Are employees more committed and willing to accept critical assignments during a crisis? A study of organizational commitment, professional commitment and willingness to care during the SARS outbreak in Taiwan

Few researches were involved in investigating the factors of commitment affecting employees' willingness to take critical assignment during a crisis. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) event provided as a good arena for crisis research. The study focused on the impact of crisis on the employees' willingness to accept critical assignments and the influencing factors of their willingness. This empirical study of willingness is captured by comparing the nurses' willingness to take care of SARS patients during and after 2 years of SARS outbreak and investigating organizational commitment (OC) and professional commitment (PC) as the determinants of their willingness to care under SARS outbreak. Registered nurses were surveyed during (2003) and after (2005) the SARS outbreak. The results showed that crisis does not affect a change on employees' willingness to accept critical assigned jobs. However, the nurses had higher level of desire to stay at the job and lower level of professional identification during the SARS crisis. The determinants of the nurses' willingness to care for SARS patients with pooling data were organizational identification, and particularly willingness to work in extra efforts. To enhance employees' willingness to accept critical assignments during a crisis, improving their level of OC and PC is a direction for the management to work on.