Teachers’ Involvement in Decision Making and Its Effect on Job Commitment: A Survey of Private Schools of Gaindakot Municipality

Abstract

Participatory decision-making has been widely recognized as a driver of organizational commitment in educational settings, yet its role in Nepal's private school sector is not studied enough. Demographic groups in Gaindakot Municipality’s private schools may unevenly distribute teachers’ participation in institutional decisions. This study examined the relationship between teacher involvement in decision-making and job commitment in private schools in Gaindakot Municipality. Specifically, it addressed four research questions related to the current level of teacher involvement and their job commitment, whether involvement and commitment differ significantly across demographic and school characteristics, and whether teacher involvement significantly predicts job commitment. The study employed a quantitative survey design. From a population of 604 teachers, 265 were selected through cluster sampling, of whom 245 returned valid responses. Data was collected using two structured, self-administered Likert-scale questionnaires: the Teacher Involvement in Decision-Making Scale and the Job Commitment Scale. Both instruments exhibited sufficient internal consistency (Cronbach’s α > .70). I analyzed the data using descriptive statistics, the Mann Whitney U test, the Kruskal–Wallis H test with Dunn’s post-hoc comparisons, Pearson and Spearman correlations, and simple linear regression. The results show that teachers are involved in decision-making (M=3.81, SD= 0.40). The involvement score runs like academics (M = 3.81) policy (M = 3.75) and administration (M = 3.73). Job commitment is similarly above moderate (M = 3.92, SD = 0.33), driven principally by affective commitment (M = 4.20) rather than continuance commitment (M = 3.69). Involvement varied significantly by age, gender, educational qualification, teaching level, and administrative role, whereas commitment varied significantly by age, school category, and school grading. A strong, statistically significant positive correlation was found between involvement and commitment (r = .508, p < .001), and involvement explained 25.8% of the variance in commitment (R² = .258, p < .001). Including teacher involvement in evaluation rubrics and ensuring representation of female and young teachers in decision-making are recommended. Similarly, findings on commitment also indicate the need to introduce career development pathways and mentoring programs for young and fresh teachers. Institutional recognition systems to maintain emotional attachments and decrease teacher attrition are also important.