Staff organizational commitment as a predictor of staff perceptions of working alliances with delinquent youth

Abstract

The relationship between staff organizational commitment and staff perception of working alliances with youth in juvenile justice settings was investigated. Staff of the North American Family Institute (NAFI) were the subjects of this investigation. Meyer and Allen's (1991) model of organizational commitment with dimensions of affective, normative and continuance commitments was used to investigate staff organizational commitment as an independent variable impacting perceptions of working alliances between staff and youth in juvenile institutions. Horvath and Greenberg's (1994) Working Alliance Inventory (WAI) was used to measure staff perceptions of working alliance. A significant positive correlation was found between normative commitment and perceptions of working alliance using Pearson correlation statistics. Affective commitment and continuance commitment did not correlate significantly with staff perceptions of working alliance. Regression of normative, affective, and continuance commitment with the dependent variable of working alliance showed only normative commitment as significantly impacting working alliance. Age, gender and ethnicity were not found to be significantly correlated with staff perceptions of working alliances.