Civil servants¿ commitment and the accomplishment of organizational missions

Abstract

Being committed to the organization involves some activity from the individual to- wards self-identifying with it and wishing to stay as a member, in order to satisfy his or her interests and to facilitate the accomplishment of the organizational missions. This article has adopted the affective commitment concept of Mowday, Porter and Steers (1979), which emphasizes the nature of the individual¿s identification process with organizational objectives and values, and has used the reduced scale proposed by Bastos (1994). It has focused on the organizational commitment of civil servants in the areas of health, education and safety. The results have indicated that the modified instrument allows the identification of the employee¿s commitment. This commitment is linked to the perceived organizational mission and not to the real organizational mission. Higher levels of commitment were found within safety employees, when compared to those from the health and education service areas.