Comprometimento organizacional com a universidade: um estudo com estudantes de graduação em Ciências Contábeis

Abstract

Understanding the link between individual and organization is shown as the purpose of studies on organizational commitment, which have been carried out in different types of institutions (O'Reilly & Chatman, 1986). Characterized as an organization, the university has been the object of research within the scope of organizational commitment with a focus on analysis of its professors, its administrative servants and, incipiently, the students. Studying the type of student commitment is essential for the university to direct investments and maximum return to society. In this sense, this research aims to analyze the organizational commitment in the affective, normative and instrumental approaches of students of the Accounting course. Additionally, antecedent characteristics (gender, age, marital status and quota program), correlated (discipline monitor, participation in extracurricular activities) and consequent (income coefficient) characteristics of the sample were analyzed. For this, the model developed by Allen and Meyer (1990) with 222 students from the Federal University of Minas Gerais in the year 2019 was used. The analysis techniques employed were: descriptive statistics, the Wilcoxon mean difference test and the multiple linear regression analysis that aimed to identify the influence of behavioral variables on organizational commitment. The results point to the predominance of the affective focus, that is, the students are in the institution because they want to and due to a feeling of desire and pride. It was observed that the students have characteristics that are not common to the affective focus, such as low participation in the activities offered by the institution and median income coefficient. This may be due to the nature of the course: evening and with the possibility of entering the labor market in the initial periods. The normative and instrumental approaches were observed in a moderate and low way, respectively among the students. Among the hypotheses presented, H1 (women are more committed) and H4 (quota students are more committed) were not rejected. The remaining hypotheses H2 (older students are more committed), H3 (married students are more committed), H5 (students who participate in extra-class activities are more committed) and H6 (more committed students have higher academic performance) were rejected. In the analysis of the antecedent, correlated and consequent characteristics, the variables that presented statistical significance were: gender for the affective and instrumental approaches and quota share in the instrumental approach, and the normative approach did not present any significant variable. Thus, this research contributes by knowing the organizational commitment existing among students and the characteristics related to this commitment in the affective, instrumental and normative approaches.