Do you get the best of both worlds? : Exploring the Impact of Hybrid Work on Organizational Commitment

Organizations have actively focused on retaining workforce for decades. One strategy they’ve been using is increasing organizational commitment (OC), which is linked to better work performance and productivity, and lower turnover. However, the rise of flexible work arrangements (FWA) such as remote and hybrid work (HW), is transforming how work is conducted. At the same time, evolving social behaviors are forcing organizations to adapt in order to stay competitive on the labour market. These behaviors are especially prominent in the younger generations, who value flexibility and work-life balance more than previous generations. Trends such as “quiet quitting” further highlights the decline in OC, adding to the challenges employers are facing. Despite these shifts, there has been limited research on how the rising FWA specifically influence OC. Thus, this thesis aims to contribute to the scarce literature by exploring the relationship between HW and OC. Furthermore, the study seeks to identify the specific factors in the context of HW that have specific influence on OC. Following these objectives, the research questions was carefully formulated as follows: “How does hybrid work affect organizational commitment in the context of Swedish municipalities?” We adopted an interpretivist paradigm mindset and an inductive approach for this study. Our research design was mostly qualitative, as we held semi-structured interviews with employees working hybridly at two municipalities in Northern Sweden. We used a snowball sampling method and ended up with nine participants. These interviews were complemented with the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire created by Mowday et al. (1979, p. 228) in order to measure the participants levels of OC. This thus made our study use quantitative measures as well. The interviews were then thematically analysed, and seven key factors in HW influencing OC emerged. These factors were autonomy, focus, work-life balance, boundaries, loneliness, guilt and trust. We found autonomy, focus, work-life balance and trust to positively influence employees OC, while boundaries, loneliness and guilt had negative impacts. These findings were compiled into a model which describes what factors influence OC in HW, as well as in what direction they have impacts. Overall, the combined effect these factors had on OC was positive, which is in line with previous research. Our thesis thus found OC to increase when employees work in hybrid settings.