Abstract :
The purpose of this research was to study organizational commitment of volunteers and employees in Physical Education administrations of Iran Universities to compare sub-factors of organizational commitment between them. The statistical populations consist of volunteers in sport associations and employees in physical education administrations of Iran Universities. One hundred and forty-one volunteers and eighty-one employees from 20 universities were selected as subjects by using random clustered sampling method. Organizational commitment was measured by standard questionnaire (OCQ) of Allen and Meyer (1991).The questionnaire consists of 18 questions and 3 sub-factors (affective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment). A panel of experts was asked to thoroughly examine the questionnaires for content and face validity. A panel of experts included sport management assistant professors (n=3), current volunteer coordinators in sport associations of Iran Universities (n=2), and individuals who had conducted research on sport volunteerism (n=2).The respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient was used to test the reliability of the questionnaire (?=0.86, for organizational commitment questionnaire of volunteers & ?=0.89, for organizational commitment questionnaire of employees). The data were analyzed by Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Friedman and independent t tests with P < 0.05 significant level. Results indicated that affective commitment was the first priority for volunteers. The next priorities were normative and continuance commitment, respectively. For employees, priorities were affective, continuance and normative commitment, respectively. There were significant differences between dimensions of organizational commitment in volunteers and employees (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in affective commitment between volunteers and employees (P < 0.05). However, differences in normative and continuance commitment were significant between them (P < 0.05). The critical result of this research is that affective commitment has the highest score among volunteers and employees. It means that due to the sense of belonging and attachment to the organization, they remain in the organization and enjoy keeping their membership. These people have propensity to maintain membership in the organization. The outcomes of this study will contribute not only to an extension of the knowledge base of volunteerism in the field of sport management, but also to practical applications for volunteer coordinators, administrators and event marketers. The directions for future research are presented.
