ABSTRACT
The construct Work Orientation comprises three different concepts - organizational commitment, job satisfaction and job involvement. The aim of this research is to investigate the potential relationship between the three concepts and establish whether an optimal orientation pertains to different cultural groups in South Africa. The hypothesis states that the concepts correlated, representing a Work Orientation construct which manifested itself differently within the two sub-samples, namely the White and the Black group. A set of measures, comprising the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire, Job Involvement Questionnaire and Job Descriptive Index, was distributed to 1,983 students. Of the larger sample, 934 students returned the questionnaire. Factor and reliability analyses were performed and invalid items rejected. All questionnaires were found suitable for further analyses. Spearman correlations were determined, followed by a structural analysis of latent variables. The results of the study show that the variables significantly correlated for both the White and the Black groups and manifested meaningfully within Work Orientation. The findings reflect an optimal Work Orientation among two cultural groups in South Africa.
