John P. Meyer

A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment

Abstract Diversity in the conceptualization and measurement of organizational commitment has made it difficult to interpret the results of an accumulating body of research. In this article, we go beyond the existing distinction between attitudinal and behavioral commitment and argue that commitment, as a psychological state, has at least three separable components reflecting (a) a desire (affective commitment), (b) a need (continuance commitment), and (c) an obligation (normative commitment) to maintain employment in an organization. Each component is considered to develop as a function of different antecedents and to have different implications for on-the-job behavior. The aim of this reconceptualization is to aid in the synthesis of existing research and to serve as a framework for future research.

Commitment to organizations and occupations: Extension and test of a three-component conceptualization.

he authors tested the generalizability of J. P. Meyer and N. J. Allens (1991) 3-component model of organizational commitment to the domain of occupational commitment. Measures of affective, continuance, and normative commitment to occupation were developed and used to test hypotheses concerning their differential relations with antecedent and consequence variables. Confirmatory factor analyses conducted on data collected from samples of student and registered nurses revealed that the 3 component measures of occupational commitment were distinguishable from one another and from measures of the 3 components of organizational commitment

Commitment in the workplace: toward a general model

Abstract It is now well recognized that employees can develop multiple work-relevant commitments, and that commitment itself is a multidimensional construct. Unfortunately, there remains considerable disagreement, both within and across work commitment literatures (e.g., organizational, occupational, union), about what commitment is, its dimensionality, how it develops, and how it affects behavior. We argue that commitment should have a “core essence” regardless of the context in which it is studied, and that it should therefore be possible to develop a general model of workplace commitment. We propose such a model based on the propositions that commitment (a) is a force that binds an individual to a course of action of relevance to a target and (b) can be accompanied by different mind-sets that play a role in shaping behavior. We demonstrate how this model helps to explain existing research findings and can serve as a guide for future research and for the management of workplace commitments.

Employee Commitment and Motivation: A Conceptual Analysis and Integrative Model.

Theorists and researchers interested in employee commitment and motivation have not made optimal use of each others work. Commitment researchers seldom address the motivational processes through which commitment affects behavior, and motivation researchers have not recognized important distinctions in the forms, foci, and bases of commitment. To encourage greater cross-fertilization, the authors present an integrative framework in which commitment is presented as one of several energizing forces for motivated behavior. E. A. Lockes (1997) model of the work motivation process and J. P. Meyer and L. Herscovitchs (2001) model of workplace commitments serve as the foundation for the development of this new framework. To facilitate the merger, a new concept, goal regulation, is derived from self-determination theory (E. L. Deci & R. M. Ryan, 1985) and regulatory focus theory (E. I. Higgins, 1997). By including goal regulation, it is acknowledged that motivated behavior can be accompanied by different mindsets that have particularly important implications for the explanation and prediction of discretionary work behavior.

Commitment to organizational change: Extension of a three-component model

Three studies were conducted to test the application of a three-component model of workplace commitment (J. P. Meyer & N. J. Allen, 1991: J. P. Meyer & L. Herscovitch, 2001) in the context of employee commitment to organizational change. Study 1, conducted with 224 university students, provided preliminary evidence for the validity of newly developed Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment to Change Scales. Studies 2 and 3, conducted with hospital nurses (N = 157 and 108, respectively), provided further support for the validity of the three Commitment to Change Scales, and demonstrated that (a) commitment to a change is a better predictor of behavioral support for a change than is organizational commitment, (b) affective and normative commitment to a change are associated with higher levels of support than is continuance commitment, and (c) the components of commitment combine to predict behavior.

Side-bet theory and the three-component model of organizational commitment

Abstract We tested Becker’s (1960) side-bet conceptualization of commitment within the context of Meyer and Allen’s (1991) three-component model of organizational commitment. Employees (N=202) from various organizations completed a survey including measures of (a) seven categories of side bets (b) affective, normative, and continuance commitment, and (c) turnover intention. The findings provided strong support for Becker’s theory. All seven side-bet categories correlated significantly with a revised measure of high-sacrifice continuance commitment, and structural equation modeling analyses revealed that the relations between the side bets and turnover intention were fully mediated by commitment. The findings also address issues pertaining to the dimensionality and measurement of continuance commitment, and help to explain relations among the three components of commitment.

Organizational commitment: Evidence of career stage effects?☆

Abstract Research examining work attitudes from a career stage perspective addresses two issues: changes in attitudes across stages and the relations between work experiences and attitudes at different stages. Unfortunately, employee age, organizational tenure, and positional tenure are all used to define career stages, making cross-study comparisons difficult. In this study, affective, continuance, and normative commitment to the organization were examined as a function of all three career stage variables. Also examined were the contributions, across stages, of various work experiences to the prediction of affective commitment. Results indicate that although affective and normative commitment increase significantly with employee age, increases in continuance commitment are more closely related to increase in organizational and positional tenure. Further, the relationships between work experiences and affective commitment differ only slightly across tenure levels, and not at all across employee age groups.

Examination of the combined effects of work values and early work experiences on organizational commitment

We tested the hypothesis that the influence of early work experiences on organization commitment would be moderated by the value employees place on these experiences. We measured work values in two samples of recent university graduates prior to organizational entry, and obtained measures of commensurate work experiences and three forms of commitment (affective, continuance, and normative: Allen and Meyer, 1990) on different occasions following entry. Regression analyses revealed that values and experiences did interact in the prediction of affective commitment and normative commitment, but that the nature of the interaction was different for different work value/experience combinations. The findings provide some challenge to the common sense assumption that positive work experiences will have the strongest effect on commitment among those who most value such experiences. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Development of Organizational Commitment During the First Year of Employment: A Longitudinal Study of Pre- and Post-Entry Influences

To test hypotheses concerning the influence of prospective and retro-spective rationality in the development of organizational commitment, we measured both the affective and continuance commitment of recent university graduates on three occasions during theirfirst year of employment and examined their relations with variables measured prior to and following entry into an organization. Prior to entry, we measured variables presumed to bind individuals to their choice of organization (i.e., volition, irrevocability, and importance) as well as perceived decision quality. Following entry, we measured perceptions of job quality, investments, and alternative employment opportunities. The results were more consistent with a prospective- than with a retro-spective-rationality view of the development of commitment. The best predictors of affective commitment were the job-quality and decision-quality variables. Continuance commitment correlated most strongly with the pre-and post-entry measures of perceived alternatives. Implications for organizational efforts to foster commitment in employees are discussed.

The Three-Component Model of Organisational Commitment: An Application to South Korea

We conducted two studies to determine whether the three-component model of organisational commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991) is generalisable to a non-Western culture using data from South Korea. In Study 1, we found that when the 6-item versions of the scales (Meyer, Allen, & Smith, 1993) were translated into Korean, the psychometric properties of the Affective Commitment Scale were similar to those found in North America, but problems were identified in the Continuance and Normative Commitment Scales. In Study 2, we found that these problems could be overcome by adopting a revised set of items written in North America. The new scales demonstrated good psychometric properties in terms of factorial validity, internal consistency, and criterion-related validity with respect to turnover intention. We concluded that the three commitment constructs are likely to generalise to non-Western cultures, but that there might be a need to refine the measures for cross-cultural research.