Organization communication,job stress, organizational

commitment, and job performanceof accounting professionals in

Taiwan and AmericaJui-Chen Chen

Department of Accounting Information, Fortune Institute of Technology,Taiwan, Republic of China

Colin SilverthorneDepartment of Psychology, University of San Francisco, San Francisco,

California, USA, and

Jung-Yao HungDepartment of Finance, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan,

Republic of China

Abstract

Purpose – To further understand the impact of organizational communication and commitment onjob stress and performance. Over the past 20 years, the constructs of organizational commitment andcommunication have been studied extensively but little attention has been paid to the relationshipbetween them and other organizational variables such as job performance and stress. Also, differencesbetween employees either in managerial or full time accounting positions and between respondentsfrom the USA and Taiwan were evaluated.

Design/methodology/approach – Differences and relationships were assessed using standardizedand valid instruments measuring four organizational variables in Taiwan and the USA.

Findings – No country level difference in stress and communication levels were found butorganizational commitment and performance levels were higher in the USA. At the same time, higherlevels of organizational communication led to higher levels of organizational commitment and jobperformance in both countries. Rather surprisingly, stress levels were not found to be related to eitherorganizational communication or job performance. Further, the only measure that indicated adifference between those in managerial and full time accounting positions was work performancewhich was higher for those doing full time accounting.

Practical implications – The results are discussed in terms of their importance and implicationsfor organizations, particularly those utilizing employees with professional training and operating indifferent cultures. The finding that stress levels were not reduced by increased organizationalcommunication and had little impact on job performance suggests that in the accounting field stressmay play a different role than it does in other professions.

Originality/value – Furthers our understanding on the impact of organizational communication andcommitment on job stress and performance.

Keywords Stress, Communications, United States of America, Taiwan, Accountants, Job satisfaction

Paper type Research paper

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Received April 2005Revised July 2005Accepted August 2005

Leadership & OrganizationDevelopment JournalVol. 27 No. 4, 2006pp. 242-249q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0143-7739DOI 10.1108/01437730610666000

IntroductionOrganizational communication, organizational commitment, job stress, and jobperformance have received substantial attention in past organization behaviorresearch. These organizational behavior variables are significant to a company’soverall performance. For example, poor organizational communication has been foundto lower organizational commitment (Kramer, 1999; Rodwell et al., 1998) resulting inthe three basic components of organizational commitment, identification, involvement,and loyalty, being reduced. In addition, the level of organizational commitment hasbeen found to positively influence job performance (Yousef, 2000) and negativelyinfluence job stress (Sager, 1990). Although, the relationship between these variableshas received attention in the USA, little is known about these relationships innon-western cultures (Honeycutt et al., 2001).

Price (1997) defined organizational communication as the degree to whichinformation about job is transmitted by an organization to its members and among themembers of an organization. A review of the research on organizational processesconcluded that member satisfaction with organizational communication practices hasbeen ignored. In particular, there is a lack of research on the relationship betweenorganizational communication and commitment and any relationship that may existbetween these two variables is more implied than demonstrated (Putti et al., 1990).Until now few studies have supported a relationship between communicationsatisfaction and organizational commitment (Downs et al., 1995).

Yousef (2000) pointed out that organizational commitment has three basiccomponents: identification, involvement, and loyalty. The relationship between the jobinvolvement component of commitment and various variables, including performancehas found a positive relationship between them (Babin and Boles, 1996). Otherresearchers have also found that organizational commitment and job performance arepositively correlated (Baugh and Roberts, 1994; Ward and Davis, 1995). On the otherhand, Mathieu and Zajac (1990) conducted a meta-analysis of published research thatexplored this relationship and concluded that commitment has relatively little directinfluence on performance in most instances.

In the area of job stress, Kahn and Byosiere (1992) concluded that organizationalresearch has not been adequately concerned with organizational and interpersonalfactors that might serve as moderators, buffers, or even as antidotes to stress and thatthere is very little empirical evidence to suggest moderating factors may or may notexist. However, Montgomery et al. (1996) see severe job stress as dysfunctional anddecreasing commitment and productivity. Williams et al. (2001) stressed thatshort-term outcomes of job stress have both physiological and behavioral effectsleading to poor job performance. This study investigated the impact organizationalcommitment and communication as possible moderating factors on both jobperformance and job stress.

While culture may influence a variety of organizational behaviors (Hofstede, 1991),the impact of professional status on these variables also deserves attention becauseobtaining the necessary qualifications to practice a profession requires a significantcommitment of time and resources. The question of how this initial commitmentimpacts subsequent organizational behavior is worthy of study. In addition, socialand professional identity is reflected in a person’s organizational self esteem(Gardner and Pierce, 1998) which in turn impacts a variety of organizational behaviors.

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Research looking at occupational commitment has concluded that it is positivelyrelated to job satisfaction for teachers (Rutebuka, 2000) and sports management(Cunningham and Sagas, 2004). However, little research has specifically addressedhow using professional education and training is linked to organizational variables.

In this study, professional status was defined by qualifications in the accountingprofession and individuals in staff position who were working as full time accountantswere compared to individuals in managerial positions that involved accounting as partof the job peripherally. Studies have been conducted on accounting professionals, suchas looking at stress and job satisfaction of external auditors in Certified PublicAccounting (CPA) firms (Fisher, 2001), job satisfaction in practicing accountants inaccounting firms (Patten, 1995), and job satisfaction and organizational commitmentin accounting graduates working for public accounting firms and private industry(Reed et al., 1994). However, no comparative studies appear to have been conducted onindividuals with accounting training or credentials with different responsibilities.

Based on the findings from previous research the following research hypotheseswere proposed and tested:

H1. Organization communication is inversely related to the job stress ofaccounting professionals in Taiwan and America.

H2. Organization communication is positively related to organizationalcommitment, job performance of accounting professionals in Taiwan andAmerica.

H3. Job stress is inversely related to job performance of accounting professionalsin Taiwan and America.

H4. Organizational commitment is positively related to job performance ofaccounting professionals in Taiwan and America.

H5. There are differences in the levels of job performance, organizationalcommitment, organizational communication and job stress betweenaccounting professionals in Taiwan and America.

The first purpose of this study was to investigate whether there are differences inorganization communication, job stress, and organizational commitment levels ofaccounting professionals between two countries with different cultures, the USA andTaiwan. The second purpose was to identify the relationships, if any, betweenorganizational communication, job stress, organizational commitment and the jobperformance of accounting professionals in Taiwan and American companies. Both ofthese areas of research have received little or no attention in the research literature.Cultural differences are important to consider especially with global changes in theway and place that companies do business. In addition, investing in professionalqualifications is a major commitment of time and resources yet little research hasstudied the impact of such commitments on subsequent organizational behavior ofemployees either using or not fully using their training and credentials on the job.

Research methodologyThe data were collected from companies in the USA and Taiwan. The sample groupwas designated as employees working in accounting capacities in various businesses.

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In Taiwan, the questionnaires used in the USA were translated into Mandarin andpilot-tested on samples working for businesses as accounting professionals. Thetranslations of the questionnaires from English into Mandarin were conductedfollowing standard procedures used in intercultural research (Ady, 1994). The pilot testshowed reliabilities scores of 0.7 or better. Three hundred questionnaires with return,stamped envelopes were mailed to randomly selected companies listed on www.Thomas.com in the USA and Taiwan, 300 questionnaires were delivered to companiesin Da-Fa industrial Park and Hsinchu Science Park by either mail, fax or by hand.In Taiwan, 87 fully completed questionnaires were returned for a 29 percent return rateand in the USA 57 fully completed questionnaires were returned for a 19 percent returnrate. The Taiwan sample included 8 males and 79 females while the US sampleincluded 17 males and 40 females. The Taiwan sample included 75 professionals and12 managers while the US sample included 30 professionals and 27 managers. Threehundred was chosen as the contact sample size in order to obtain a reasonable samplesize given anticipated return rates.

InstrumentationThe following scales were used to measure the organizational variables. Organizationalcommunication was measured using the five-dimension supervisor-subordinatecommunication scale developed by Penley and Hawkins (1985). It includes 19questionnaire items with a six-point Likert-type scale. The five dimensions ofcommunication are task, performance, career, personal communication andcommunication responsiveness. Job stress was measured using the job stress scale,developed by Montgomery et al. (1996). This is a six-item five-point Likert-type responsescale. Organizational commitment was measured using a Likert scale adapted by Kim et al.(1996) from Mowday and Steers (1979) original scale. The job performance instrument wasa four-item, seven-point self-appraisal job performance scale (Yousef, 2000).

ResultsIndependent t-tests, two way analyses of variance, correlations and linear andnon-linear regression analysis were used to test the relationships between Taiwan andAmerican accounting professionals in their levels of organization communication,job stress, and organizational commitment.

The results of independent t-tests for differences between USA and Taiwan showthat there was a significant difference between Taiwan and American respondents intheir ratings of organizational commitment (t ¼ 26.61, df ¼ 142, p , 0.01) and jobperformance (t ¼ 25.35, df ¼ 142, p , 0.01) but there was no significant difference intheir rating of organization communication (t ¼ 21,66, df ¼ 142, p . 0.05) and jobstress (t ¼ 0.76, df ¼ 142, p . 0.05).

Pearson product-moment correlations were computed between organizationcommunication, job stress, organizational commitment; and job performance withthe data for Taiwan and the USA combined. The correlation values indicate that fororganizational communication there was a significant and positive relationship withorganizational commitment (r ¼ 0.6, p , 0.01) and job performance (r ¼ 0.26,p , 0.01) but not job stress (r ¼ 20.07, p . 0.05). No significant correlations werefound between job stress and organizational commitment (r ¼ 20.06, p . 0.05) orbetween job stress and job performance (r ¼ 20.02, p . 0.05). Finally, there was a

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significant correlation found between organizational commitment and job performance(r ¼ 0.42, p , 0.01). There were no differences in results between the genders for eitherthe Taiwan or the US samples. A two-way analysis of variance was also computedwith occupation (manager and accountant) as one factor and country (Taiwan or theUSA) as the other factor for each of the four measures used. Once again, there were nodifferences found for the communication and stress scales but for the job performancemeasure accounting professionals reported a lower level of performance thanmanagers (F(1, 139) ¼ 7.49, p , 0.05) and the people in Taiwan reported a lower levelof organizational commitment than did the respondents in the United States(F(1,139) ¼ 29.29, p , 0.01).

A series of correlations were computed to see if there was any relationship betweenthe four organizational factors measured. For the US sample, organizationalcommitment and communication were positively related (r ¼ 0.64, p , 0.01),organizational commitment and performance were positively related (r ¼ 0.27,p , 0.05) and performance and communication were positively related (r ¼ 0.34,p , 0.01). None of the other correlations were statistically significant. For the Taiwansample, only organizational commitment and communication; organizationalcommitment and performance were positively related (r ¼ 0.61, p , 0.01 andr ¼ 0.28, p , 0.01).

A linear regression technique was used to analyze the relationships between thosevariables that were statistically related to each other. The results suggested that anincrease in the level of organization communication by one unit reflected a 0.17 unitincrease in organizational commitment (R 2 ¼ 0.36, F ¼ 80.62, p , 0.01). Thus, iforganizational commitment increased one unit organization communication increasedby 2.09 units. With an increase in organization communication and commitment by oneunit individually, job performance went up 0.05 (R 2 ¼ 0.07, F ¼ 10.05, p , 0.01) and0.26 units (R 2 ¼ 0.17, F ¼ 29.66, p , 0.01), respectively.

In order to find the relationship between job stress and the other variablesmeasured, linear and non-linear regression measure were utilized. The authors foundthat job stress did not predict changes in the other measures based on linear regressionbut the non-linear regression model indicated that job stress is a better predictor oforganization commitment (R 2 ¼ 0.08, F ¼ 6.45, p , 0.01) and job performance(R 2 ¼ 0.05, F ¼ 4.05, p , 0.05). Both non-linear regression models were U-shapedindicating that both low and high levels of stress led to lower levels of organizationalcommitment and poorer job performance. Moderate levels of stress, however, resultedin more organizational commitment and better job performance indicating thataccountants appear to respond positively to moderate levels of stress but respondpoorly to both high and low levels of stress.

ConclusionsThis study examined the relationships between levels of organization communication,job stress, job performance and organizational commitment. In addition, differencesbetween employee’s level of professional training in accounting use and whether theywere in either Taiwan or the USA were investigated. The results suggest that there islittle difference between America and Taiwan accounting professionals in rating theirassessment of organization communication and job stress. However, there weredifferences in the levels of organizational commitment and job performance reported

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by the two samples with the American sample reporting higher levels of both jobperformance and organizational commitment. A look at the mean scores shows that theAmerican sample reported higher levels for each of the four variables so there may be acultural response bias on the scales. However, while Taiwanese respondents are morelikely to understate their job performance based on cultural norms, the lower level oforganizational commitment reported in the Taiwan sample is more surprising. Otherresearch has suggested that reported organizational commitment levels are equivalentbetween the two countries (Silverthorne, 2004). This result is also somewhat differentfrom what would be predicted by Hofstede (1991) since a high individualism culturesuch as the USA, is more person centered than organizational centered whereas a lowindividualism culture, like Taiwan, is the opposite. Perhaps a professional trainingbackground implies a greater loyalty to the profession than to the organization ingeneral but especially in Taiwan. If so, this finding has implications for accountingorganizations operating in Taiwan particularly those from American parentcompanies.

The Pearson correlations and linear regression indicate there are positiverelationships between organization communication, organizational commitment andjob performance. This finding suggests that companies strengthen theircommunication channels and processes in order to strength their accountingprofessionals’ organizational commitment and job performance. From the linear andnon-linear regression model, the authors found that the relationships between jobstress and organizational commitment; job stress and job performance were U-shapedrather than linear. This finding is not consistent with past research focusing onaccounting professionals who worked for CPA firms where an inverted U-shapedrelationship was found between the level of stress and job performance (Choo, 1986).

Overall, the results, found little support for the hypotheses related to job stress. Atleast for accountants, rather surprisingly, it appears that stress and organizationalcommunication are independent variables that do not impact each other. This findingappears to contradict that of Stamper and Johlke (2003) who found that issues relatedto organizational communication could be used to reduce stress. It is unclear whetherthese hypotheses were not supported because of issues related to levels of stress in thespecific occupation studied here or whether stress is an individual variable that is noteasily impacted by organizational strategies designed to reduce stress.

Both organizational commitment and job performance appear to be consistentlypositively related to organizational communication as might be predicted from generalexpectations of the relationship between the variables. Therefore, endeavors design toincrease or improve the levels of organizational communication will have a positiveimpact on both the employees and the organization. In addition, while stress andcommunication levels reported by the respondents were equivalent in Taiwan and theUSA, they were higher in the USA for both job performance and organizationalcommitment.

This study surveyed accountants working in a variety of organizations other thanprofessional accounting organizations. Future research could look at this relationshipin more detail given than the level of professional identification with accounting islikely to be higher for accountants in accounting firms rather than as one member of amanagement team. In addition, the finding, that job stress appears to be unaffected bythe other variables studied here, suggests that research that investigates whether or

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not stress is too individual a variable to respond the organizational strategies is worthfurther consideration since this finding could demonstrate the relative value of groupor individual approaches to reducing stress.

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Corresponding authorColin Silverthorne can be contacted at: silverthorne@usfca.edu

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