Internal marketing involves planning, implementing, and assessing strategies focused on the internal customer (employee), who, at the same time, looks to strengthen their organizational commitment. In this context, leaders and managers should focus on human capital through policies which encourage the motivation and satisfaction of employees, in a way that they feel committed to the institution which, at the same time, will help the achievement of organizational targets. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to analyze internal marketing dimensions and their possible relationship with organizational commitment. To do so, fieldwork based on a research questionnaire has been developed, aimed at a very important area of the social economy: co-operativism in a developing country. A total of 2,499 surveys were distributed among employees, leaders, and managers of Ecuadorian cooperatives. To describe the possible mediating effect of the research variables, a hierarchical, multiple linear regression analysis was applied. The results reveal that the internal marketing dimensions present statistically significant correlations with the organizational commitment, with the internal communication dimension being its maximum relational exponent. It is also extracted from the study that sociodemographic and works position variables positively influence the relationship between both constructs, presenting higher relational levels when the employee is married, has higher studies and their work contract is temporary.

PurposeThe objective of this research is to analyse the affective organizational commitment in cooperatives in Ecuador. This was done by adapting and testing a measurement scale based on the one-dimensional model proposed by Porter.Design/methodology/approachField work was carried out, with a structured questionnaire being given to a significant sample of workers in Ecuadorian cooperatives (2,499 employees and heads of department). The scale was adapted through a structural equation model.FindingsThe results show that the adaptation of the measuring scale for affective organizational commitment using a one-dimensional vision is consistent for the cooperative sector. In addition, the analysis of the socio-demographic variables and the work position show that some of them have a statistically significant relationship with organizational commitment.Practical implicationsThe proposed scale can contribute to the management of human capital in cooperatives in Ecuador. It can also be used as a tool to support the national agency in charge of the cooperative sector in this country (Superintendencia de Economía Popular y Solidaria, “Superintendency of Popular and Solidarity Economy”). By applying this tool, social economy organizations in Ecuador can measure the level of their employees' affective commitment with the institution they work in. Using the results, the people in charge and the leaders of the organization shall be able to introduce strategies to develop this organizational variable that is crucial for the proper management of human resources and, therefore, to help to obtain the institutional purposes.Originality/valueThis research project presents a measuring tool that can discover the unique features of the cooperative sector in a developing country such as Ecuador as it provides a special framework for managing human resources in this sector. Additionally, in a cooperative organization many employees have different roles in the same company. This tool can be adapted for other kinds of cooperatives with different activities (financial and non-financial activities) in different sectors.

No abstract

Internal marketing involves the development of organizational strategies that promote the welfare of the employees who, in turn, play a transcendental role in achieving institutional goals. Ecuadoran co-operativism lacks relevant studies of this construct and, because of this, this research intends to analyze the dimensions of internal marketing, through the validation of a measuring instrument that has been adapted to this sector of the social economy, in a developing country. The methodology is based on the completion of field work, where a structured questionnaire for a representative sample of 2,499 employees and officers of the operatives of Ecuador was applied. The suitability of the scale was determined through the means of a model of Ecuadoran structural equations. The results show that internal marketing is a multi-dimensional construct and it can be measured in six dimensions: Identify Value Exchange (IVE), Internal Market Segmentation (IMS), Internal Communication (IC), Management Concern (MC), Training (TR), and Work/Family Balance (WFB).