Introduction

Organizational commitment has received significant attention in studies of the workplace. This is
due to the general recognition that this variable can be the major determinant of organizational
performance (Angle, 1981; Riketta, 2002) and effectiveness (Laschinger, 2001; Miller, 1978).
When employees are dissatisfied at work, they are less committed and will look for other
opportunities to quit. If opportunities are unavailable, they may emotionally or mentally
withdraw from the organization. Thus, organizational commitment is an important attitude in
assessing employees’ intention to quit and the overall contribution of the employee to the
organization.

It briefly highlights the various types of organizational commitment. Organizational

Commitment is an attitudinal or emotive dimension of work motivation, manifesting its form in
members’ behavior. Organizational Commitment is a subset of employee commitment, which is
comprised of work Commitment, Career Commitment & Organizational Commitment. There
Components of organizational commitment have been identified in the literatures which are
affective Continuance & normative commitment. As a combination of both attitudinal &
behavioral approaches, organizational commitment is defined as employee’s acceptances,
involvement & dedication towards achieving organizations goals.

Organizational Commitment
1
 Organizational commitment has an important place in the study of organizational
behavior. This is in part due to the vast number of works that have found relationships between
organizational commitment and attitudes and behaviors in the workplace (Porter et al., 1974,
1976; Koch and Steers, 1978; Angle and Perry, 1981).

Furthermore, Batemen and Strasser (1984) state that the reasons for studying
organizational commitment are related to
(a) Employee behaviors and performance effectiveness,
(b) Attitudinal, affective, and cognitive constructs such as job satisfaction,
(c) Characteristics of the employee’s job and role, such as responsibility and
(d) Personal characteristics of the employee such as age, job tenure” (p. 95-96).

Organizational commitment has been studied in the public, private, and non-profit sector,
and more recently internationally. Early research focused on defining the concept and current
research continues to examine organizational commitment through two popular approaches,
1) commitment-related attitudes and
2) commitment-related behaviors. A variety of antecedents and outcomes have been
identified in the past thirty years (Angle and Perry, 1981; Mowday et al (1979; Hall,
1977).

Definition of Commitment

Multiple definitions of organizational commitment are found in the literature. Bateman and
Strasser state that organizational commitment has been operationally defined as
“multidimensional in nature, involving an employee’s loyalty to the organization, willingness to
exert effort on behalf of the organization, degree of goal and value congruency with the
organization, and desire to maintain membership” (p.95).

Mowday, Steers, and Porter (1979) identified commitment-related attitudes and commitment-
related behaviors.

Porter et al. (1974) Schultz, 3 discuss three major components of organizational commitment as
being “a strong belief in and acceptance of the organization’s goals, a willingness to exert
considerable effort on behalf of the organization, and a definite desire to maintain organizational
membership”.

Sheldon (1971) defines commitments as being a positive evaluation of the organization and the
organizations goals.

According to Buchanan (1974) most scholars define commitment as being a bond between an
individual (the employee) and the organization (the employer), though his own definition of
commitment Meyer and Allen (1991) and Dunham et al (1994) identified three types of
commitment; affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment.
Normative commitment is a relatively new aspect of organizational commitment having been
defined by Bolon in 1993.

2
Affective commitment is defined as the emotional attachment, identification, and involvement
that an employee has with its organization and goals (Mowday et al, 1997, Meyer& Allen, 1993;
O’Reily & Chatman). Porter et al (1974) further characterize affective commitment by three
factors (1) “belief in and acceptance of the organization’s goals and values, (2) a willingness to
focus effort on helping the organization achieve its goal’s, and (3) a desire to maintain
organizational membership”. Mowday et al (1979) further state that affective communication is
“when the employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals in order to maintain
membership to facilitate the goal” (p.225). Meyer and Allen (1997) continue to say that
employees retain membership out of choice and this is their commitment to the organization.

Continuance commitment is the willingness to remain in an organization because of the

investment that the employee has with “nontransferable” investments. Nontransferable
investments include things such as retirement, relationships with other employees, or things that
Schultz, 4 are special to the organization (Reichers, 1985). Continuance commitment also
includes factors such as years of employment or benefits that the employee may receive that are
unique to the organization (Reichers, 1985). Meyer and Allen (1997) further explain that
employees who share continuance commitment with their employer often make it very difficult
for an employee to leave the organization.

Normative commitment In 1982, Weiner discusses normative commitment as being a

“generalized value of loyalty and duty”. Meyer and Allen (1991) supported this type of
commitment prior to Bolon’s definition, with their definition of normative commitment being “a
feeling of obligation”. It is argues that normative commitment is only natural due to the way we
are raised in society. Normative commitment can be explained by other commitments such as
marriage, family, religion, etc. therefore when it comes to one’s commitment to their place of
employment they often feel like they have a moral obligation to the organization (Wiener, 1982).

Meyer, Allen, & Smith (1993) say that the three types of commitment are a psychological state
“that either characterizes the employee’s relationship with the organization or has the
implications to affect whether the employee will continue with the organization”. Meyer et al
(1993) continue to say that generally the research shows that those employee’s with a strong
affective commitment will remain with an organization because they want to, those with a strong
continuance commitment remain because they have to, and those with a normative commitment
remain because they fell that they have to. Meyer & Allen (1997) define a committed employee
as being one “stays with an organization, attends work regularly, puts in a full day and more,
Schultz, 5 protects corporate assets, and believes in the organizational goals”. This employee
positively contributes to the organization because of its commitment to the organization.

Many scholars have defined organizational commitment, e.g., Kanter (1968), views
organizational commitment as the willingness of workers to devote energy and loyalty to an
organization. According to Porter et al. (1974) organizational commitment is the relative strength
of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organization.

3
The idea for investigation is based on the conceptualization of Meyer and Allen’s (1997) three
types of organizational commitment model. Figure 1 is a pictorial presentation of Meyer and
Allen’s three types of organizational commitment.

Figure1: Three Types of Organizational Commitment

As figure 1 shows, Meyer and Allen (1997) identified and represented three forms of
commitment: affective, continuance, and normative. Affective commitment is an individual’s
emotional attachment with (i.e. identification with and involvement in), the organization.
Continuance commitment refers to the individual’s recognition of the benefits of continued
organizational membership versus the perceived cost of leaving the organization. Finally,
normative commitment refers to the employee’s feeling of obligation to stay in the organization.
All three forms of commitment affect not only employees’ willingness to remain with an
organization, but their work related behavior as well.
Organizational Commitment is highly valuable. This paper highlights the importance of
understanding the meaning organizational commitment. It is this factor which increases our job
satisfaction, loyalty, growth.

• Affective commitment exists when workers are happy to be members of an organization,

believe in and feel good about the organization and what it stands for, are attached to the
organization, and intend to do what is good for the organization.
• Continuance commitment exists when workers are committed not so much because they
want to be but because they have to be; the costs of leaving the organization are too great.
• Normative commitment is the commitment that a person believes that they have to the
organization or their feeling of obligation to their workplace

Common to all of the three types of commitment is the view that commitment is a psychological
state that (a) characterizes the employee's relationship with the organization, and (b) has
4
implication for the decision to continue or discontinue membership in the organization.
Employees with a strong affective commitment remain with an organization because they want
to, those with a strong continuance commitment remain because they have to, and those with a
strong normative commitment remain because they feel they ought to (Meyer, Allen and Smith
(1993). Allen and Meyer (1990), found, however, that these three classifications of commitment
are conceptually and empirically separable. Even though there appears to be some overlap
between affective and normative commitment, both were found to be relatively independent of
continuance commitment. Therefore, they can be measured separately.

Over the years, two basic approaches have been used to study organizational commitment:
commitment-related attitudes and commitment-related behaviors. Each approach offers a slightly
different definition. The commitment-related attitude approach defines organizational
commitment as a partisan, affective attachment to the goals and values, and to the organization
for its own sake, apart from its purely instrumental worth (Buchanan, 1974, p. 533). Porter,
Crampton and Smith (1976) define it as the willingness of an employee to exert a high level of
effort on behalf of the organization, a strong desire on behalf of the organization, and an
acceptance of its major goals and values. According to Mowday, Steers and Porter (1979, p.
225), attitudinal commitment represents a state in which an individual identifies with a particular
organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in order to facilitate these goals.

The commitment-related behavior approach focuses on a behavioral pattern guided by

internalized normative pressures to act in a way that meets organizational goals and interest
(Wiener, 1982). Wiener and Gechman (1977) argued that the pattern of behavior resulting from
commitment should possess the following characteristics: (1) it should reflect personal sacrifices
made for the sake of the organization; (2) it should show persistence - that is, the behaviors
should not depend primarily on environmental controls such as reinforcements or punishment,
and (3) it should indicate a personal preoccupation with the organization, such as devoting a
great deal of personal time to organization-related actions and thoughts. In this sense,
organizational commitment is viewed as (1) willingness of an individual to identify with and the
desire not to leave an organization for selfish interest or marginal gains; (2) willingness to work
selflessly and contribute to the effectiveness of an organization; (3) willingness to make personal
sacrifice, perform beyond normal expectations and to endure difficult times with an
organization-- low propensity to "bail-out" in difficult times (4) acceptance of organization's
values and goals -- the internalization factor. This study adopted the organizational commitment
behavior-related approach.

The concept of organizational commitment and its subsets.

5
Organizational commitment is vital for productivity, quality & good performance of an
organization. Numerous empirical evidence regarding job commitment & its relationship with
job satisfaction has been offered.

These findings reveal that the level of job commitment can also be influenced by various factors
such as demography, pay, co–workers, work supervision, company’s background & employee’s
job–satisfaction level.

In the last decade there has been a steady interest in studying organizational commitment of
employees. Organizational commitment refers to “The relative strength of an individual’s
identification with and involvement in a particular Organization. “(Mowday Etal 1979, P. 226.)
Strongly committed employees are more likely to remain with the organization than are those
with weak commitment. Commitment may even be better predictor of turn over than job
satisfaction because it is influenced less by day to day happenings than is job satisfaction (Porter
et al – 1974)

Employee Commitment –

The concept of employment commitment lies at the heart of any analysis of Human Resource
Management. Indeed, the rationale for introducing Human resource Management policies is to
increase levels of commitment so positive outcomes can ensue. Such is the importance of this
construct. Yet, despite many studies on commitment, very little is understood of what managers
mean by the term ‘commitment’ when they evaluate someone’s performance and motivation.
The literature defines commitment as an employee’s level of attachment to some aspect of work.
Various authors have been instrumental in identifying types of employee commitment as critical
constructs in understanding the attitudes and behaviors of employees in an organization. Meyer
et.al. [4] Identify more than 25 employee commitment concepts and measures.
Arguing that conceptual redundancy exists across these, they group them into three foci, as in
Fig. 1: commitment to work/job, commitment to career/profession and commitment to
organization. Though this study specifically addresses commitment to the organization, or
organizational commitment, it also considers work and career commitment towards clarifying the
conceptual meaning.

Organizational Commitment:

There are two dominant conceptualizations of organizational commitment in sociological

literature. These are an employee’s loyalty towards the organization and an employee’s intention
to stay with the organization. Loyalty is an affective response to, and identification with, an
organization, based on a sense of duty and responsibility.

6
One may use Herscovitch and Meyer’s definition: ‘the degree to which an employee identifies
with the goals and values of the organization and is willing to exert effort to help it succeed’.
Loyalty is argued to be an important intervening variable between the structural conditions of
work, and the values, and expectations, of employees, and their decision to stay, or leave.
Positive and rewarding features of work are expected to increase loyalty, which , in turn, will
reduce the likelihood of leaving. Loyalty becomes stabilized with tenure, which partly explains
the negative relationship typically found between tenure and turnover.
Intent to stay is portrayed as effectively neutral, and focuses on an employee’s intention to
remain a member of the organization. It is much closer to economists’ ideas on how weighing
the costs of leaving versus staying, decides the employee to leave or stay. Hagen defines this
form of commitment as the employee’s expected likelihood of remaining employed in the same
organization. As with loyalty, intent to stay stabilizes with tenure, and helps explain the negative
tenure and turnover relationship. Theoretically, it is viewed as an intervening response to
structural conditions of work, as well as conditions of work elsewhere, or to not working at all.
Career Commitment:
Career commitment refers to identification with, and involvement in, one’s occupation. Much
literature refers to similar or related concepts: occupational commitment, professional
commitment, career salience, the cosmopolitan/local distinction and professionalism. Common
to all these is the critical notion of being committed to one’s career, or occupation, rather than to
the organization which employs one.

WorkCommitment:
Work commitment refers neither to the organization nor to one’s career, but to employment itself
persons committed to work hard a strong sense of duty towards their work, and place intrinsic
value on work as a central life interest. This form of commitment relates terms like work
motivation, job involvement, work as a central life interest and work involvement. Although
work commitment is expected to be related to organizational commitment and career
commitment, literature shows it to be empirically distinct from these two forms of commitment.

Organizational Commitment:

The issue of organizational commitment within the private sector, has, generally, received
significant research focus over the past 25 years. This review further describes the past
development of organizational commitment, and its relevance in the future.
Development of Organizational Commitment:

Two major theoretical approaches emerge from previous research on commitment:

Firstly, commitment is viewed as an attitude of attachment to the organization, which leads to
particular job–related behaviors. The committed employee, for example, is less often absent, and
is less likely to leave the organization voluntarily, than are less committed employees.
Secondly, one line of research in organizations focuses on the implications of certain types of
behaviors on subsequent attitudes. A typical finding is that employees who freely choose to
behave in a certain way, and who find their decision difficult to change, become committed to
the chosen behavior and develop attitudes consistent with their choice.
7
One approach emphasizes the influence of commitment attitudes on behaviors, whereas the other
emphasizes. Although the ‘commitment attitude behavior’ and ‘committing behavior attitude’
approaches emerge from different theoretical orientations, and have generated separate research
traditions, understanding the commitment process is facilitated by viewing these two approaches
as, inherently, inter–related.

Rather than viewing the causal arrow, between attitudinal and behavioral commitment, as
pointing in one direction or the other, it is more useful to consider the two as reciprocally–related
over time. It is equally reasonable to assume that (a) commitment attitudes lead to committing
behaviors that subsequently reinforce and strengthen attitudes; and (b) committing behaviors
lead to commitment attitudes and subsequent committing behaviors.
The important issue is not whether the commitment process begins with either attitude or
behavior. Rather, it is important to recognize the development of commitment may involve the
subtle interplay of attitudes and behaviors over a period of time. The process through with
commitment is developed may involve self–reinforcing cycles of attitudes and behaviors that
evolve on the job, and over time, strengthen employee commitment to the organization.
Meyer and Allen present three approaches, define their three dimensional constructs as affective,
continuance and normative commitment. These components of commitment have been identified
in the literature.

1. Affective Commitment: The individuals affective or emotional attachment to the organization.

(i.e. individuals stay with organization because they want to.).
2. Continuance Commitment: The perceived costs associated with leaving the organization (i.e.
the individual stays with the organization because they need to)
3. Normative Commitment: An individuals felt obligation to remain with the organization (i.e.,
the individual stays with the organization because they feel they caught to do so).
Affective Commitment refers to the employee’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and
involvement in, the organization [based on positive feelings, or emotions, toward the
organization]. The antecedents for affective commitment include perceived job characteristics
[task autonomy, task significance, task identity, skill variety and supervisory feedback],
organizational dependability [extent to which employees feel the organization can be counted on
to look after their interests], and perceived participatory management [extent to which employees
fell they can influence decisions on the work environment and other issues of concern to them.

The use of these antecedents is consistent with findings by researchers, such as Steers, Mottaz
and Rowden, that these factors all create rewarding situations, intrinsically conductive to the
development of affective commitment. In addition, age and organizational tenure are considered
to be positively associated with affective commitment. It is hypothesized that employees with
low affective commitment will choose to leave and organization, while employees with a high
affective commitment will stay for longer periods, as they believe in the organization and its
mission.
Continuance commitment refers to commitment based on the costs that the employee associates
with leaving the organization [due to the high cost of leaving]. Potential antecedents of
continuance commitment include age, tenure, career satisfaction and intent to leave. Age and

8
tenure can function as predictors of continuance commitment, primarily because of their roles as
surrogate measures of investment in the organization.

Tenure can be indicative of non–transferable investments [close working relationship with co–
workers, retirement investments, career investments and skills unique to the particular
organization]. Age can also be negatively related to the number of available alternative job
opportunities. Career satisfaction provides a more direct measure of career–related investments,

which could be at risk if the individual leaves the organization. In general, whatever employees
perceive as sunk cost, resulting from leaving the organization, are the antecedents of continuance
commitment.

Normative commitment refers to an employee’s feeling of obligation to remain with the

organization [based on the employee having internalized the values and goals of the
organization]. The potential antecedents for normative commitment include co–worker
commitment [including affective and normative dimensions, as well as commitment behaviors],
organizational dependability and perceived participatory management are expected to instill a
sense of moral obligation to reciprocate to the organization.

Roles of Managers to enhance job commitment

Throughout the workplace employees must be given numerous opportunities to feel

committed to the organization. Meyer & Allen, (1997), found that employees that have a good
relationship with their immediate work group have higher levels of commitment. They discuss
their idea that if employees are directly committed to their group, their commitment to the
overall Schultz, 9 organizations will be higher. Lio (1995) concluded that “workers’
organizational commitment is significantly correlated to their perceived job security” (p.241).

Management styles can influence the commitment level of employees. Koopman (1991)
studied how leadership styles affected employees and found those employees who favored their
manager’s style also favored the organization more. Though there was no direct connect between
commitment, it could be argued that this would then affect their levels of commitment to the
organization. Nierhoff et al (1990) found that the “overall management culture and style driven
by the top management actions are strongly related to the degree of employee commitment” (p.
344). These correlations bring to light the importance of having strong managers and their roles
in the overall organization.

Eisenberger et al (1990) discuss that those employee’s who feel that they are cared for by their
organization and managers also have not only higher levels of commitment, but that they are
more conscious about their responsibilities, have greater involvement in the organization, and are
more innovative. Managers and organizations must reward and support their employees for the
work that they do because this perceived support allows for more trust in the organization.

9
Potential Consequences of Poor Job Commitment

1. Performance: Committed workers are only slightly more likely to perform at a higher
level than dissatisfied workers.
a. Satisfaction is most likely to affect work behaviors when workers are free to vary
their behaviors and when a worker’s attitude is relevant to the behavior in
question.
2. Absenteeism: Committed workers are only slightly less likely to be absent than
dissatisfied workers.
3. Turnover: Committed workers are less likely to leave the organization than dissatisfied
workers.
4. Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB): Committed workers are more likely to
engage in this behavior than dissatisfied workers.
a. OCB: Behavior that is above and beyond the call of duty but is nonetheless
necessary for organizational survival and effectiveness
i. Helping coworkers, spreading goodwill
5. Worker well-being: Committed workers are more likely to have strong well-being than
dissatisfied workers. Worker well-being: How happy, healthy, and prosperous workers
are.

Ways for increasing job commitment

1. Work is challenging and interesting but not tiring.

2. Rewards are equitable and provide feedback.
3. Working conditions match physical needs and promote goal attainment.
4. Self-esteem is high.
5. Others in the organization hold similar views and facilitate reward attainment.
6. Policies and procedures are clear, don’t conflict, and aid goal attainment.

Conclusion
There is progress in our understanding of commitment and organizational commitment, both
conceptually, and, more practically, in terms of the positive consequences for organizations of
having committed employees. Finding the relationship between human resource management
practices, employee commitment and the financial performance of firms has important
implications for improved integration of research across several business school disciplines.
10
Evidence clarifies that investment in employees can have positive financial consequences for
firms and their shareholders, and may help broaden their narrow view of the world. From the
literature review on organizational commitment, the authors identify that employee perception is
the foundation of employee motivation, leading to higher organization commitment, and that
employee perception forms the antecedent of organizational commitment.
Positive employee perception leads to improved employee motivation, which in turn, leads to
higher organizational commitment. As upbringing, race and religion are key factors influencing
employee perception, a clear understanding of the meaning of organizational commitment among
all persons concerned, such as researchers, respondents, practitioners and academicians is vital.

Significant of organizational commitment

There have been two schools of thoughts about commitment. One the “from control to
commitment” school, was led by Walton, who saw commitment strategy as a more rewarding
approach to Human Resource Management, in contrast to the traditional control strategy. Two
“Japanese or excellence” school, is represented by writers such as Pascal, and Athos (1981) and
Peter and waterman (1982), who looked at the Japanese model and related the achievement of
excellence to getting the whole hearted commitment of the work force to the organization.

Problems with the concept of Commitment

11
References–

1. Armenakis, A., 1999. Ethnics program Pose Potential Threats. Internal Auditor, 56(2): 12.

2. Bard, K., 2002. Employee ownership and affective Organizational Commitment: employee
perceptions of fairness and their preference for company shares over cash. Scandinavian Journal
of Management.

3. Meyer, J.P. and Lynne, H., 2001. Commitment in the workplace–Toward a general model’.
Human Resource Management Review.

4. Meyer, J.P. and Allen, J.N., 1997. Commitment in the workplace. Thousand Oaks, CA: sage
Publications.

5. Singh, V. and Vinnicombe, S., 2000. What does ‘commitment’ really mean? Views of UK and
Swedish engineering managers’. Personnel Review, Vol. 29(2)

6. Rajendra Muthuveloo and Radvan Che Rose-2005,TYPOLOGY of organizational

commitment-American journal of applied science 2(6):1078-1081,2005

12