Commitment in Organizations

Accumulated Wisdom and New Directions

Howard J. Klein,Thomas E. Becker,John P. Meyer

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135389840
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Business
• Sous-sujet: Human Resource Management

Commitment is one of the most researched concepts in organizational behavior. This edited book in the SIOP Organizational Frontiers series, with contributions from many scholars, attempts to summarize current research and suggests new directions for studies on commitment in organizations.

Commitment is linked to other concepts ie. satisfaction, involvement, motivation, and identification and is studied across cultural lines. Both the individual and group levels of building and maintaining commitment are discussed.

Section 1

The Meaning and Relevance
of Commitment

1

Conceptual Foundations:
Construct Definitions and
Theoretical Representations
of Workplace Commitments

Howard J. Klein, Janice C. Molloy, and Joseph T. Cooper

Ohio State University

Commitment is one of the most frequently examined constructs in the study of organizational phenomena. This is likely due to commitment being a relatively convenient outcome to assess as well as the impact workplace commitments have been shown to have on individual-level outcomes important to organizations, such as absenteeism, turnover, motivation, performance, and prosocial behaviors (Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Meyer & Allen, 1997; Meyer, Becker, & Vandenberghe, 2004; Mowday, 1998). Commitment is also frequently studied outside of the workplace in numerous other disciplines, suggesting that commitment is a fundamental concept for understanding human behavior.

Most dictionaries provide multiple definitions of commitment. The commitment literature provides even more variation with respect to the nature and meaning of commitment. Some of that variation is due to the changing nature of work and work relationships as discussed by Meyer in chapter 2. Most of the variation, however, is due to differences in perspective, with different authors approaching the study of commitment from different foundational literatures and/or with a focus on different phenomena relating to commitment (e.g., turnover, motivation, decision making, behavioral consistency). Consistent with Weick’s (1989) depiction of the evolutionary stages in theory development, such variation is an important initial stage in construct development. However, continued variation and the absence of consensus on the definition of commitment leads to confusion surrounding the terminology, nature, and function of commitment. We feel the commitment literature has matured to a point where such variation creates more problems than benefits and suggest that it is time to move from variation to selection (i.e., consensus).

Chapter Overview

The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide the conceptual basis for this book so that other chapters need not provide extensive discussions of the history, nature, or theories of commitment. Central to that purpose, this chapter summarizes the different ways commitment has been conceptualized and defined in the literature. The focus of this chapter is the study of workplace commitments over the past half-century within the organizational behavior (OB) and industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology literatures. That focus is not limited to organizational commitment, although this is the dominant target covered, given that it has been the most widely researched, has the longest and richest history, and has often been borrowed from by those studying commitment to other targets. In terms of structure, the chapter begins by providing a brief history of the study of commitment. We then discuss the various definitions of commitment found in the literature and provide our assessment of those conceptualizations. A small set of theories representing the various perspectives found in the literature is then presented. As a whole, the chapter provides the necessary background so that other authors can evaluate the commitment literature in light of the available theories and conceptualizations outlined in this chapter.

Historical Perspective

Prior to 1960. It is not our intention to provide an exhaustive history of the study of commitment but rather to present a timeline to recognize the sequencing of oft-cited works and to highlight some of the shifts in focus that have occurred over the past half-century. The explicit study of commitment was largely absent from the workplace literatures prior to the early 1960s. Before then, the study of commitment was found primarily in the fields of psychology and sociology. There were exceptions; for example, Simon, Smithburg, and Thompson (1950) noted that commitment to the organization is distinct from commitment to that organization’s specific values, policies, and goals. In the psychology and sociology literatures, even when notions of commitment were central to the research, the term commitment was not defined but instead, as H. S. Becker (1960) noted, “treated as a word requiring no such definition” (p. 32).

An example of the early work from this era is Whyte’s (1956) classic book, which examined the loyalty of individuals who not only worked for an organization but also obtained a sense of social belongingness from the organization and subordinated their personal goals and desires to conform to the demands of the organization. In general, the interests of psychologists and sociologists at this time centered on how individuals could engage in collective action (e.g., strikes, negotiations) through commitment to social institutions (e.g., employers, unions, workgroups) to cope with power differentials between workers and management, enhance social welfare, and move between social classes (e.g., Commons, 1908; A. W. Gouldner, 1948; Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939).

1960–early 1970s. From about 1960 forward, the commitment construct began to receive considerably more attention in the workplace literatures. One stream of research has viewed commitment as the propensity to engage in consistent lines of activity and exchanges. For example, H. S. Becker (1960), focusing on “loyalty” to employers, studied the mechanisms through which commitment to a course of action may occur. Specifically, Becker examined how side-bets and prior choices commit the individual to future actions that are consistent with those prior choices. Kiesler (1971; Kiesler & Sakamura, 1966) also studied commitment to future actions but took more of a psychological perspective based on the attitude and attitude change literatures. In this work, Kiesler defined “commitment as a pledging or binding of the individual to behavioral acts” (Kiesler & Sakamura, 1966, p. 349). Other examples from this time period include Grusky (1966), who examined how the rewards received and the difficulty experienced in attaining rewards influenced organizational attachment, and Greenwald (1965), who suggested that individuals who commit in writing to a particular stance are less likely to be persuaded from that stance.

The origins of other views of commitment also developed during this time and can be found in work that identified multiple bases of commitment. For example, H. P. Gouldner (1960) distinguished between cosmopolitan integration and organizational introjection. Etzioni (1961) developed a typology of involvement based upon the types of organizational control and use of power to manage employees (i.e., moral involvement with normative power, calculative involvement with remunerative power, and alienative involvement with coercive power). Kanter (1968) provided a similar typology, although it differed in several respects. First, unlike Etzioni, who viewed his bases of involvement as distinct, Kanter viewed her different bases of commitment as highly interrelated. Second, Kanter’s typology was based on her study of social groups such as utopian communities and focused on how the behaviors that groups require of members influenced commitment and the survival of the social group (i.e., norms and control commitment, investments and continuance commitment, and renunciation of relationships with outsiders and cohesive commitment). Taken together, the work from this period provided important insights into the phenomena of commitment and established the foundation for studying both multiple bases of commitment and commitment from different perspectives (e.g., economic, social, behavioral, psychological).

Early 1970s–mid-1980s. Work born out of the behavioral, investment, and exchange views continued through the 1970s and beyond, as evidenced by extensions of H. S. Becker (1960) and Kiesler’s (1971) work (e.g., Hrebiniak & Alutto, 1972; Salancik, 1977) and research on the escalation of commitment (e.g., Staw, 1981; Staw & Fox, 1977). More significantly, however, another perspective became prevalent during this period, an attitudinal view of commitment that would inform much of the subsequent research on commitment. The attitudinal perspective focuses on how individuals identify or relate to the commitment target. Examples of work in this area at this time include Porter, Steers, Mowday, and Boulian’s (1974) study of commitment and turnover, Buchanan’s (1974) suggested components of commitment (identification, involvement, loyalty), and Steers’s (1977) test of a model of commitment antecedents and outcomes. It was also during this time frame that the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) was first published (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979) and gained wide acceptance. Mowday, Porter, and Steers’s (1982) book summarized the early work on this perspective. This time period essentially marked the emergence and wide acceptance of organizational commitment as an important outcome variable, a construct of importance to employees and organizations that managers could measure and attempt to influence.

Mid-1980s–2000. In the mid-1980s commitment researchers rediscovered and focused greater attention on understanding commitment to multiple targets (not just the employing organization) along with the multiple bases of commitment. For instance, the work of Morrow (1983), Reichers (1985), and T. E. Becker (1992) was foundational in the study of multiple commitment targets. In terms of bases of commitment, O’Reilly and Chatman (1986) offered a taxonomy reminiscent of earlier works by Etzioni (1961) and Kanter (1968). A considerable amount of research followed, examining commitment to targets other than the employing organization (e.g., Blau, 1985; Hollenbeck, Williams, & Klein, 1989), multiple commitment targets (e.g., Fukami & Larson, 1984; Zaccaro & Dobbins, 1989), multiple bases of commitment (e.g., Allen & Meyer, 1990; Dunham, Grube, & Castaneda, 1994), and both multiple commitment targets and bases (e.g., T. E. Becker & Billings, 1993; Clugston, Howell, & Dorfman, 2000). During this time, and consistent with the broader trend in psychology, greater attention was also given to the role of cognition in explaining the formation and influence of commitment (e.g., Hollenbeck & Klein, 1987; Wiener, 1982). Also in this period, Meyer and Allen (1991) introduced their typology of three commitment mindsets (affective, normative, and continuance) resulting from multiple bases of commitment, a typology that has risen to predominance in the study of workplace commitments, along with measures for assessing each mindset (Allen & Meyer, 1990). Consistent with Weick’s (1989) model of theoretical evolution, this era was marked by considerable expansion and variation in the breadth of commitment-related concepts with numerous frameworks presented to try and make sense of the dizzying array of workplace commitments being studied.

Recent research. Most recently, research on workplace commitments has focused on construct clarification and integration. Examples of this include the integrative models presented by Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) and Klein, Brinsfield, and Molloy (2006). Efforts have also been directed toward better distinguishing and articulating the linkages between commitment and related constructs such as identification (e.g., Meyer, Becker, & Van Dick, 2006; Riketta, 2005) and motivation (e.g., Meyer et al., 2004). There have also been efforts to quantitatively summarize the growing commitment literature (e.g., Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005; Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002). Those studies documented both substantial convergences and important distinctions among the various bases and targets of commitment studied in the workplace literatures. A final trend evident in recent commitment research is the recognition of the multiple commitments present in today’s work environment and attempts to understand the most relevant targets of commitment for different types of workers given the changes in the nature of work and work relationships (e.g., Liden, Wayne, Kraimer, & Sparrowe, 2003; McElroy, Morrow, & Laczniak, 2001). The sections that follow provide a more detailed discussion of the many conceptualizations of commitment that have been presented in the literature over the years as well as a summary of the primary theories put forth to explain and examine workplace commitments.

Definitions and Co...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• The Organizational Frontiers Series
• SIOP Organizational Frontiers Series
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Foreword by Robert D. Pritchard
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Section 1 The Meaning and Relevance of Commitment
• Section 2 Multiple Foci of Commitment
• Section 3 Building and Maintaining Commitments
• Section 4 Methodological Issues and Challenges
• Section 5 Integration and Future Directions
• Subject Index
• Author Index