Training Effectiveness and Commitment to Organizational Change: Saudi Arabian ARAMCOoaji.net/articles/2016/352-1465640432.pdf · 2016-06-11 · addition, it is an important managerial

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*Corresponding author: Dr. Adel Mahmoud Al Samman, Assistant Professor, Department of Business Administration, College of Administrative Sciences, Applied Science University E-Mail: [email protected]

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Management and Administrative Sciences Review

Volume 5, Issue 3

Pages: 128-142

May 2016

e-ISSN: 2308-1368

p-ISSN: 2310-872X

Training Effectiveness and Commitment to Organizational Change: Saudi Arabian

ARAMCO

Adel Mahmoud Alsamman1, Saeed Hameed Aldulaimi2, Muhammad Alsharedah3

1. Assistant Professor, Department of Business Administration, College of Administrative Sciences, Applied Science University

2. Assistant Professor, Department of Business Administration, College of Administrative Sciences, Applied Science University

3. Aramco, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Training aims at the individual’s development and organizational change aims at the organization’s development, they both meet halfway that development comes only through one source, “the individual”. This paper is an endeavor to probe how training, as the corner stone for change, is a substantial element in improving the performance of individuals and equip them with the necessary knowledge required for conducting business, in addition to the way it makes the human being more acceptable to such change and development. This paper aims to address the question “what is the effect of training evaluation on commitment to change?” using the widely accepted theories in management. This descriptive study utilizes survey methodology approach designed to identify the relationship between employees’ training and employees’ organizational commitment to change measured by three organizational commitment components as suggested by Herscovitch and Meyer 2002 The target population of this study consisted of ARAMCO employees with 321 participants. The major findings from this study is that the training-related variables were significantly related to dimensions of commitment to organizational change. Affective commitment to organizational change is highly affected by training evaluation program; while, continuance and normative commitment to change are less influenced.

Keywords: Change Management – Training Evaluation – Aramco- Saudi Arabia

INTRODUCTION

Public and private organizations conduct businesses through their employees aiming at achieving short and long range objectives. To do so, organizations should be able to recruit those who

are able to achieve such objectives, and adopt the methods and approaches that fulfil the constant development of employees’ performance, on top of which, comes the organizational change.

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Manag. Adm. Sci. Rev. e-ISSN: 2308-1368, p-ISSN: 2310-872X Volume: 5, Issue: 3, Pages: 128-142

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Saying so, the organizational change concept is considered the comprehensive framework for the required organizational development based on the integrated managerial system on the long range that it provides, in the core of which we find the main elements of the successful organizations. In return, commitment to organizational change is not a philosophy, it is rather a practical framework that could be applied in real life. Simply put, it is actual plans programmed to transfer the organization to a better situation than its status que, through integrated and continuous change programs. In addition, it is an important managerial phase in organizations’ life cycles that was the center point for the attention of management and social studies scholars as an important process to develop powers and abilities of individuals, groups, and organizations to reach an optimum level of performance that achieves efficiency, effectiveness, and sustained survivability for organizations.

Training is a vital factor for developing human capital of organizational based on its positive impact on affective commitment (Meyer, Smith 2000). Human capital is a basic source of achieving competitive advantage (Thang, 2009). Organizations spend substantial amounts of its financial and non-financial resources to train their employees with the hope of increasing their performance. In 2011, the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) reported that US organizations spent more than $156 billion on employee learning and development (Franko, 2013). Armstrong (2001) stated that the main objectives of employee training in organizations are development of employee competences and improvement of their performances; employee growth within the organization, assuring that future human resource needs of the organization can be met, and lastly reduction of employee learning time in the case of new appointments, transfers or promotions.

Plentiful studies have been conducted in the past two decades on the relationship between employee training and organizational commitment. These researches have studied various training-related variables, and have concluded that there is a positive relationship between training and organizational commitment (Tannenbaum et al., 1991; Bartlett, 2001; Owens, 2006; Al-Emadi and Marquardt, 2007)

The organizational change concept is considered the comprehensive framework for the required organizational development based on the integrated managerial system on the long range that it provides, in the core of which we find the main elements of the successful organizations. In return, commitment to organizational change is not a philosophy, it is rather a practical framework that could be applied in real life. Simply put, it is actual plans programmed to transfer the organization to a better situation than its status que, through integrated and continuous change programs. In addition, it is an important managerial phase in organizations’ life cycles that was the center point for the attention of management and social studies scholars as an important process to develop powers and abilities of individuals, groups, and organizations to reach an optimum level of performance that achieves efficiency, effectiveness, and sustained survivability for organizations.

In Saudi Arabia, studies on training and organizational commitment are not enough conducted. As Saudi Arabian Aramco offers various services to enable Saudis to effectively contribute in the community engagement, in addition to its support to other countries, modernizing and improving its employees’ performance has become one of its most important issues depending on training in the arena of commitment to organizational change.

RESEARCH FRAMEWORK

This study is aiming at extending the previous studies on effectiveness to training, and testing the trainers attributes in the effectiveness of training directly. Furthermore, the paper aims at shedding the light on the effect that training has on the commitment to organizational change in Saudi Aramco, and highlighting the relationship between both of them. In addition to identifying the relationship between training and improving the employee performance in the company.

Nowadays, organizations are in constant endeavours to cope with the developments occurring every day in business environments, especially in the field of technology and its applications in the organizations’ cadres and management. Such high pace developments in the external environment should be coped with


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constant change in the work designs and processes, in addition to organizing and planning objectives and operations in organizations.

Through the internal regulations, decisions, and instructions, and through interviews conducted by the researchers with Aramco leadership members and employees, it was revealed that Aramco employees sustain a weak awareness of internal procedures, and confusion of work tasks in some positions, in addition to the weak consideration to training need assessment, training evaluation methods, and transferring some employees between departments without prior training.

The researchers see that Saudi Aramco needs to support its organizational change; hence, this study is an attempt to explore the effect of training evaluation on the commitment to organizational change in Saudi Aramco.

There are some facts that are noted about Aramco, its role is evolving, its business is ramifying, it is diversifying its internal and external relationships, and it is aiming at success, prosperity, and distinction; certain things that are difficult to achieve without the organizational change. Hence, this study aims at answering the following questions:

What is the influence of training effectiveness on the commitment to organizational change in Saudi Aramco?

What is the reality of effectiveness of training programs that are being implemented by HR department in ARAMCO?

To address these questions, the current study utilizes variance of instruments. The evaluation of the effectiveness of training is conucted through measuring a number of its outcomes, usually through the use of Kirkpatrick’s model. Kirkpatrick (1994) developed his training evaluation model, which was the main basis for all researches related to training evaluation. Such model consisted of 4 levels of evaluating training, namely reaction, learning, behaviour and results.

Reaction is concerned with the participants’ perception of a specific program and their impressions about it, to include content, materials, trainers, location and facilities provided. Usually this level is measured via a questionnaire including some questions about the participants’ satisfaction.

Learning is usually measured via the participants’ gained information and skills. Although this level is more objective than the previous one, but it stops at the changes occurring to the memory, as it does not measure the real behaviour at work as the trainee might gain more information and skills, without applying them to place of work.

Behaviour measures the changes of the individual’s behaviour, whether in his/her work, or the result of training. It means measuring the changes that occur to their style of working, thinking, and their relations with superiors and co-workers.

Robert Katz indicated the existence of five main requirements that should be provided for the individual to change his/her behaviour at work. According to Katz, the individual should have the willing of self-development, determine his/her weaknesses, should conduct work in a tolerable environment, the availability of skilful trained person to provide the necessary help, and finally the availability of the opportunity to implement the newly gained ideas.

The last level of Kirk Patrick’s model is the results. Results involve all data, before and after the training, through measuring the individual’s performance to get to the training consequences, while excluding the other variables that could affect the improvement of the organization’s performance.

In this level, the real training results are measured, so measurements include quality, costs, time, and customers’ satisfaction. In addition, the evidence on the training usefulness lies in the trainees’ performance to the missions they are assigned to, its impact on their productivity, and decreasing of errors, costs, and time.

Many scholars argued that creating a highly committed workforce is still the highest priority in the field of human resource management (Cohen, 2003). Hence, it is not surprising that commitment is receiving such greater attention in relation to research into organizational change.

Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) model of commitment to organizational change (affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment) was developed based on Meyer and Allen’s (1991) three-component model of organizational commitment, therefore this study


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in turn is guided and supported by the basic theory of organizational commitment (Meyer and Allen 1991) to differentiate among the three dimensions of organizational commitment.

From the above framework, we can hypothesize that:

There is a statistical significant effect of training program evaluation on the commitment to organizational change at Saudi Aramco.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Employees’ performance is well known to be affected by the training they receive, in regards to the quality of the services they provide, which is reflected in the competitive advantage enjoyed by the organization.

According to (Al Sawat et al, 2207) training could be defined as a group of activities which the organization plans to provide its employees with the information, experiences, and the abilities related to their jobs, so that the attitudes and social behaviour of employees could be changed to accommodate with the planned objectives, in addition to the specific requirements of the concerned job.

Furthermore, training is defined as providing employees with specialized information and knowledge related to their jobs and the proper ways of performing them, in addition to sharpening their skills and abilities that help them use their implied potentials that are not yet fully employed, and trying to change the employees’ behaviour and develop their methods and styles of performance in a realistic way to provide them with more chances for improving and developing the productive work and reach the objectives of continuous productivity (Al Qablan, 1992).

As far as this is concerned, investment in the organizational human capital includes training the required knowledge and skills of the concerned organization. In addition, and coping with the same debate, training increases the satisfaction level of employees to a significant level regarding development, on the personal and professional levels. In addition, according to Scott and Meyer (1991), investment in the training of employees has a significant impact on increasing the

organization’s performance and productivity. But on the other side, there are few studies suggesting that HRD has a positive impact on the performance of the organization (Terraco, 1999). Researches in this field suggest exerting continuous efforts to assure providing adequate and effective training to employees to enable them to achieve the objectives of the organization with a high degree of confidence. This could be achieved with the employees’ demonstration of commitment toward the organization in a higher level.

There had been several studies conducted to establish a relationship between the impacts of training on the level of commitment of employees in different countries such as Malaysia, Turkey, Qatar, and India. Studies were conducted in western countries to provide evidence of the impact that training has on the level of employees’ commitment. In addition, there had been studies conducted by numerous researchers like Shantz and Latham (2012) and Glaveli and Karassavidou (2011) that shed the light on the effects the training has on numerous outcomes to improve the performance of organizations.

Meyer and Allen (1991) defined the affective commitment as the emotional attachment of an employee to the involvement in the organization and his/her identification with it, and they defined the continuous commitment as the one that is relied on the employee’s perception of the costs related to leaving the organization, while, to them, normative commitment is the feeling of an employee of commitment to stay with the organization.

Employees are ready to exert extra effort for or on behalf of the organization when they have a strong faith in the values and beliefs of an organization and readily accept its goals and objectives. In addition, they are considered to have a decent level of organizational commitment (Angel & Perry, 1981; Porter, Steers, Mowday, & Boulian, 1974). This implies that employees who are tightly affiliated to their organization to a substantial level of commitment, could be motivated to achieve the organizational objectives without searching for the opportunity to obtain personal gains.

Lowry et al. (2002) examined the impact of work context factors (such as management practices, promotion, work scheduling, social integration and training) on employee job satisfaction and


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commitment. The study was conducted on casual employees in the Australian hospitality industry. Results from their study indicated that casual employees who had received training were more satisfied with and committed to their jobs compared to those who had not. Bartlett (2001) explored the relationship between employees’ perception towards training and organizational commitment. The target population were nurses in five public hospitals. Among the training-related variables that were measured, perceived access to training had the highest correlation with organizational commitment. Among the three components of organizational commitment, affective commitment had the strongest relationship with training. In a similar study, Bartlett and Kang (2004) compared the relationship between perception of training and organizational commitment between nurses in New Zealand and the USA. Results from the two groups of nurses showed that perceived access to training was positively related to affective and normative components of organizational commitment. However, the study showed that nurses from New Zealand reported lower levels of organizational commitment as compared to their counterparts in the USA. Ahmad and Bakar (2003) also carried out a study among local professionals in Malaysia to explore the relationship between training and organizational commitment. Their study investigated the relation between five training variables and the three components of organizational commitment. Results showed that, in general, there is a positive relationship between all the training variables and the three components of organizational commitment. However, availability of training is significantly correlated with affective commitment and normative commitment and less significant with continuance commitment.

A similar study was carried out in China among Chinese employees working in multinational companies by Newman et al. (2011). Results of their study showed a strong relationship between perceived availability of training and continuance commitment. In addition, the general relationship between training perception and continuance commitment was weaker compared to previous researches carried out by Bartlett (2001) and Ahmad and Bakar (2003). Bulut and Culha (2010) conducted

an empirical study to investigate the impact of training on organizational commitment among employees of 4- and 5-star hotels in Turkey. Among the training variables, access to training positively correlated well with organizational commitment. Similar findings were reported also by Ooi and Arumugam (2006) when they investigated the influence of corporate culture on organizational commitment among employees in the Malaysian semiconductor packaging industry. Lam and Zhang (2003) also reported as positive relationship between learning opportunities and organizational commitment among employees in the Hong Kong fast food Industry. Alhassan (2011) conducted a study to investigate the relationship between employees’ perception of training and the two components of organizational commitment, namely, affective commitment and continuance commitment. The study was conducted among employees in the hotel sector of the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Results from the study showed that employees who perceived high availability of training demonstrated higher affective commitment compared to the employees who perceived low availability of training. The study went on further to reveal a correlation between perceived availability of training and turnover intentions implying that employees with high perception of training availability had lower intentions of leaving the organisation.

Owoyemi et al. (2011) conducted a study to explore the relationship between training and employees’ organizational commitment in a financial service organisation in South-Western Nigeria. Statistical analysis was conducted with commitment as the dependent variable and levels of training based on the number of days the employees had received training as the dependent variables. The number of days were less than one day, less than two days, two to five days, less than ten days and more than ten days, respectively. Their results revealed a positive correlation between the number of days the employees were trained and their commitment to the organization. Yang et al. (2012) also reported that a relationship existed between employees’ perception on access to training and organizational commitment. Data from employees in two organizations from Philippines showed that the employees’ perceived access to training positively related well with organizational commitment. In


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addition, employee self-construal had a mediating effect on this relationship. Employees’ perception of access to training was positively related to normative commitment for employees with a high collective self-construal.

Herscovitch and Meyer cited evidence that commitment’s nature gets important when we explain the willing of employees to go further than such minimum requirements. Those employees who embrace the change and contribute to its effectiveness (strong affective commitment), or those who have a sense of commitment to stand by it (strong normative commitment) will be willing to go beyond what is required, even if it entails personal sacrificing (working more and extra hours to learn marketing procedures).

On the other side, those with commitment to change is primarily based on their perceived costs of failure to support the change (strong continuous commitment) shall exert less than required. Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) discovered that all commitment to change three components positively correlate with compliance. However, only affective commitment and normative commitment positively correlate with cooperation and championing, while continuous commitment negatively correlate, even though not to a significant degree, with forms of discretionary behaviour. All three components of commitment were found to negatively relate with intentions to turnover and to turnover itself, but only affective and normative commitment positively relate to behaviour of citizenship. In addition, they discovered that commitment to change could predict better the behavioural support for change than was commitment to the organization.

Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) defined Commitment, in a broad terms, as mind-set that coheres the course of action of an employee to one target or more.

Measures of commitment to change have only been recently developed and employed to test the behaviour and performance relevant to change (Neubert and Cady, 2001; Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002).Today, scholars affirm that employees are simultaneously exposed to more than one object of commitment, while confirming that there is a relation between behavioural support and commitment.

METHODOLOGY AND DESIGN

This study utilizes the survey descriptive methodology approach to identify the relationship between employees’ training effectiveness measured by four training variables as suggested by Kirkpatrick (1994). Data collection was conducted using the survey method with adapted questionnaire instrument. In other hand, commitment to change will be measured by using the model which was developed by Herscovitch and Meyer (2002). Commitment to change model consists of three components (Affective, continual, and normative).

The target population of this study consisted of admin staff (3533) of Aramco as it is one of the biggest companies in the world and located in Saudi Arabia. As all employees of Saudi Aramco are subject to the study in concern the population is represented in all employees of Saudi Aramco. Random sampling is the purest form of probability sampling (Gravetter & Forzano, 2015). It assures that each unit will have equal probability of being chosen. Study sample was chosen randomly among admin employees of Saudi Aramco, and consisted of (352) employees.

As it mentioned before, this study depends heavily on two well-known models (Kirkpatrick (1991) and Herscovitch and Meyer (2002), therefore, the study reviewed and adapted the measures suggested by the two studies to build a group of measures related to the evaluation of the training programs and commitment to the organizational change, which helped in the data collection instrument design. Data was analyzed using SPSS 20, using the following methods (Arithmetic Mean, Standard Deviation, Pearson Coefficient, multiple regression, Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient and One Sample t- test)

RESULTS AND FINDING

The dimension of affective commitment to change was measured through (6) statements showed below, which demonstrates arithmetic mean and standard deviation. Table 1 shows that the mean of the emotional loyalty statements towards change prevailing in Aramco ranged between 3.29 and 4.22 according to the 5 grade scale specified by the researchers, where the general Mean is 3.73 with a


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standard deviation of 0.58, which indicates the existence of emotional loyalty towards change in Aramco with a high level. Looking at the statements, we find that the statement with content that is applied most as per the sample opinion was the one “I believe in his change’, with the very high mean of 4.22, and on the other side, the least of them was “This change is unnecessary (R)” with a medium mean of 3.29 and a standard deviation of 1.35, which means that the sample individuals differs about it. The results show that the means of affective commitment to change were high, which is attributed to the employees’ perception of the value and importance of change to any organization, and that it represents a strategic choice for Saudi Aramco in achieving its objectives. This is confirmed by the advanced order of the statements “I believe in his change” and “This change is an effective strategy for the organization” in this dimension.

TABLE 1 HERE

The dimension of Continuous commitment to change was measured through (6) statements showed below which demonstrates arithmetic mean and standard deviation of such statements:

TABLE 2 HERE

The dimension of normative commitment to Change was measured through (6) statements showed below, which demonstrates arithmetic mean and standard deviation of such statements. Table 3 shows that the mean of the continuous loyalty statements towards change prevailing in Aramco ranged between 3.11 and 3.44 according to the 5 grade scale specified by the researchers, where the general Mean is 3.25 with a standard deviation of 0.50, which indicates the existence of continuous loyalty towards change in Aramco with a medium level. Looking at the statements, we find that the statement with content that is applied most as per the sample opinion was the one “I have no choice but supporting this change”, with the high mean of 3.44, and on the other side, the least of them was “Resisting this change is not an option to me” with a medium mean of 3.11 and a standard deviation of 1.22, which means that the sample individuals differs about it. The results show that the means of continuous loyalty towards change were medium, which is attributed to that employees have no other option but the change to accommodate with the

changing external environment to survive. This is confirmed by the advanced order of the statements “I have no choice but supporting this change” and “I feel I am pushed to support this change” in this dimension.

Table 3 shows that the mean of the normative commitment to Change statements towards change prevailing in Aramco ranged between 2.93 and 4.09 according to the 5 grade scale specified by the researchers, where the general Mean is 3.55 with a standard deviation of 0.54, which indicates the existence of standard loyalty towards change in Aramco with a medium level. Looking at the statements, we find that the statement with content that is applied most as per the sample opinion was the one “I have a feeling of duty to work for this change”, with the high mean of 4.09, and on the other side, the least of them was “I do not feel committed to support this change” with a medium mean of 2.93 and a standard deviation of 1.34, which means that the sample individuals differs about it. The results show that the means of normative commitment to Change were high, which is attributed to the employees’ feeling of responsibility towards supporting the change from the ethical side towards their organization. This is confirmed by the advanced order of the statements “I have a feeling of duty to work for this change” and “I do not think it is appropriate to me to resist this change” in this dimension.

TABLE 3 HERE

Table (4) shows the results of training evaluation which indicate that workers’ impressions in general about this axis were positive, as the mean was (3.77) and standard deviation was (1.17). In presenting points of this axis, it was clear from the table below that paragraph "the reaction of each trainee towards training or education has been positive," received the highest mean (4.16) and a standard deviation (1.55), this indicates that the workers look positively to the training. While it was the lowest mean paragraph "Measuring the actual results achieved by training refers to the usefulness of the training" with the mean of (3.95) and standard deviation (1.02), and this shows that Aramco is sponsoring its staff gradually being focused on the interior environment. Varied averages for the rest of the paragraphs between (4:16), (3:30) and this means that employees satisfaction with the focus of training evaluation was acceptable.


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TABLE 4 HERE

The first major hypothesis stated that there is a statistically significant effect of the training evaluation on the commitment to change in Aramco. To test this relationship, we calculated the regression scores of subjects on the axis of the training program evaluation on the commitment to organizational change dimensions, the researchers used the regression coefficient as the results shown in Table 5. It is seen from the below table that the impact of the training evaluation on the commitment to organizational change is statistically significant at the 1% level and this indicates that the improvement in the assessment of training programs of one unit leads on average to increase by 100% to improve organizational commitment to change. The training evaluation has the greatest influence on affective commitment to change (SD 0.820), while it has modest influence on continuance commitment to change (SD 0.354), whereas, the training evaluation has the low influence on normative commitment to change (SD 0.442).

TABLE 5 HERE

DISCUSSION

The main objective of this research is to shed light on the effect that training has on the commitment to organizational change in Aramco. In particular, identifying the influence of training evaluation programs on improving the employee commitment to organizational change initiatives in the company.

In view of the above, the positive and significant relationship of training and normative and affective commitment indicates that the staff are more likely to be attached emotionally when they feel there is an adequate access to training or there is a probability of attending training are more likely to be attached emotionally, are loyal or morally committed to remain with the organization. Bartlett (2001) that suggested that employees are likely to exhibit higher feelings of affective commitment if they have more access to training. However, a study by Newman et al. (2011) investigating the relationship between benefits of training and organizational commitment revealed that Chinese employees in multinational companies in China revealed the contrary. Their findings showed that there was no evidence of a relationship between perceived benefits of training and organizational

commitment among the Chinese employees. They suggested that even though the employees may be motivated to participate in the training, if they could not apply the skills they learned during the training or gain promotions, they will not be committed to the organization.

Furthermore, the significant positive relationship between training and affective and normative organizational commitments indicates that the staff who have a positive evaluation of training will develop a strong bond with their organization and feel obliged to stay, and the company is more likely to help them in their personal development, better job performance and build up their career are more likely to. Ahmad and Bakar (2003) from their finding on the relationship between training and organizational commitment stated that learning and acquisition of skills and knowledge during training increases affective commitment. A similar study by Al-Emadi showed a strong relationship between benefit of training and the three components of organization. Similar findings were also reported by Bartlett (2001) and Joiner and Bakalis (2006). The positive relationship between benefits of training and organizational commitment revealed in this study as well as past researches are largely due to social exchange theory, whereby employees perceive the provision of training by their organization as a sign of care and recognition of their contributions. Employees thereby reciprocate such as with more commitment to their work due to the psychological bond created with the organization. Employees may stay in an organization due to the investments they have made or the costs/benefits associated with leaving. Such costs could be fear of losing pensions, loss of benefits that are unique to that organization, retirement or even relationships they have developed with their co-workers. Bonds between employee and organization could likely developed if a higher compensation is received due to participation in training (Al-Emadi, 2006) or could lead to promotion. This may explain the lack of a relationship between training and continuance organizational commitment among the staff. Similar results were reported by Bartlett and Kang (2004) when they conducted similar studies among nurses in New Zealand.

Wang (2008) investigated the impact of Chinese workers’ emotional bond with their co-workers on


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organizational commitment in foreign-invested enterprises in China. The result of the study revealed a positive relationship between emotional bonds with co-workers’ organizational commitment. Specifically, there was a positive relationship with normative commitment. A similar study was also conducted in a Canadian health organization

Ahmad and Bakar (2003) in their study on training and commitment, investigated the relationship between employees’ perception on the benefits of training and commitment. Their results showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between perceived benefits of training and all the three components of organizational commitment. Specifically, 19 per cent of the variance in affective commitment was accounted for by the perceived benefits of training.

CONCLUSION

Organizations nowadays encounter the inevitability of the comprehensive change to survive among today’s competition stresses. Hence, they should plan marketing, production, finance, and investment in human capital in a way that assures the best selection of human resources and training them to develop and level up their efficiencies and contribution to activate and support the organizational change.

The present study combined the Kirkpatrick four levels model with an experimental design of evaluation with the three components of commitment to change as suggested by Herscovitch and Meyer 2002 (affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment). The target population of this study consisted of ARAMCO employees (Oil Company) in Saudi Arabia with 200 participants.

The findings from this study have some implications for human resource professionals employed by Aramco. The implications can represent a guidance for the company to enhance the organizational commitment of their staff. This study has indicated that training enhances emotional attachment/sense of belonging (i.e. affective commitment) and loyalty (i.e. normative commitments) among academic staff. Thus, in this view, the leaders could create an environment

enriched with multiple interactive training activities. This study has also revealed a weak relationship between training and staff’s continuance commitment indicating that the company should not expect a continuance organizational commitment from its staff through provision of training. However, studies have shown that employees’ continuance commitment to their organization could be enhanced by provision of benefits and rewards (Becker, 1975; Malhotra et al., 2007). Therefore, to enhance continuance commitment, the company could attach incentives to training participation such as part of the promotion criteria, financial support for training activities outside the company, overseas, etc.

Although this study was conducted in the oil industry, the results of this study were consistent with previous studies conducted on different organizations operating in different fields in western countries, in addition to few studies conducted in some Asian countries such as Qatar, China, Australia and Malaysia. However, the study was conducted in a single company in Saudi Arabia and therefore results of the study may not be generalizable to all companies in this country or other Arab countries, hence, local and domestic variables should be taken into consideration when approaching it. Future research may also consider the demographic factors, including the organizational environment ones as mediating factors to examine any associations.

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APPENDIX

Table (1): Mean and Standard Deviation of Affective Commitment to Change

No. Sorted largest to smallest based on Mean Mean Standard

Deviation Order Grade

1 I believe in the value of this change

4.22 0.73 1 Very High

2 This change is an effective strategy for the

organization

4.14 0.83 2 High

3 I believe the organization is doing a mistake having

this change (R)

3.97 0.89 3 High

4 This change serves an important purpose

3.41 1.28 4 High

5 Things will be better without this change (R))

3.37 1.20 5 Medium

6 This change is unnecessary (R)

3.29 1.35 6 Medium

General Mean 3.73 0.58 High

Table (2): Mean and Standard Deviation of Continuous Commitment to Change


Deviation

Order

Grade

7 I have no choice but supporting this change 3.44 0.98 1 High

8 I feel I am pushed to support this change 3.31 1.08 2 Medium

9 I have a lot at stake to resist this change 3.30 1.17 3 Medium

10 It will be substantially expensive for me to resist this

change 3.17 1.20 4 Medium

11 It will be dangerous to talk in public against this change 3.16 1.15 5 Medium

12 Resisting this change is not an option to me 3.11 1.22 6 Medium

General Mean 3.25 0.50 Medium


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Table (3): Mean and Standard Deviation of Normative Commitment to Change



13 I have a feeling of duty to work for this change

4.09 0.90 1 High

14 I do not think it is appropriate to me to resist this

change

3.95 1.28 2 High

15 I will not feel bad to resist this change

3.68 1.09 3 High

16 It will be irresponsible for me to resist this change

3.50 1.16 4 High

17 I will feel guilty to resist this change

3.17 1.31 5 Medium

18 I do not feel committed to support this change 2.93 1.34 6 Medium

General Mean 3.55 0.54 High

Table (4): Mean and Standard Deviation of Training Evaluation

Ser. Sorted largest to smallest based on Mean Mean Standard


1 Reaction of each trainee towards training or

learning was positive 3.51 1.36 1 High

2 Increase of knowledge compared to the status

before and after learning 3.44 1.36 2 Medium

3 Change of behavior during application/

implementation on the job 3.40 1.55 3 Medium

4

Extent of Trainee’s effect on the work

environment in general and his/her job in

particular

3.30 1.34 4 Medium

5 I think information and ideas will enhance my

effectiveness and results 4.16 0.94 5 Medium

6

Pre and after learning/training tests are easy to

prepare and achieve, and they enable me to reach

digital results that are easy to be measured

4.13 0.95 6 High

7 Figuring out the change to the employee behavior

achieved from the training 4.09 0.98 7 Medium

8

Measuring he information and skills gained by

trainees demonstrate the learning level after

training

3.95 1.07 8 Medium

9 Measuring the actual results achieved from

training indicate how beneficial the training was 3.95 1.02 9 Medium

General Mean 3.77 1.17 Medium


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Table 5: Regression analysis of the effect of training evaluation on commitment to change dimensions

Dependent variables Standardized

Coefficients β

t Significant

Affective commitment 0.820 3.143 **.000

Continuance commitment 0.354 3.019 **.001

Normative commitment 0.442 4.665 **.005

Note: Dependent variable: commitment to organizational change dimensions

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