Chapter 2: Relevant Literature
2.3 What is Commitment?
other constructs presented other definitions of commitment (Scholl, 1981; Oliver, 1990; Brown, 1996). The Oxford English Dictionary’s (1969) definition of commitment has been provided to differentiate between the term's scientific and commonplace uses. Points of agreement and disagreement were revealed when reviewing these definitions in Table 1.
Table 1: Definitions of Commitment
In general
(Oxford English Dictionary, 1969)
“engagement which restricts freedom of action.”
(Becker, 1960, p. 32) “Commitment comes into being when a person, by making a side-bet, links extraneous interests with a consistent line of activity.”
(Salancik, 1977, p. 62) “a state of being in which an individual becomes bound by his actions and through these actions to beliefs that sustain the activities of his own involvement.”
(Brickman, 1987, p. 2) “a force that stabilizes individual behavior under circumstances where the individual would otherwise be tempted to change that behavior.”
(Oliver, 1990, p. 30) “one’s inclination to act in a given way toward a particular commitment target.”
(Brown, 1996, p. 241) “an obliging force which requires that the person honor the commitment, even in the face of fluctuating attitudes and whims.”
Organizational commitment
(Mowday et al., 1979, p. 226) “the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organization.”
(Wiener, 1982, p. 421) “the totality of normative pressures to act in a way which meets organizational goals and interests.”
(O'Reilly & Chatman, 1986, p.
493)
“the psychological attachment felt by the person for the organization; it will reflect the degree to which the individual internalizes or adopts characteristics or perspectives of the organization.”
(Allen & Meyer, 1990, p. 14) “a psychological state that binds the individual to the organization (i.e., makes turnover less likely) .”
(Mathieu & Zajac, 1990, p.
171)
“a bond or linking of the individual to the organization.”
Table 1: Definitions of Commitment (continued)
Job commitment
(Rusbult & Farrell, 1983, p.
430)
“refers to the likelihood that an individual will stick with a job, and feel psychologically attached to it, whether it is satisfying or not. “
Occupational/career commitment
(Blau, 1985, p. 278) “one’s attitude toward one’s profession or vocation.”
(Carson & Bedeian, 1994, p.
240)
“one’s motivation to work in a chosen vocation.”
Goal commitment
(Campion & Lord, 1982, p.
268)
“an unwillingness to subsequently reduce goals to a lower level when confronted with error signals.”
(Locke et al., 1988, p. 24) “one’s attachment to or determination to reach a goal, regardless of the goal’s origin.”
(Hollenbeck et al., 1989, p. 18) “ the determination to try for a goal and the persistence in pursuing it over time.”
(Tubbs, 1993, p. 86) “A committed person is thought to adopt a specific performance goal and to persist in attempts to reach it even through difficulties.”
(DeShon & Landis, 1997, p.
106)
“the degree to which the individual considers the goal to be important, is determined to reach it by expending effort over time, and is unwilling to abandon or lower the goal when confronted with setbacks and negative feedback.”
Commitment to organizational change
(Herscovitch, 1999, p. 17) “a psychological state that binds an employee to a course of action deemed necessary for the successful implementation of a change initiative.”
Commitment to a strategy
(Weissbein et al., 1998, p. 3) “ involves the willingness of the person to put forth effort to enact the strategy.”
Source with modification: (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001).
All of these definitions established the following two facts that (a) commitment acts as a stabilizing or obliging force, and (b) commitment directs behavior (e.g., an individual is bound to a particular course of action). These two facts characterize the
definitions of commitment to varying degrees depending on their relationship to the specific commitment targets (such as organization, occupation, or goal). The details relating to the nature or origin of commitment as a stabilizing force that directs behavior leads to differences in the various definitions of commitment (Meyer &
Herscovitch, 2001).
When evaluating the numerous conceptualizations of commitment, it is important to consider if commitment can be differentiated from any related constructs such as motives and attitudes. Commitment can be seen as more than a motivating factor for individuals to engage in a specific course of action and more than a positive attitude towards an entity, resulting in an individual being inclined to behave in a such a way that it will benefit an entity. If commitment is viewed solely as an attitude that occurs when individuals experience and develop effective exchange relationships with an entity, then it does not contribute beyond the exchange theories of motivation (e.g., expectancy, equity); therefore, it does not contribute to the development of more comprehensive insights into organizational behavior. Furthermore, if commitment is considered simply as a positive attitude, then there are insufficient benefits that would be derived from continuing to study commitment beyond the confines of general attitude research. Remarkably, several researchers suggested that behavior is influenced by commitment independently of other motives and attitudes. This might lead an individual to pursue a course of action that might seem contrary to the individual’s self-interest. Therefore, commitment is distinguished from motivation or general attitudes, and it has the capacity to alter behavior, even when extrinsic motivation or positive attitudes are absent (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001).
2.3.1 Is Commitment A Unidimensional or Multidimensional Construct?
An agreement that is shown in the general definitions offered in Table 1 is when commitment is considered to be a binding force; this force is experienced as a mindset or a frame of mind, or psychological state that forces a person toward a certain action. However, when considering the nature of the mindset (i.e., strategies involved in the development of the mindset), less agreement is seen in these definitions. The nature of the underlying mindset is a factor that differentiates the various dimensions (forms or components) of commitment. It is what creates the multidimensional conceptualizations that have been considered by many theorists. These multidimensional models of OC lead to different forms of commitment definitions.
This reveals the disagreement regarding the dimensionality of OC (Table 2) and indicates an issue with establishing a general model for commitment in the workplace, concerning which dimensions should be retained.
Table 2: Dimensions of Organizational Commitment Within Multidimensional Models
(Angle & Perry, 1981, p. 4)
Value commitment: “commitment to support the goals of the organization”
Commitment to stay: “commitment to retain their organizational membership”
(O'Reilly & Chatman, 1986, p. 493)
Compliance: “instrumental involvement for specific extrinsic rewards”
Identification: “attachment based on a desire for affiliation with the organization”
Internalization: “involvement predicated on congruence between individual and organizational values”
Table 2: Dimensions of Organizational Commitment Within Multidimensional Models (continued)
(Penley & Gould, 1988, p. 46)
Moral: “acceptance of and identification with organizational goals”
Calculative: “a commitment to an organization which is based on the employee’s receiving inducements to match contributions”
Alienative: “organizational attachment which results when an employee no longer perceives that there are rewards commensurate with investments; yet he or she remains due to environmental pressures”
(Meyer & Allen, 1991, p. 67)
Affective: “the employee’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization”
Continuance: “an awareness of the costs associated with leaving the organization”
Normative: “a feeling of obligation to continue employment”
(Mayer & Schoorman, 1992, p. 673)
Value: “a belief in and acceptance of organizational goals and values and a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization”
Continuance: “the desire to remain a member of the organization”
(Jaros et al., 1993, p.
953)
Affective: “the degree to which an individual is psychologically attached to an employing organization through feelings such as loyalty, affection, warmth, belongingness, fondness, pleasure, and so on” (p. 954)
Continuance: “the degree to which an individual experiences a sense of being locked in place because of the high costs of leaving” (p. 953)
Moral: “the degree to which an individual is psychologically attached to an employing organization through internalization of its goals, values, and missions” (p. 955)
Source with modification: (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001).
The models developed by Meyer and Allen (1990) and O’Reilly and Chatman (1986) are important models that have arguably to generate the most research (Meyer
& Herscovitch, 2001). Prior to reviewing other multidimensional models to address conceptual issues that arise from comparisons between the different perspectives, a brief examination of these two multidimensional models would be beneficial.
2.3.2 Meyer and Allen’s Three-Component Model
Meyer and Allen (1990) advanced a three-component model, which was built on the similarities and differences found in the already present unidimensional conceptualizations of OC. Three differentiated mindsets characterize this multidimensional model. Commitment is the incorporation of all three mindsets into the model because it could be accompanied by one or more of them in this model.
These three mindsets reflect three clearly identifiable themes. The three themes consist of: an individual’s affective attachment to an organization, an individual’s perceived cost of leaving an organization, and their sense of obligation to continue working at an organization are labeled as AC, CC, and NC respectively.
Some disagreements were raised regarding this model as to whether AC and NC are truly distinguished forms of commitment, and whether CC is a unidimensional construct. The confirmatory factor analyses, however, consistently show that AC and NC items are separate factors (Caldwell et al., 1990; Jaros, 1997), even though they are highly correlated, noticing that the correlation between the two constructs is indicative of non-unity. Moreover, the magnitude of the correlations between these commitment components with the same outcomes is often quite different (Meyer &
Herscovitch, 2001; Meyer et al., 2002).
Regarding CC, the results are mixed as some researchers still confirm its unidimensionality, while others confirm its subcomponents. The perceptions of employment alternatives do not reflect the existence of costs. Therefore, the conclusion that has been drawn by some researchers is that only the high sacrifice items in this three-component model reflect the construct of CC and that only these items should be used to measure it in their model (Meyer & Allen, 1984; Jaros, 1997;
Ko et al., 1997). High sacrifice items refer to unrecoverable investments in the organization by the individual (Solinger et al., 2008).
Other researchers’ findings suggested two CC subcomponents of perceived sacrifice and lack of alternatives. High sacrifices are reflected when employees have the perception that they will lose benefits when leaving the organization. In contrast, lack of alternatives reflects the lack of alternative employment possibilities as the degree to which the employee believes that alternative employment opportunities exist in the labor market (McGee & Ford, 1987).
Meyer et al. (2002) in their meta-analysis found that the two subcomponents, high sacrifices and low alternatives are more highly correlated than initially reported by McGee and Ford (1987). Additionally, the correlations of these CC subcomponents with both AC and NC are opposite in sign. This is consistent with Meyer et al.’s (1990) findings, where they found that personal sacrifice has a positive correlation with AC, while the lack of alternatives has a negative correlation with AC. According to Meyer et al. (2002), the sacrifice subcomponent has a stronger negative correlation with withdrawal cognition and turnover intention than the alternatives subcomponent.
Therefore, they concluded that a high sacrifice CC subscale is perhaps a better operational definition of Becker’s (1960) side bet view of commitment than the low
alternatives CC subscale since it appeared to be more closely parallel to it.
Accordingly, their recommendation was to refine the CC scale by including more items to reflect perceived sacrifice (McGee & Ford, 1987; Meyer et al., 1990; Jaros, 1997; Meyer et al., 2002).
2.3.3 O’Reilly and Chatman’s Model
A multidimensional framework was created by O’Reilly and Chatman (1986) based on the supposition that commitment is representative of attitudes toward an organization which can be developed by several mechanisms. This framework has three distinct forms that are labeled compliance, identification, and internalization.
Compliance happens when attitudes and consistent behaviors are adopted to achieve specific rewards. When there is an acceptance of a satisfying relationship, identification happens. When the attitudes and behaviors which encourage a person to adopt are congruent with the existing values of the organization, internalization happens (O'Reilly & Chatman, 1986).
Due to difficulties in distinguishing between identification and internalization, criticisms increased (Caldwell et al., 1990, 1991; Meyer & Allen, 1991). The two constructs showed high correlation to each other, as well as similar correlations patterns with measures of other variables (Becker et al., 1996; Meyer & Allen, 1997).
Therefore, O’Reilly et al. (1991) developed NC by combining identification and internalization items. Furthermore, this NC corresponds to AC in Meyer and Allen’s (1991) model, but not their normative construct (Meyer & Allen, 1997; Meyer &
Herscovitch, 2001).
Moreover, compliance (also called instrumental commitment in more recent work) which is undoubtedly distinct from both identification and internalization has a
positive correlation with turnover rather than a negative correlation. This led to questions being raised about whether or not compliance can be regarded as a form of OC (Meyer & Allen, 1997). The interpretation suggests that compliance addresses employees’ levels of motivation to comply with typical workplace pressure to perform (i.e., it assesses their commitment to perform), and not with pressures to stay in the organization (i.e., not commitment to remain). Therefore, while there is a difference in the behavioral focus between O’Reilly and Chatman’s compliance and Meyer and Allen’s CC, there are some similarities in some aspects (Meyer & Allen, 1997; Meyer
& Herscovitch, 2001).
2.3.4 Other Multidimensional Conceptualizations
A study conducted by Angle and Perry (1981) differentiates between value commitment that assesses support for organizational goals, and commitment to stay that assesses willingness to remain (Angle & Perry, 1981); using this finding by Mayer and Schoorman (1992) along with their own work, two dimensions of OC were defined. They were labeled as value commitment indicating the willingness to exert effort, and CC indicating the desire to remain, where CC is used to measure the perceived costs associated with leaving (Mayer & Schoorman, 1992).
While the similarities are present in the OC dimensions identified by Meyer and Allen (1991), as well as those determined by both Angle and Perry (1981) and Mayer and Schoorman (1992), there are significant differences that exist between them. Meyer and Allen (1991) established that three components of commitment exist:
affective, continuance, and normative commitment that were distinguished by the attitude that attaches an individual to the organization, and where continued employment is the major behavioral consequence of the three attitudes. On the
contrary, Angle and Perry (1981), and Mayer and Schoorman (1992) create distinctions in terms of the resulting behavioral ramifications, instead of attitudes. In regards to them, CC is related to an individual’s resolve to remain with or leave an organization, and value commitment is related to the act of putting in the required effort towards achieving organizational goals (Angle & Perry, 1981; Mayer &
Schoorman, 1992; Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001).
Jaros et al. (1993) proposed a similar OC model to Meyer and Allen (1991) with affective, continuance, and morally distinguished dimensions with some differences. Both researchers viewed AC to be reflective of the emotional attachment to the organization, with more emphasis on employees’ actual experiences with Jaros, et al.’s (1993) model, compared to Meyer and Allen (1991). In contrast, Jaros et al.
(1993) use the affect adjective checklist as their assessment tool. For moral commitment, Jaros et al. (1993) defined it as an internalization of goals and values that corresponds to AC as defined by Meyer and Allen (1991), more than NC. Both researchers’ definitions of CC are matched (Jaros et al., 1993; Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001).
Lastly, Penley and Gould (1988) created their multidimensional framework using three forms of commitment, which consisted of moral, calculative, and alienative commitment; this was based on Etzioni’s (1961) work on organizational involvement.
In this model, the moral commitment definition closely corresponds to Jaros et al.’s (1993) definition. It also overlaps conceptually with the AC of Meyer and Allen’s (1991) model, as well as sharing common features of value commitment which were highlighted in frameworks developed by Angle and Perry (1981) and Mayer and Schoorman (1992). Calculative commitment corresponds to the compliance of
O’Reilly and Chatman (1986) model. Alienative commitment in Penley and Gould’s (1988) framework corresponds to Meyer and Allen, and Jaros et al.’s CC component (Angle & Perry, 1981; Penley & Gould, 1988; Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001).