Browsing by Author "Korpela, Maria"

The purpose of this study is to examine close peer coworker relationships and work commitment as well as to explain the meaning of peer coworker relationship closeness in work commitment. Previous studies on work place communication have emphasized supervisor-subordinate relationships and the research on work commitment has been very scattered. Research literature has given even conflicting results concerning commitment and connections between coworker relationships and commitment have not been researched very much. This thesis was carried out using mainly quantitative research methods. The research material was gathered on the Internet using a survey and all in all 111 office workers responded. The survey was composed of four different parts: respondents' background information, experiences about the work place atmosphere, feelings about the closest perceived peer coworker relationship and perceptions about one's own work commitment. The material was gathered in February 2015 and it was analyzed quantitatively using statistical tests and also qualitatively using classification and content analysis. The results of this study indicated that special peer coworker relationship closeness does not strengthen one's work commitment but lack of any close peer coworker relationships might weaken one's work commitment. Also, it was found that the demographic features of a worker are more connected to the ability to feel absorption and dedication but the vigor of a worker might be related to how much the organization is willing to encourage workers to engage in informal communication and coworker relationships. The results of this study increase knowledge on non-hierarchical communication and work commitment. This study helps operationalizing the terminology of these phenomena. The results give new insight in coworker relationship research and its significance in organizations and work commitment. The results can be applied as indicative guidelines to organizations when they want to specify what kind of commitment is expected from their employees, and in what sort of matters encouragement should be provided when aiming at employee engagement.