Commitment in Corporate

We talk about commitment everyday in our corporate life. Especially in employee review meeting, this is the hottest topic ever. We try to define commitment in our terms differing in nature from person to person.

Commitment, as I learned from my professor, can be defined as:

• A strong desire to remain a member of the organization.
• A willingness to exert high level of effort on behalf of the organization.
• A belief in, and acceptance of the values and goals of the organization.

If we observe the tenure of an employee who leaves an organization after a long duration, commitment differs time to time.

Initially on joining, an employee is eager to know about organization, people and processes. If one likes these aspects, he or she creates emotional attachment with the culture of organization. We can define this commitment as Affective Commitment.

But after working for five years, the emotions may vanish due to certain bad experiences or may be by comparing one with some other good organization. In this situation, employee starts performing cost-benefit analysis of leaving the organization. If market is slow or job really pays high, the employee cant leave the organization. This type of commitment is known as Continuance Commitment.

The moment employee resigns, he or she stays in the organization for an obligatory notice period. Here the employee does not want to work with the organization, still he or she has to stay for certain duration and show commitment. This type of commitment is called Normative Commitment.

Now, dont start guessing what type of commitment, you have for your organization ;)

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The Software Team Structure

In India, Software organizations are mushrooming everywhere. With diversity in resources, skill sets and quick obsolescence of technology, structure team has become a crucial issue.

Mantei suggested three generic team structure.

1. Democratic Decentralized (DD)

This team structure is driven by group cohesiveness in making group decisions and solving problems with consensus. There is no group leader as such. A task coordinator is chosen for short duration based on skill or experience level. On completion of task, the coordinator may replaced by other.

2. Controlled Decentralized (CD)

Unlike DD, here team has a specific leader whose primary task is to divide the project into tasks and assign groups to accomplish them. He may choose a task coordinator for each group. The communication in group will be horizontal and between groups, communication will be vertical. Here groups and individuals are involved for decision making and problem solving.

3. Controlled Centralized (CC)

The structure is almost similar to CD, but communication and involvement differs. Communication is always vertical. Decision are made by top level management people. There is very little or no involvement of groups in decision making.


In the image, direction of arrow shows low to high transition. CC encourages less innovation compared to DD. Similarly decision speed is higher in CC compared CD.

Mantei suggested following factors for considerations before structuring a team

• Difficulty of the problem
• Size of the resultant program(s) in lines of code or function points
• Team lifetime
• Degree of Modularization
• Required Quality and System Reliability
• Rigidity of the delivery date
• Degree of communication required for the project

Because a centralized structure completes tasks faster, it is the most adept at handling simple problems.

Decentralized teams generate more and better solutions than individuals. Therefore such teams have a greater probability of success when working on difficult problems.

Since the CD team is centralized for problem solving, either a CD or CC team structure can be successfully applied to simple problems. A DD structure is best for difficult problems.

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Model For Psychological Contract

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Peter V/s Dilbert

You might have heard of Dilbert's stories about his boss. This is contradiction to what peter's principle says.

Peter's Principle: "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence."

Now what Dilbert says about it

Dilber's Principle: Companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management, in order to limit the amount of damage they're capable of doing."

So be sure what principle is followed in your company.

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