Harold L. Angle and James L. Perry

8/7/2019 Harold L. Angle and James L. Perry

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An Empirical Assessment of Organizational Commitment and Organizational EffectivenessAuthor(s): Harold L. Angle and James L. PerrySource: Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Mar., 1981), pp. 1-14Published by: Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2392596 .

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An EmpiricalAssess-ment of OrganizationalCommitment and Or-ganizational Effective-nessHarold L. Angle andJames L.Perry

? 1981 by CornellUniversity.0001-8392/81/2601-0001 $00.75

Support for this research was provided bythe U.S. Department of Transportation,Of-fice of University Research, the GraduateSchool of Management, and the Instituteof TransportationStudies, University ofCalifornia,Irvine. The authors are indebtedto a number of their colleagues, particularlyRobert Dubin and Lyman Porter, for theirhelpful comments on an earlierversion ofthis paper.March 1981, volume 26

The study attempts to relate the organizational commitmentof lower-level employees to organizational effectiveness inorganizations offering bus services. Organizational com-mitment was found to be associated with organizationaladaptability, turnover, and tardiness rate, but not withoperating costs or absenteeism. Two subscales were con-structed to measure value commitment and commitment tostay in the organization. Few significant differences werefound between the subscales, as they relate to variousindicators of organizational effectiveness, and the overallpattern suggested the need to avoid simplistic assumptionsabout the impact of commitment on organizationally rele-vant behavior.Ina widely accepted paradigm in organizationtheory, organiza-tions and their members are seen inan exchange relationship.Each partymakes certain demands on the other while providingsomething in return. March and Simon (1958) characterizedsuch an exchange in terms of organizational inducements andindividualcontributions. They pointed out that employees'contributions to the organization take two general formsproduction and participation and they described some impor-tant differences inthe antecedents of an employee's decisionto produce in contrast to the decision to participate.Students of organizationalbehavior have attempted to estab-lish reliablelinkages between employee attitudes and organiza-tionally relevant behaviors, though with mixed results (Vroom,1964). Substantial attention has been directed recently towardorganizationalcommitment as the attitudinal component of thisrelationship (Hrebiniakand Alutto, 1972; Buchanan, 1974;Porteret al., 1974; Porter, Cramponand Smith, 1976; Steers,1977a; Stevens, Beyer and Trice, 1978). Some have proposedthat the concept of commitment may disclose reliable linkagesbetween attitudes and behavior, because commitment is pre-sumed to be a relativelystable employee attribute (Porteret al.,1974; Koch and Steers, 1978).Commitment has been studied from so many different theoret-ical perspectives, however, that Hall (1977) remarked that wemight better abandon the term altogether and deal instead witha set of concepts, each focused on one or another aspect ofcommitment. The term "commitment" has been used, forexample, to describe such diverse phenomena as the willing-ness of social actors to give their energy and loyaltyto socialsystems (Kanter,1968), an awareness of the impossibility ofchoosing a different social identity or of rejecting a particularexpectation, under force of penalty (Stebbins, 1 970a), thebinding of an individual o behavioral acts (Kiesler, 1971;Salancik, 1977), or an affective attachment to an organizationapart from the purely instrumental worth of the relationship(Buchanan, 1974). Some commitmentlike concepts, such asorganizationalidentification ororganizationalinvolvement, havealso appeared inthe literature(Patchen, 1970; HallandSchneider, 1972).The commitment framework adopted in the present researchhas been called the "organizationalbehavior approach" (Staw,1977). This treatment of commitment has perhaps its mostfrequently cited origins inthe work of Porterand his associates1/AdministrativeScience Quarterly


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(Porterand Smith, 1970; Porter et al., 1974; Porter, Cramponand Smith, 1976; Steers, 1977a; Mowday, Steers and Porter,1979) and a similarconcept is found in other research by Hall,Schneider and Nygren (1970), Halland Schneider (1972) andBuchanan (1974).Organizationalcommitment as defined by Porteret al. (1974)has three majorcomponents: (1)a strong belief in and accep-tance of the organization's goals, (2)a willingness to exertconsiderable effort on behalf of the organization, and (3) adefinite desire to maintainorganizationalmembership. Re-search conducted within this framework has indicated thatcommitment is not only a predictorof employee retention(Porteret al., 1974; Koch and Steers, 1978), but may also be apredictor of employee effort and performance (Mowday, Por-ter, and Dubin, 1974; Mowday, Steers, and Porter, 1979).Organizational Commitment and OrganizationalEffectivenessOrganizationaltheorists seem to agree that organizationalef-fectiveness is multidimensional (Campbell et al., 1974; Steers,1977b), and there is also reason to believe that the determi-nants of organizationaleffectiveness vary (Steers, 1977a; Ste-vens, Beyer, and Trice, 1978). Although general organizationaltheory holds that the structural features of an organizationshould fit the demands of environment and technology (Burnsand Stalker, 1961; Woodward, 1965; Lawrence and Lorsch,1967), organizationaldesign, alone, will not ensure organiza-tional effectiveness. Even where the structuralprerequisiteshave been met, there remains a crucialrequirement-that themembers of the organization behave ina manner supportive oforganizationalgoals.Katz (1964) suggested three types of member behaviors,reminiscent of March and Simon's (1958) participationandproduction framework, essential for a functioning organization.Not only must the organization induce members to joinandremain (i.e., participate),but it must also motivate two kinds ofproduction: dependable role behavior, as prescribed by theorganization, and spontaneous and innovative behaviors whichgo beyond explicit behavioral prescriptions.Some parallels can be drawn between the elements of organi-zational commitment according to the organizationalbehaviorschool (Porteret al., 1974) and the motivational taxonomies ofMarch and Simon (1958) and Katz(1964). A committedmember's definite desire to maintainorganizationalmember-ship would have a clear relationship to the motivation toparticipate.Willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf ofthe organizationand the belief inand acceptance of theorganization's goals, in combination, have implications for themember's motivation to produce for the organization - inaccordance with explicit organizationalmandates, as well as interms of Katz's (1964) spontaneous and innovative behaviors.Expected RelationshipsInthe present research, it had been anticipated that severalmeasures of organizationaleffectiveness would be sensitive todifferences inthe levels of commitment of the members of theorganizations studied. Thus, itwas hypothesized that organiza-tions whose members were strongly committed would have2/ASQ


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Organizational Commitment and Effectivenessboth high participationand high production. Such organizationswere therefore expected to show relatively low levels ofabsenteeism, tardiness, and voluntaryturnover, and high levelsof operating efficiency. Inaddition, in keeping with the viewthat committed employees will engage inspontaneous, innova-tive behaviors on behalf of the organization, itwas anticipatedthat, within limits, organizationalcommitment among themembers would facilitate the ability of an organization to adaptto contingencies. The adaptability-commitment relationshipwould not actually be expected to be monotonic over allpossible levels of commitment. Extreme commitment wouldprobably lead to fanatical behavior, suspension of individualjudgment and the like, i.e., the syndrome that Schein (1968)termed "failures of socialization." However, the relationshipwas presumed to be positive and monotonic over the range ofvalues actually encountered. While these outcomes are notexhaustive, they are typical of the measures of effectivenessthat have appeared in the literaturebased on the goal model oforganizations (Campbell et al., 1974; Steers, 1977b).Itwas anticipated that the relative strength of the relationshipbetween organizationalcommitment and organizationaleffec-tiveness mightvary depending upon the behaviors to which theemployees were committed. Harrisand Eoyang (1977), buildingupon Steers' (1977a) notion of "active" and "passive" com-mitment, offered a fourfold typology of commitment as aconstruct having two bipolardimensions: (1) commitment, orlack of commitment, to remain with the organization, and (2)commitment, or lackthereof, to work in support of organiza-tional objectives. Within such a framework, turnover measuresshould be most sensitive to the extent to which employeeswere committed to remaining in the organization. Conversely,those measures that more nearly reflected a decision byorganizationalmembers to produce (Marchand Simon, 1958)should be more clearly related to their commitment to exerteffort on behalf of the organization. The latter category ofindicators includes not only such performance dimensions asservice efficiency and adaptability,but absenteeism and tardi-ness, as well. Although the term "participation" n commonusage includes employee behaviors opposite to absenteeism,as well as to turnover, March and Simon (1958) defined theterm solely with respect to turnover.METHODSample and Research SitesA total of 24 organizations, which operated fixed-route busservices in western United States, participated in the study.Archivaland transit manager questionnaire and interview datawere collected at all participatingorganizations, and employeequestionnaires were administered to members of the busdrivers'bargainingunit. Consequently, a majority(91 percent) ofthe respondents were bus drivers; however, at a few of theparticipatingorganizations, mechanics and/or clerical personnelwere included in the drivers' bargainingunitand so weresampled along with the drivers.The total employee sample was1244, while the transit manager sample was 96.The nature of the bus driver's job was expected to provide aparticularly sensitive test of the relationship between thecommitment of rank-and-filemployees and severalindicators3/ASQ


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of the effectiveness of their employing organizations. Drivingabus is one of the more controlled yet one of the moreautonomous blue-collar occupations. On the one hand, driversmust adhere rigorously to minute-by-minute schedules keyedto a fixed route that must be followed exactly, and deviancefrom these schedules has a high probabilityof discovery. Onthe other hand, within the constraints of time and route, thebus driveris like a rulerof a minor kingdom. Whether intendedby the organization or not, a great deal of the driver's behavior,with respect to passenger relations, is discretionary.Forthe passengers, the driveris the organization. The networkof driversthat the organizationputs out on the roadconstitutesthe organization's public face. Ultimately, publicattitudestoward the organization, and publicutilizationand support of thetransit operation, may come to depend in large parton how wellthe drivers represent the organization to the public. Thus, as atrue boundary-role person (Adams, 1976), the bus drivermay bein a unique position to influence organizationaloutcomes, by heror his job-relevant behaviors. Ifthese behaviors are, inanyway,a function of organizational commitment, then organizationalcommitment and organizationalperformance might be related.MeasuresOrganizational commitment. Employee commitment wasmeasured by the 15-item Organizational Commitment Ques-tionnaire (OCQ) (Porter et al., 1974), which has demonstratedgood psychometric properties and has been used with a widerange of job categories (Mowday, Steers, and Porter, 1979). Inthe present study, Cronbach's alpha was .90. Two subscaleswere also created, based on the results of a factor analysis:value commitment (alpha=.89) and commitment to stay (al-pha=.72), which appear to differentiate between the respon-dents' commitment to support the goals of the organization andtheir commitment to retain their organizational membership.Table 1 indicates the factor loadings and shows which itemswere included in each of the subscales. As Table 1 indicates,there was also a third factor extracted under the conventionalrule that eigenvalues equal or exceed a value of one (Nunnally,1978); however, only one item had its highest loading on thatfactor. Because single-item scales are notoriously unreliable,only the two subscales mentioned were used.Inorder to assess the stability of the factor structure obtained,cross validationwas achieved by randomlydividingthe sampleand conducting a new pairof factor analyses. The factor-loadingpatterns for these analyses were virtually dentical with thosefor the overall sample; thus, the factor structure appears quitestable.The observation that the items loading on factor 2 were allreverse-scored, while none of the reverse-scored items wereloaded on factor 1, gave rise, initially, o the concern that thestructure obtained might have resulted from an artifact ofmeasurement. Although it is likelythat such an artifact mighthave contributed to the separation of factors, the two clustersof questionnaire items appear to be conceptually distinct.The value commitment scale includes items connoting pride inassociation with the organization (i.e., identification), willing-41ASQ


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Organizational Commitment and EffectivenessTable 1Rotated Factor Loadings from Factor Analysis for the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire*

Factors**Item 1 2 3

1 t Iam willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normallyexpected in order to help this organization be successful. .5942.t Italk up this organization to my friends as a great organizationto work for. .716 .3123.t Ifeel very little loyalty to this organization (reversed). .4824.t Iwould accept almost any type of job assignment in order to keepworking for this organization. .5095.t Ifind that my values and the organization's values are very similar. .547 .4836.t Iam proud to tell others that Iam partof this organization. .745 .3367.t Icould just as well be working for a different organization aslong as the type of work were similar(reversed). .3278.t This organization really inspires the best in me in the way ofjob performance. .586 .5029.t Itwould take very little change in my present circumstances tocause me to leave this organization (reversed). .61010.t Iam extremely glad I chose this organization to work for overothers Iwas considering at the time Ijoined. .646114 There's not much to be gained by sticking with this organizationindefinitely (reversed). .68912. Often, I find it difficult to agree with this organization'spolicies on important matters relatingto its employees (reversed). .375 .53213.t Ireally care about the fate of this organization. .569 .32514.t For me, this is the best of all organizations for which to work. .613 .3231 54 Deciding to work for this organization was a definite mistakeon my part (reversed). .409 .555Eigenvalues 6.354 1.363 1.004

* Only factor loadings above .30 are shown.** Factor 1-value commitment; Factor 2 - commitment to stay.t Items included invalue commitment subscale.t Items included in commitment to stay subscale.ness to perform forthe organization,concern forthe fate of theorganization, and congruence of personal values with those ofthe organization. Although three of the nine items relate toattitudes toward organizational membership, their wordingtends to imply that attachment is based on the member'spositive regard for the organization. Inthe aggregate, theseitems indicate a form of organizational involvement, whichEtzioni(1975) termed "moral"and which is clearlyanalogous toStebbins' (1970b) notion of value commitment.The commitment to stay scale includes a cluster of question-naire items that pertain to membership in itself. Unlikethemembership-related items that load on factor 1, these items donot connote an affective bond to the organization. On thecontrary,the wording of this set of items conveys a generalimpression of Etzioni's (1975) calculative involvement."Organizational effectiveness. Several aspects of overall or-ganizational effectiveness were tapped by the use of selectedperformance indicators. The rationale for the selection of thespecific indicators is discussed in an earlierpaper (PerryandAngle, 1980b).Employee turnover (separation rate)was measured by compila-tion of statistics on voluntarytermination during the precedingfiscal year. A second turnover measure was obtained by self-reportof employees' intent to quit (Appendix), a measure which5/ASQ


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has received substantial research support, as documented in arecent review by Muchinsky and Tuttle (1979).Employee tardiness was computed as the ratio of recordedtardiness incidents to the mean number of employees duringthe preceding fiscal year. Unfortunately, adequate tardinessrecords had been maintained by only 14 of the 24 organizationsfor which other performance data were available.Absenteeism was obtained by self-report (Appendix).Liketardiness, reliable absence statistics had not been maintainedby several of the participatingorganizations, but the alternativemeasure was available through the employee questionnaire.Operating expense was another measure of effectiveness. Ageneral notion of efficiency seems to be common in mosttaxonomies of the dimensions of organizational effectiveness.The broad concept of efficiency involves the computation ofratios of inputs to outputs, or of costs to benefits. Inpublicmasstransit, efficiency may be defined in terms of the extent towhich the organization is able to minimize operating costs,relativeboth to the amount of transit service providedand to theoverall scope of the operation. Two performance indicatorswere, therefore, selected for this purpose: operating expenseper revenue vehicle-hour, computed by dividing total operatingexpenses for the preceding fiscal year by the total number ofoperating hours for the revenue vehicles, and operating ex-pense per employee, using the total number of employees asthe measure of input.Organizationaladaptabilitywas measured by self-report, using amodified version of Mott's (1972) questionnaire. A four-itemscale was constructed and incorporated in both the employeequestionnaire and the transit manager questionnaire (Appen-dix).The adaptabilityof each organizationwas thus measuredtwo ways, i.e., by averaging the responses to the adaptabilityscale separately for transit managers and for other employees.Procedures for Data CollectionArchival data and questionnaires. Archival data were col-lected and questionnaires administered duringtwo-day sitevisits. Employees had been made aware of the survey inadvance of each visit through the internalcommunicationsystems of the organizations. Allquestionnaires were pre-sented directly to participatingemployees by a member of theresearch team. Inmost cases, completed questionnaires,which were filled out anonymously, were returned directly toone of the researchers before the conclusion of the site visit. Ina few cases, respondents were unable to complete question-naires in time, and so were furnished with preaddressed,postpaid envelopes for direct mailreturn to the university. Innocase did persons in the chain of authority in the organizationbecome involved inadministering questionnaires. The re-sponse rate for the primarymethod of administration (i.e.,on-site return)was 71 percent; however, the overall responserate dropped to 64 percent when persons who were providedmail-returnenvelopes were included in the computation. Theresponse rate from mail returnsalone was 32 percent.Sampling goals were established separately for each site, ininverse proportion to organization size. At the smallest organiza-tions, less than 30 eligible employees, for instance, the target6/ASQ


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Organizational Commitment and Effectivenesswas 100 percent. At organizations having more than 1 000eligible employees, the target was only 10 percent. Inmostcases, the targeted sampling objectives were achieved, theexceptions tending to be inthose organizations for which thetarget was 100 percent sampling.Since participationwas voluntary, true random sampling wasnot possible. Researchers attempted judgmentally, however,to distribute questionnaires across categories of race and sex,and across the apparent range of age and tenure. Analysis ofquestionnaire returns, however, disclosed some discrepanciesin proportionalrepresentation of certain groups. Blacks wereunderrepresented (14 percent in sample, 31 percent in popula-tion); as were employees having more than five years' tenure inthe organization (30 percent in sample, 38 percent in popula-tion); women were overrepresented (18 percent in sample, 6percent in population). Other groups matched sampling targetsreasonably well. Retrospectively, itappeared that the devia-tions from ideal proportionalrepresentation may have resulted,at least in part, from population differences duringthe workshifts in which most of the sampling effort had been concen-trated.

RESULTSOrganizational Commitment: Subgroup DifferencesPersonal factors accounted for several subgroup differences.Commitment was positively correlated with age (r= .17,p


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were older and had longer organizational tenure than females.There were no significant sex differences ineducational levels.Measures of Organizational EffectivenessCorrelationalanalysis was the principalmethod used to assessorganizational-level relationships. Pearson correlationcoeffi-cients were computed where marginaldistributions weresymmetrical and unimodal; however, forvariables with skeweddistributions, nonparametric correlations were substituted forPearson correlations. Intercorrelationsamong the effective-ness indicators are provided inTable 2. Allvariables inTable 2were measured at the organizational level; thus, the self-reportmeasures consisted of the arithmetic mean of responses toquestionnaires within each participatingorganization.

Table 2Intercorrelations among Indicators of Organizational EffectivenessIndicators* N 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 81. Manager-perceived adaptability 24 1 .23 .11 -.08 -.04 -.16 -.19 -.322. Employee-perceived adaptability 24 1 -.16 -.48g -.26 -.53 -.19 -.183. Absenteeism 24 1 -.25 -.26 .37 .500 .6704. Intent to quit 24 1 .64 .48 .14 .025. Separation rate 24 1 .05 -.15 -.056. Tardiness 14 1 .42 .437. Operating expense/revenue 22 1 .43*vehicle hour8. Operating expense/employee 20 1*Pearson correlation coefficients are underlined; all others are Spearman rho.*np< 05 en11


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Organizational Commitment and EffectivenessTable 3Correlations between Commitment Variables and Indicators of Organizational Effectiveness*

Total difference betweencorrelations for valueOrganizational Value Commitment commitment and commitmentIndicator N commitment commitment to stay to staytManager-perceived 24 .16 .15 .17 .02adaptabilityEmployee-perceived 24 .58* .52* .6800 .16adaptabilityAbsenteeism 24 .27 .26 .15 .11Intent to quit 24 -.36 -.28 -.609 .32Separation rate 24 -.48 -.449 -.640 .20Tardiness rate 14 -.48 -.46 -.35 .11Operating expense/ 22 -.28 -.34 -.06 .28revenue vehiclehourOperating expense/ 20 -.21 -.35 .05 .400employee* Pearson correlation coefficients are underlined; others are Spearman rho.t Statistical significance is indicated for the difference between correlations between value commitment andcommitment to stay. All significance tests are one-tailed.*sp


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1Itis acknowledged that the significance ofthe difference between two correlationcoefficients, neither of which is statisticallysignificant, is difficult to interpret. How-ever, the fact that a correlationcould haveoccurred by chance does not mean that thecorrelationequals zero. In his instance, thelarger of each pair of correlations related tooperating expense is nearly significant(p


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Organizational Commitment and Effectivenessoperating costs, and the probable reasons for this have beendiscussed in an earlier paper (Perryand Angle, 1980a).The overall pattern in Table 3 seems consistent with HarrisandEoyang's (1977) notion that commitment to stay and commit-ment to work are independent constructs and, in combination,have complex implications for organizations. However, thetable shows fewer statistically significant relationships thanmight be desired, and there are some anomalies. For instance,although there is no significant difference between the correla-tions for employee-perceived adaptabilityand the two com-mitment subscales, the trend is in a counterintuitive direction.Indeed, the largest correlation inTable 3 is betweenemployee-perceived adaptabilityand commitment to stay.It would seem unlikelythat a linearrelationship should existbetween any form of commitment and organizationaladaptabil-ity. At the extreme, commitment would appear to militateagainst the individual's(andtherefore the organization's)abilityto adapt to change (Salancik, 1977). It is more likelythat, withrespect to adaptability,there is some optimal level of commit-ment - sufficient to evoke needed employee behaviors be-yond explicit role stipulations, but not so strong as to incurthesuspension of individual udgment in favor of organizationalprecepts.As an additional note on the number of nonsignificant relation-ships in Table 3, it should be recognized that this studyrepresents an attempt to find systematic relationships in a"noisy system." As is often the case with field research, thereare a number of uncontrolled variables. Inparticular,suchperformance measures as operating expense ratiosare subjectto many influences besides the motivation of lower-levelemployees. Management competence, structuralandtechnological variables, and various contextual factors combineto place limits on any potential effort-performance relationship.Two cautions are required.The first is about the cross-sectionalnature of the research. To the extent that Table 3 does showrelationships between commitment and indicators of organiza-tional effectiveness, the directionalityof the causal arrow hasstill not been established. Forexample, however logical a casemight be made that some optimal level of employee commit-ment might foster organizationaladaptability,there is thepossibility that organizations that are adaptable either inducecommitment in their members or tend to attract and retain adisproportionate share of committed types of employees.The second caution is about occupational specificity. As Salan-cik(1977) pointed out, the impact of employee commitment onan organization depends, not only on what the employees arecommitted to do, but also on what the potential is for thosespecific behaviors to influence organizationaloutcomes. Inthepresent research, for example, commitment to stay was shownto have a more clear-cut relationship to voluntaryturnover thanto such indicators as operating costs. This may reflect the readyavailabilityof a replacement laborpool and relatively modesttrainingcosts in the transit industry. Inan industrywherelabor-pooland technological considerations would combine tomake turnover particularlyexpensive, commitment to staymight exert a more powerful impact on operating costs, thoughindirectly.1 1 ASQ


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CONCLUSIONThe present research offered an opportunity to uncover acommitment-performance relationship, if such a relationshipexists, through cross-organizational comparison of commit-ment levels relative to performance measures within a singletype of service organization. Furthermore, there were reasonsto expect that the role of bus operator was such that abehavior-performance linkmight, indeed, exist.What the research most clearly accomplished was a construc-tive replicationof a relatively large body of earlierwork, showinga definite negative relationship between organizationalcom-mitment and voluntaryturnover. Beyond that issue, the resultswere rather mixed. The statistics that could most nearlybeconsidered bottom-line indicators for the organizations thatparticipated in the research were the two operating expenseratios, yet these aspects of organizational performance werenot significantly associated with organizationalcommitment.Although employee-perceived organizational adaptability wasassociated with commitment, manager-perceived adaptabilitywas not. The relationship between tardiness and commitmentwas significant; however, employee tardiness rate was notsignificantly associated with organizationaloperating costs.The overall pattern of relationships between various perform-ance indicators and the two commitment subscales, thoughinconclusive, suggests follow-up research. The relationshipbetween commitment and behavior very likely depends on theform that commitment takes. Ratherthan assuming a simplisticrelationship between commitment and positive performanceoutcomes, organizational researchers will have to begin to dealwith more complex factors.

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APPENDIX:Self-Report Performance IndicatorsIndicator Wording of itemIntent to quit What are your plans for staying with this organization?1. I intend to stay until I retire.2. Iwill leave only if an exceptional opportunity turns up.3. Iwill leave if something better turns up.4. 1 ntend to leave as soon as possible.Absenteeism How many workdays were you absent from work in the last year (do not count vacation)? days.Adaptability A scale was constructed from the following four questions (Alpha=.80). Responses were obtained on a7-point summated ratingscale with anchorwords ranging from "strongly disagree" (1) to "stronglyagree" (7):1. People in this organizationdo a good job anticipating problems.2. People in this organizationdo a good job in keeping upwith changes in new equipment and new waysof doing things.3. When changes are made in routines and equipment, people adjust to these changes quickly.4. People in this organization do a good job coping with emergency situations brought on by accidents,equipment and labor problems, or other factors that might cause temporary work overloads.

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Harold L. Angle and James L. Perry