Organizational Commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Characteristics of Japanese Nurses and Chinese Nurses

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychological mechanism of nurse's turnover action from “organizational commitment” (OC) and “organizational citizenship behavior” (OCB) in Japan and China as a comparative study between the two countries. Method: We conducted a questionnaire survey among 180 nurses at 5 facilities in Japan and 257 nurses at 8 facilities in China, with a total of 368 effective data obtained. We set up a framework based on the Allen & Meyer model, and tested our hypotheses based on this framework. Results: Our results revealed significant differences in the average score and all lower dimension scores of OC and OCB. In OC, there was no significant interaction of country and years of experience; however, individually each had significant main effect. In Japan/China/total both, the OC mean of nurses in “no turnover intention” group was significantly higher than the “turnover intention” group. OC was observed to have significant influence on OCB. Conclusion: These findings suggest that OC differs according to country and years of experience. OC level of the nurse with no turnover intention was higher than with turnover intention. The tendency that the higher level of OC, the more OCB is performed by nurse was confirmed.