that were used were: affective, continuance and normative commitment. A t-test, Pearson correlation and regression analyses were carried out to test the hypotheses. Results indicated that: gender does not significantly influence organizational commitment as well as it components of affective, continuance and normative commitment; males and females do not significantly differ on their levels of job performance and its components of cooperation, time consciousness, organization citizenship behavior and communication; there was a positive significant relationship between overall job performance and affective commitment as well as normative commitment; and only affective commitment was a significant predictor of job performance. Employees who value hard work, and are committed and highly participate in organizational activities are likely to be outstanding (good) performers. However, targeting one employee attitude in order to improve performance may not be enough. It is very important to focus on a combined pattern of work attitudes to obtain the desired goals.


Introduction
The job model suggests that when women perform in the same organizational settings as their male counterparts, their attitudes are shaped by the same factors, and that there should be no significant differences across the two groups (Dodd-McCue & Wright, 1996). The model suggests that workplace experiences determine attitudinal commitment. From a gender model perspective on the other hand, it is contended that gender-related differences in job attitudes represent true psychological differences resulting from early socialization of males and females (Rosener, 1990), and by socially determined gender roles (Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000). The gender model contends that socialization shapes attitudinal commitment. However, even though many studies have found no differences in job attitudes by gender (e.g. Aven, Parker, & McEvoy, 1993;Smith, Smits, & Hoy, 1998), and that women may even be more committed than men to their work and careers, among other job attitudes (e.g. Mathieu & Zajac, 1990;Wahn, 1998), there are perceptions that men and women have different job attitudes (Schwartz, 1989) and some empirical studies have reported such attitudinal differences (Kaldenberg, Becker, & Zvonkovic, 1995). More support of the gender model includes the following empirical studies: that significant and fundamental differences exist between genders (Gray, 1992); several statistics indicate gender disparities among CEOs, parliamentarians, nonprofit organizations, and men being higher than women (Sandberg, 2013); that gender disparities are not decreasing and persist over time (Slaughter, 2015); and that gender disparities exist among medical school department chairs (Kolovich, 2015).
The most commonly cited definition of organizational commitment is that of Mowday, Porter and Steers (1982). They defined it as the relative strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organization. As Meyer and Allen (1991) outlined, commitment consists of three dimensions, namely, affective, continuance and normative commitment. Affective organizational commitment is defined as the relative strength of an individual's identification with and commitment to an organization. Three aspects characterize affective commitment: a strong belief in and the acceptance of organizational goals and values, the willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization, and a strong desire to maintain membership in the organization (Dipboye, Smith, & Howell, 1994;McCaul, Hinsz, & McCaul, 1995).
Continuance commitment refers to the commitment employees experience towards the organization because

Gender and performance
Some research findings indicate gender differences, and others indicate none in as far as the performances of men and women are concerned. One body of research maintains that there are no significant differences in the behaviors (e.g. performance ratings) of male and female leaders (Vilkinas & Cartan, 1993;Fogarty, 1996;Kim, Lee & Kim, 2015), and in the overall emotional intelligence of men and women (Petrides & Furnham, 2006). Additional studies report that women and men in leadership roles are more similar than different (Lyness & Thompson, 1997). Perceived discrepancies in the attributes of men and women were found to diminish when women were designated as successful (Heilman, Block and Martell, 1995 (2016), and Solakoglu and Demir (2016 found out that gender showed no significant relationships with performance. Similar studies provide empirical evidence that men and women do not perform differently in managing their entrepreneurial businesses and that their managerial performance and attitudes correspond in many aspects (Menzies, Diochon, & Gasse, 2004;Orser & Riding, 2004), while a third group of studies addresses the advantages women have in specific functions in management. The body of studies focusing on the managerial performance for which women are at an advantage compared to men includes managerial functions related to people; women more than men focus on their teams' development, empower their subordinates and encourage their workers' achievements and perseverance (Bruni, Gherardi, & Poggio, 2004;Brush, Carter, Gatewood, Greene, & Hart, 2004). Other studies report that women entrepreneurs spend more time in networking, more engaged in conducting market research and typically demonstrate advantages in strategic planning, leading change (Morris, Miyasaki, Watters, & Coombes, 2006;Walker & Webster, 2006) and innovation (Sexton & Bowman-Upton, 1990;Goldsmith, Freiden, & Eastman, 1995).
A contrasting body of research finds that there are gender differences in leadership behaviors. Women leaders have been reported to have better people skills than men (Rutherford, 2001), to be more visionary (Vinnicombe, 1987), to have a more democratic leadership style (Eagly & Johnson, 1990) and a more transformational style relying on consideration and interpersonal skills (Bass & Aviolo, 1997;Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001). Perrault and Irwin's (1996) study of men and women at the executive levels in a variety of companies found that women outperform men in 28 of 31 skill areas, leading them to conclude that women behave similarly but more effectively than their male colleagues. Similar results were reported by Sharpe (2000), i.e. women executives received higher ratings on 42 of 52 skills measured, and Shore (1992), i.e. women were rated significantly higher than men on six of seven performance dimensions.
A sizeable body of research has discovered that there are indeed differences in the assessments of female leaders and of male leaders. One line of reasoning cited for these gender differences has been a "think manager, think male" stereotypical view of leadership (Metcalfe & Altman, 2001). Brenner, Tomkiewicz and Schein (1989) discovered that both women and men saw successful leaders as male. Many leadership skills are observed through gender stereotypes and regarded differently when performed by men or by women (Martell & DeSmet, 2001;Merrill-Sands & Kolb, 2001).
Another major finding that repeatedly emerges from studies on entrepreneurship is that women-owned businesses and men-owned businesses, respectively, differ in some success measures (Alsos, Isaksen, & Ljunggren, 2006;Grilo & Irigoyen, 2006). With the exception of a few recent studies showing no gender differences among entrepreneurial businesses in some success measures (Menzies et al., 2004;Johnsen & McMahon, 2005), most studies revealed differences in business longevity (Low & MacMillan, 1988), rates of sales (Cassar, 2004;Covin, Green, & Slevin, 2006), and rates of growth (Bhide, 2000;Watson, 2006) among others. Previous studies on entrepreneurship have shown that men and women differ in their managerial skills and performance (Perry, 2002;Morris et al., 2006). Most of these studies have shown that women entrepreneurs are less successful in turning their managerial performance into successful and profitable enterprises (e.g. Du Reitz & Henrekson, 2000). But Dafna (2008) indicated that women entrepreneurs however, both Canadian and Israeli, ranked significantly higher in some functions of their managerial performance compared to their male counterparts.
Recent studies have also indicated a similar mixed trend. To obtain an overall picture of self-rated performance according to personal characteristics, results indicated that self-reported performance was significantly higher among male than female respondents (Crossman & Abou-Zaki, 2003;Al-Ahmadi, 2009 Vol.12, No.14, 2020 another study, male leaders were assessed as more successful even when the male and female leaders demonstrated an equivalent level of competences (Hopkins & Bilimoria, 2008). However, Millmore, Biggs and Morse (2007) did research using 66 managers (33 males and 33 females) against four broad capabilities on the 360-degree appraisal system. Like Maamari and Saheb (2018), their results illustrated that females had an overall higher performance rating score than males. This difference was found to be statistically significant. This result indicates that females were rated significantly higher than males in the overall scores achieved on the 360-degree appraisal system. Taken at face value, this may reflect that female managers were consistently out performing their male counterparts on the work-related competences assessed and that this has been objectively identified through the 360-degree appraisal process. Millmore et al. (2007) gave an explanation for the superior performance by female managers. One possible explanation relates back to the suggestion that female managers have something more to prove than male managers and, as a result, may work harder or differently to achieve results (Greener, 2007). If this is the case, then at least their efforts are being recognized through the 360-degree appraisal system in the case company (Fletcher, 1999). An alternative explanation is provided by the "gender contrast" effect (Heilman, et al., 1988), where the overrating of females performing roles perceived as male-oriented, such as management, is evidenced. The argument here is that raters are surprised by the actual performance of females in comparison to sex-based stereotypes, particularly, given the perceived barriers that they need to surmount if they are to succeed, leading to overcompensation in any ratings of performance. H2: Females than males will indicate significantly higher levels of overall job performance and its components.

Organizational commitment and performance
Organizational commitment has been an important research topic having both practical and theoretical implications. Organizations are intended to have more highly committed workforce, because several research results show that organizational commitment leads to important outcomes such as decreased turnover, higher motivation, higher organization citizenship behavior and organizational support (e.g. Kwon & Banks, 2004). The concept of ''organizational commitment'' has gained increasing attention primarily because of its negative relationship between absenteeism and employee turnover (Kuruuzum et al., 2009). Greater organizational commitment has been linked to low rates of absenteeism and also better job performance (Cohen, 1992;Khatri & Fern, 2001;Subramaniam et al., 2002). Interest in the relationship between organizational commitment and performance is based on the assumption that employees who feel attached to, and identify with their organizations, are more likely to work harder. Tang et al. (2000), Suliman (2002) and Tumwebaze (2009) found out that job performance was positively and significantly correlated with organizational commitment, which was also found to be a strong predictor of employees' performance (Al-Ahmadi, 2009). Looking at the differences between employees either in managerial or full time accounting positions and between respondents, Chen, Silverthorne and Hung (2006) found that organizational commitment and performance were positively and significantly related. Liu (2009) also found a significant positive relationship between affective commitment and organizational directed organizational citizenship behavior. Recent research also indicates that diversity management and organizational commitment were positively related to in-role performance (Kim, Lee & Kim, 2015). Organizational commitment and employee performance have been found to be significantly related (Hendri, 2019;Nasab and Afshari, 2019). This research suggested that affective, continuance and normative commitment all had significant and positive association with individual job performance (Al Zefeiti and Mohamad, 2017;Torlak et al, 2018). According to Rukh et al. (2018), organizational commitment is associated with employees' positive behavior. Committed employees to the organization tend to willingly exert high levels of effort in achieving organizational goals and as a result contribute to positive organizational outcomes (Afshari and Gibson, 2016). Similar findings had been obtained by Ward and Davis (1995), Suliman and Iles (2000), Yousef (2000), Gava (2005), Sande (2005), Suliman and Kathairi (2013), and Indarti et al (2017).
Some other researchers found a relationship between job performance and commitment. However, they concluded that the direction of the relationship depended on the type of commitment. Job performance was found to have a strong positive relationship with affective commitment (Meyer et al., 1989;Meyer & Allen, 1997;Suliman & Iles, 2000;Suliman, 2002;Luchak & Gellatly, 2007), and normative commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1997;Suliman & Iles, 2000), while a negative relationship was found between continuance commitment and performance (Meyer et al. 1989). Mathieu and Zajac (1990) found low positive correlation between organizational commitment and performance, which lead to the belief that there are other variables that moderate this relationship. Similarly, Samad (2005) found a moderate positive relationship between organizational commitment and job performance, and concluded that job satisfaction moderates the relationship between organizational commitment and job performance, indicating that employees, who are committed to their organizations, would have better job performance if they were satisfied in their jobs.
On the other hand, few researchers have found no significant relationships between commitment and European Journal of Business and Management www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1905 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2839 (Online) Vol.12, No.14, 2020 28 performance. Organizational commitment was found to be significantly associated with job satisfaction, but not with employee performance (Yiing & Ahmad, 2009). Carmeli and Freund (2004) examined the relationships between joint work commitments, job satisfaction, and job performance of lawyers employed by private law firms in Israel and found out that performance was significantly related to career commitment, but not to affective and continuance commitments. Continuance commitment tends to be unrelated or negatively correlated to work behaviors such as attendance, job performance and organizational citizenship behavior (Meyer et al., 1989;Angle & Lawson, 1994;Meyer et al., 2002;Suliman, 2002). Other results also suggest that organizational commitment does not affect performance in a very significant way (Pinho et al, 2014), and that a very weak relationship was found between organizational commitment and organizational performance.
However, a common agreement is that a highly committed employee would contribute more to the performance of the organization than the less committed one (Suliman, 2002;Freund & Carmeli, 2003). The rationale is that commitment to work, career, job and organization would enhance the desire to stay and develop within the organization (Vandenberg & Scarpello, 1994), and this partly explains the reason why Suliman and Iles (2000), unlike some other studies (e.g. Sethivikram, Meinert, Kingrking, & Sethiavsethi, 1996;Caruana, Ewing, & Ramaseshan, 1997) found a significant positive relationship between continuance commitment and job performance. Organizational commitment contributes to better performance, as more committed employees should be more motivated to work hard on their organization's behalf (Suliman, 2002). H3: There is a significant positive relationship between organizational commitment and job performance. H4: Organizational commitment components of affective, continuance and normative commitment will significantly predict job performance.

Sample
A total of 320 sub-county chiefs who were involved in the study were selected using multi-stage stratified random sampling. Males were 79.1% as compared to females at 20.9%; with an average age of 34 years; and majority being degree holders (72%).

Measures
A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. It measured the following variables: Organizational commitment: The study used 16 items of affective commitment. The first set of 9 items were developed by Mowday, Steers and Porter (1979), and used by Yousef (2001), who obtained a reliability coefficient of 0.82, and also used by Yilmaz (2002) who obtained a reliability coefficient of 0.92. The second set of 7 items of affective commitment were developed by Allen and Meyer (1990), and used by Carmeli and Freund (2004) who obtained a reliability coefficient of 0.86, and also used by Kuruzuum et al. (2009) who obtained an  of 0.70. The study also used 12 items of continuance commitment. The first 4 items were developed by Hunt, Chonko and Wood (1985), and used by Yilmaz (2002) who obtained a reliability coefficient of 0.88, with extracted variance of 0.66. The second set of 8 items of continuance commitment were developed by Allen and Meyer (1990), and used by Carmeli and Freund (2004), who obtained a reliability coefficient of 0.81, and also used by Kuruzuum et al. (2009), who obtained a reliability coefficient of 0.76. The 8 items of normative commitment used were developed by Allen and Meyer (1990), and used by Carmeli (2005), who obtained a reliability coefficient of 0.63, and also used by Kuruzuum et al. (2009), who obtained a reliability coefficient of 0.78. All responses were precoded as I strongly disagree (scored as 1) through I strongly agree (scored as 7).
Performance: A total of 30 items used were developed from the results of the modified repertory grid (which was part of the competence profiling phase). Responses were pre-coded as never (scored as 0) through always (scored as 4).
Demographic variables: Gender was measured as a separate demographic variable, with two levels of male and female (scored as 1 and 2 respectively). Other variables were: age in years categorized as: below 25, 25-29, 30-34, 35-39, 40-44, 45-49, and 50 and above (scored as 1 through 7 respectively); educational level categorized as: O-level, A-level, Diploma, Degree, Masters, PhD (scored as 1 through 6 respectively); and tenure (years of experience) was recorded as given.

Analysis and results
Data was entered into the computer using SPSS program. Factor analysis was carried out to establish different components of job performance, which were: cooperation, time consciousness, organization citizenship behavior (OCB), and communication. The already established components of organizational commitment that were used were: affective, continuance and normative commitment. Apart from the demographic variables, a total score for each sub-scale was computed to be used in hypothesis testing. A high total score indicated a high value of the attribute being measured, and vice versa. A t-test, Pearson correlation and regression analyses were carried out to test the hypotheses. European Journal of Business and Management www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1905(Paper) ISSN 2222-2839(Online) Vol.12, No.14, 2020 According to the t-test results, gender does not significantly influence organizational commitment (t=.611; p>.05), as well as it components of affective (t=-.452; p>.05), continuance (t=1.221; p>.05) and normative (t=.791; p>.05) commitment (Table 1). H1 was not supported. In the same way, H2 was also not supported (Table 2). Males and females do not significantly differ on their levels of job performance (t=.892; p>.05) and its components of cooperation (t=1.632; p>.05), time consciousness (t=.483; p>.05), organization citizenship behavior (t=-.144; p>.05) and communication (t=-.1.301; p>.05).  Correlation results indicate a positive significant relationship between overall organizational commitment and overall job performance (r=.282; p<.01). H3 is supported. Apart from continuance commitment, there was a positive significant relationship between overall job performance and: affective commitment (r=.316; p<.001), and normative commitment (r=.159; p<.05).

Gender and Organizational Commitment
The job model explains why male and female employees may not differ in their work attitudes, and probably in their work outcomes. It suggests that when women work in the same organizational settings as their male counterparts, their attitudes are shaped by the same factors and that there should be no significant differences across the two groups (Dodd-McCue & Wright, 1996). Findings from previous researchers on gender-attitudes relationships are mixed. Some are in line with the study findings and concur with the job model. When sex and commitment are considered, some researchers did not find gender differences in overall job commitment (Matsiko, 2005;Matagi, 2006;Dick & Metcalfe, 2007;Kuruuzum et al., 2009;Kim, Lee & Kim, 2015). In similar studies, respondents' gender revealed no significant relationship with employees' affective commitment (Suliman & Iles, 2000;Carmeli, 2005;Joiner & Bakalis, 2006;Carriere & Bourque, 2009). In addition, Labatmediene et al. (2007) and Namasivayam and Zhao (2007) found out that gender was not significantly related to all components of organizational commitment, that is, affective, normative and continuance commitment.
However, some previous findings are not in line with the study findings and concur with the gender model. From a gender model perspective, it is contended that gender-related differences in job attitudes represent true psychological differences resulting from early socialization of males and females (Rosener, 1990), and by socially determined gender roles (Eagly et al., 2000). Whereas several researchers state that men are more committed to the organization than women (e.g. Al-Ahmadi, 2009), others have found that women have significantly higher levels of organizational commitment than men (Marchiori & Henkin, 2004;Singh et al., 2004;Dixon et al., 2005). In addition, Mathieu and Zajac (1990) found that women were more affectively committed to the organization than men, and Wahn's (1998) study among human resource executives found that women showed a higher continuance commitment than men. It is suggested that women may have higher organizational commitment because they perceive fewer job alternatives than their male counterparts. That is, if women believe that they have fewer opportunities for employment in other organizations, they will have higher levels of commitment to their current organizations than do men.
Though the research findings agree with the job model, most previous researchers support the gender model. There is therefore a strong support for the notion that men and women have different job attitudes and this may influence their work outcomes.

Gender and Job Performance
The finding on 'gender-performance' relationship is in agreement with the job model, that is, males and females who work in the same organizational setting don't differ in their attitudes and possibly work outcomes. This should not have been the case for this study because the respondents (sub-county chiefs) work in different sub-counties which are different in many aspects. May be the few similarities between these sub-counties should have influenced such a trend.
Some research findings indicate gender differences, and others indicate none in as far as the performances of men and women are concerned. One body of research maintains that there are no significant differences in the behaviors (e.g. performance ratings) of male and female leaders (Vilkinas & Cartan, 1993), and in the overall emotional intelligence of men and women (Petrides & Furnham, 2006). Additional studies reported that women and men in leadership roles were more similar than different (Lyness & Thompson, 1997).
A contrasting body of research found that there are gender differences in leadership behaviors. Previous studies on entrepreneurship have shown that men and women differ in their managerial skills and performance (Perry, 2002;Morris et al., 2006). Women leaders have been reported to have better people skills than men (Rutherford, 2001), to be more visionary (Vinnicombe, 1987), to have a more democratic leadership style (Eagly & Johnson, 1990) and a more transformational style relying on consideration and interpersonal skills (Bass & Aviolo, 1997;Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001). In addition, the findings of Millmore et al. (2007) illustrated that females had an overall higher performance rating score than males. On the other hand, results of Al-Ahmadi (2009) indicated that self-reported performance was significantly higher among male than female respondents. In European Journal of Business and Management www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1905(Paper) ISSN 2222-2839(Online) Vol.12, No.14, 2020 another study, male leaders were assessed as more successful even when the male and female leaders demonstrated an equivalent level of competencies (Hopkins & Bilimoria, 2008).

Organizational Commitment and Job Performance
There is a genuine belief that societal commitment to work is often associated with economic development and competitiveness. Highly committed employees will put forth substantial effort towards the achievement of organizational objectives and be less likely to turnover. Such employees, who describe high levels of job involvement, might reciprocate in the form of greater affective commitment to the organization, leading to increased in-role performance and citizenship behavior. The positive relationship between organizational commitment and performance indicates that increased loyalty leads individuals to exert more effort at work and increases productivity and performance. Interest in the relationship between organizational commitment and performance is also based on the assumption that employees who feel attached to, and identify with their organizations, work harder, have low rates of absenteeism and turnover, and hence have outstanding job performance. A common agreement is that highly committed employees are more motivated to work hard on their organization's behalf, and contribute more to the performance of the organization than the less committed ones.
A number of previous researchers have concurred with the findings of this study. Organizations are intended to have more highly committed workforce, because several research results show that organizational commitment leads to important outcomes such as decreased turnover, higher motivation, higher organization citizenship behavior and organizational support (e.g. Kwon & Banks, 2004). Similarly, job performance was found to be positively and significantly correlated with overall organizational commitment (Tang et al., 2000;Suliman, 2002;Chen et al., 2006;Al-Ahmadi, 2009;Tumwebaze, 2009); affective commitment (Suliman & Iles, 2000;Suliman, 2002;Luchak & Gellatly, 2007;Liu, 2009); and normative commitment (Suliman & Iles, 2000). Other results indicated that all organizational commitment subscales (affective, normative, and continuance) had a significant impact on work performance dimensions, contextual and task performance (Al Zefeiti and Mohamad, 2017). Greater organizational commitment has been linked to low rates of absenteeism and also better job performance.
On the other hand, very few researchers have found no significant relationships between commitment and performance (Yiing & Ahmad, 2009;Pinho et al, 2014). Carmeli and Freund (2004) found out that performance was not significantly related to affective and continuance commitments. Continuance commitment tends to be unrelated or negatively correlated to work behaviors such as attendance, job performance and organizational citizenship behavior (Suliman, 2002;Meyer et al., 2002).

Conclusion and Recommendation
The demographic variable of gender is generally a weak predictor of work attitudes and performance. Job performance is positively and significantly related to the work attitude of organizational commitment. Employees who value hard work, and are committed and highly participate in organizational activities are likely to be outstanding (good) performers. The study findings are in agreement with the commitment-performance model (Steers, 1977;Putterill & Rohrer, 1995) which asserts that there are linkages between job performance outcomes and antecedent conditions, both experiences and behaviors, aiming thereby at any time to reflect the prevailing state of employee commitment. In this model, organizational commitment, as a work attitude, intermediates experience and behavior in influencing individual job performance. However, targeting one employee attitude in order to improve performance may not be enough. It is very important to focus on a combined pattern of work attitudes to obtain the desired goals. Human resource managers should, in addition to recruiting and selecting competent employees (quality at the gate), focus on improving employee work attitudes so that appropriate individual decision making processes (that are in line with organizational goals) take place.

Limitations
Data were in the first place collected by a self-administered questionnaire, a method with some shortcomings (e.g. a bias of general method variance, and social desirability effects), and the validity of the results may not be very high. Nevertheless, the use of validated and usable measures reduced the possibility of bias in general method variance. Second, the performance measure was based on self-evaluation and may have caused over-rating of performance scores. Third, the sample was restricted to one category of respondents: the sub-county chiefs. Consequently, the findings may not be generalized to other sectors or to other national and cultural contexts. In order to overcome these limitations, similar research is recommended using alternative performance measures, drawing on a more diverse sample and which explores the relevance, if any, of national culture.