An employee can be said to be “inwardly committed” to a company’s goals and aspirations if he/she works hard to serve them, not just because “the boss said so,” but because he/she believes that giving his/her best efforts is the right thing to do. People who are not internally committed come to work, and do as much as they need to do to keep their jobs and maintain their lifestyles. They follow the rules, and do what they are told. They are “outwardly committed” to their company’s goals and aspirations.

With these definitions in hand, please answer the following questions:

(1) Based on your experience at work, or as a customer of an organization, what difference does inner commitment (versus outward commitment) make in terms of productivity, quality or service excellence? Feel free to give an example here. State the difference as a percentage, even though you may have to make a guess.

(2) What can leaders do to make people inwardly committed to the official norms (goals, mission, policies) of their organizations?

reply two classmates

1

Working inwardly committed can increase productivity, quality, and service excellence altogether compared to working outwardly committed. I would consider that 20% of difference appears to be reasonable to quantify the difference between inward and outward commitment. As an auditor, we are expected to get assignments done within certain budgeted hours with the understanding that overtime can be unavoidable when it is necessary. Working overtime does not necessarily have to happen at the reporting stage to deliver the audited financial statement, but can be avoided if work is front-loaded as much as possible and properly done at each stage to avoid rework. However, knowing overtime is probably necessary discourages people from front-loading since the beginning, which requires the inward commitment to ensure high quality and productivity even working to meet intense deadlines with long hours.
There are several ways that leaders can encourage everyone within an organization to become inwardly committed. According to Attar et al. (2017), employee satisfaction abides something inward that relates to the way how they feel despite the way that job satisfaction is impacted by various factors. For instance, offering rewards to the ones who are inwardly committed will motivate others to do the same. Also, helping each employee relate what they are doing to their respective career goal is important as well.

2

1. In my opinion, I believe 80% of employees are outward commitment in a company (very sad) and only 20% of them are “inwardly committed”. Inner commitment can help company to achieve a lot in a long run. Employees with inner commitment will think how to make the company better. However, employees with outward commitment will only think how to make himself or herself better. Employees with outward commitment will only try to provide the service which only meet the standard, but employees with inner commitment will try their best to perform above the standard. For example, an outward commitment employee will only think about how to complete the task within the budget hour (8 hours), but the inner commitment employee will think about how to complete the same task within 4 hours (to help company to save money).
2. First of all, employees should agree on the company’s culture and core value. Secondly, employees need to have a feeling or mind-set that they are actually part of the company instead of just employees which can just leave at will. I do believe this strong bond between employees and employer can actually be built through: proper employee training, reasonable but challenge working opportunities, friendly working environment, and reasonable pay rate (market rate).