Work Values and Organizational Commitment in Public and Private Sector Industries

The study has examined the work values and their relationship to job satisfaction and the level of commitment among the employees of public and private sector industry. It was assumed that the employees of the private sector industry will be more committed to their job and will show higher job satisfaction as compared to the employees of the public sector industry. The sample included 60 middle level employees from a public sector industry and 30 employees each from two private sector industries. The instrument used were: Survey of Work Values (Wallack, Goodale, Wijting, & Smith, 1971), the Commitment Scale (Porter, Steers, Mowday, & Boulian, 1974), and the Job Feeling Scale (Wysocki & Kromm, 1986). The results showed a significant difference between the employees of public and private sector industry on job involvement. The employees of private sector industry had significantly high mean scores on job involvement. There was a significant correlation between intrinsic work values and commitment for the employees of public sector industry. The differences on work values and commitment between public and private sector employees were not significant. The instrument used showed high internal consistency. Moreover, the correlations between the sub-scales of these measures and the total scores were also high. The results have been discussed in the context of prevailing social values in the Pakistani society.