Organisational

Commitment
 What is organizational
commitment ?
• It is a popular attitudinal variable in the work domain.
• It is often associated with both attitudes and emotions.
• It is strongly related to job satisfaction.
• Commitment involves emotional attachments, as well as evaluations of whether
the current circumstances are what they expected or might expect in the future.
• Organizational commitment is related to both personal and organizational
factors.
• Personal factors or characteristics related to job involvement and commitment
include age, growth needs, and belief in the traditional work ethic.
• The organizational factors associated with high organisational
commitment include job enrichment, autonomy, opportunity to use skills,
and positive attitude towards work group.

• Organisational commitment is defined as the degree of psychological

identification with or attachment to the company for which a person
works.

• Organisational commitment has the following components :-

(Mowday, Steers, Boulian and Porter, 1974- organisational commitment
as a global perspective)

1. Acceptance of and belief in the organization’s values and goals.

2. Willingness to exert effort for the organization, to help meet the goals of
the organization.

3. Having a strong desire to remain affiliated with the organization.

• Organizational commitment is influenced by employees’ perception of how
committed, the organisation is to them.

• The greater the perceived commitment to the employees, the higher the
employees’ expectations that, if they work to meet the organizational
goals, they will be equitably rewarded.

• Organisational commitment is positively related to the amount of support

received from supervisors and co-workers.

• It is also positively related to the degree of satisfaction with supervisors.

• Studies have confirmed a positive relationship between organisational

justice and organisational commitment.
 Types of
organizational
commitment
Kanchana Nk
218411
Meyer and allen developed their component model of
commitment -1991

3 types of commitment
1) Affective commitment
2) Continuance commitment
3) Normative commitment
Affective commitment (Affection for your
organization)

• It is the “ desire” component of organizational commitment

• Employee demonstrate a high level of active commitment.
• Happy, engaged, participate in meetings and discussion
• Occur When you feel strong emotional attachment to your
organization and to the work you do.
Continuance commitment (Fear and
loss)
• Measure of the willingness of an employee to continue working for
the same organization
• Employee Weighs up the pros and cons of staying v/s leaving the
organization
• Belive that leaving organization would be costly
• Employee Weighs costs such as pension accurals and friendship with
coworkers against the benefits of leaving
Normative commitment ( sense of
obligation to stay)
• Occurs when you feel Sense of obligation to your organization, Even if
you’re unhappy in your role,or even if you want to pursue better
opportunities.
• Strong feeling to stay back in the organization
• Thinking about the time and resources that have been invested in
them by the organization
• Employee believes that she owes it to organization
• Meyer and colleagues developed – occupational commitment
• Found that the 3 foundations for oragnizational commitment –
applied to the notion of occupational commitment
• oragnizational and occupational commitment -independent
influences on performance and turnover intention

• IMPORTANCE
• Associated with several job attitudes,stress indicator and behaviour
• Occupational commitment- Moderate job satisfaction
• Oragnizational commitment- strong job satisfaction
ORGANIZATION
AL
COMMITMENT
AND OTHER
Anamika Santhosh

VARIABLES
218401
Msc corporate psy
ORGANIZATIONAL
COMMITMENT AND OTHER
VARIABLES
 Various studies has included organizational commitment involving organizational
variables.
 Meta analysis was conducted on around 1000 studies by Cooper- Hakim and
Vishvevaran in 2005.
 Results- relating the three components of commitment to four important variables.
 The results of this suggests that, affective commitment relates most strongly to the
desire to quit.
 Commitment has been studied in relation to potential antecedent variable as well.
 Mayer, Stanley, Herscovich,and Topolyntsky (2002) conducted meta-analysis on 155
studies showing that commitment is associated to job stress and organizational
justice.
 Robert, Probst, Martocchio, Drasgow and Lawler in 2000 surveyed employees of a
multinational company in four countries – India , Mexico, Poland and US.
 Results- organizational commitment is strongly correlated with intend to quit in US
and Poland. India and Mexico have low commitment and less inclined to quit jobs.
 Perhaps one reason for these cross – national difference has to do with culture
values.
 Individualism and collectivism
 The idea of commitment has been extended from the organization to the other
related domains.
 Vendenbergh, Bentiene and Stinglhamber in 2004 developed scales to assess
commitment to one’s supervisors and to work groups or peers.
 They showed that commitment to group is a better predictor of turnover than
commitment to the organization or supervisor.
 Meyer et. al developed the idea of occupational commitment – concerns
occupation or profession rather than a particular organization.
 People might be committed to their occupation, such as accounting or law
and uncommitted to their current employer.
 Cropanzano, Howes, Grandey and Toth in 1997 found out that occupational
commitment is less strongly related than organizational commitment to
intention of quitting a job.
 Organizational commitment relates strongly to behaviors and variables that
are relevant to the present job than occupational commitment.
 In unionized Occupations and workplaces, people might be committed to their
unions.
 Organizational justice refers to employee perception of fairness in the
workplace.
 It is found that the relationship with these variables are stronger for affective
commitment than continuance and normative commitment.
 And as with job satisfaction, there have been few gender or racial differences
found with organizational commitment.
Assessment of
Organizational
commitment
Organizational commitment
Questionnaire
Organizational commitment is measured with self-report scales not unlike those used to asses
job satisfaction

Mowday

 I find that my values and the organization’s values are very similar
 I am proud to tell others that I am part of this organisation
 I could just as well be working for a different organization as long as the type of work
was similar
 This organization really inspires the very best in me in the way of job Performance

Acceptance of Goal
Willingness to work hard
Intention to stay with the organisation
Mayer, Allen, and Smith Three-component
organizational commitment scale
Affection for your job Fear of loss Sense of obligation to stay
(affective commitment) (continuance commitment) (Normative Commitment)

I would be very happy to Right now, staying with

I do not feel any
spend the rest of my my organisation is a
obligation to remain with
career with this matter of necessity as
my current employer
organisation much as desire

It would be very hard for Even if it were to my

I really feel as if this
me to leave my advantage, I do not feel
organisation’s problems
organization right now, it would be right to leave
are my own
even if I wanted to my organization now
A new focus: Organizational
identification
Even though the concept of commitment has an affective component, its general thrust is more
cognitive than emotional.
In some senses, the concept of commitment seems very similar to the concept of job
satisfaction an attitude with substantial cognitive foundations.
Unlike satisfaction, the commitment concept does profit from a cognitive orientation because it
is commonly used to explain why people remain with or leave an organization or occupation.
To be sure, these decisions can be emotional (or worse, irrational), but because they are usually
life-altering, person-as-scientist has a distinct presence in those decisions.
The concept of organizational identification (OID) has been proposed as a way of dealing with
the much more basic and emotional aspects of organizational membership. OID has its roots in
social identity theory
Social identity theory consists of three propositions:
(1) people value and seek self-esteem
(2) group memberships play a role in a person's self-concept
(3) individuals seek to maintain a positive social identity by making favourable distinctions
between their social in-group and other outgroups
Variations in Identification
■ Kreiner and Ashforth have suggested four variations in identification :-

1. Identification – an individual himself or herself in terms of the

attributes of the organisation.

2. Disidentification – an individual defines himself or herself as not

having the attributes of the organisation.

3. Ambivalent Identification – an individual identifies with some of the

attributes of the organisation but rejects certain other aspects.

4. Neutral Identification – an individual remains aggressively neutral,

neither identifying nor disidentifying with the attributes of an
organization.
• The four facets of organisational Identification are presented in the figure.

• This model shows the extent to which each variation is represented within and
between organizations.

• For example :- worker for Budweiser beer distributor drinking Coor’s beer and
wearing a Coor’s hat – fired.

• Research suggests that organisational identification is distinct from the construct

of commitment.

• Organisational identification has a stronger emotional base and it appears much

more volatile than commitment.

• Organisational identification is more susceptible to being influenced by the

external environment than commitment.
Graphic Scale of Organisational
Identification
■ This chart is intended to assess the employee’s or individual’s
relationship with the organization ( or unit, company, branch,
department, team etc.) he or she belongs to.

■ This scale consists of 7 rectangles. In each rectangle there are two

circles. One represents the individual and the other represents the
organization to which the individual belongs to.

■ In each rectangle the circles are overlapping differently. In the

first rectangle (1), the circles are totally separate and represents a
situation in which the individual doesn’t identify at all with the his
or her organization.

■ In the last rectangle (7), the circles are totally overlapping and
they represent a situation in which the individual completely
identifies with his or her organisation or unit. ( Shamir & Kark,
References
Spector, Paul. E, (2016) Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Research and Practice(Wiley
India Edition), Wiley India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi.

Schultz, Duane P., Schultz, Sydney Ellen (2016), Psychology and Work Today: An Introduction to
Industrial and Organizational Psychology (10th edition), Routledge, New York.
REFERENCE
 Spector, P.E (2016) Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Research and
practice (Wiley India edition) Wiley India Pvt.Ltd; New Delhi
Refrence
Spector, Paul. E, (2016) Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Research and
Practice(Wiley India Edition), Wiley India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi.
Types of organizational commitment.Retrived from
https://study.com/academy/lesson/organizational-commitment-definition-theory-types.ht
ml
 References
• Spector, Paul. E, (2016) Industrial and Organizational
Psychology: Research and Practice(Wiley India Edition),
Wiley India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi.

• Schultz, Duane P., Schultz, Sydney Ellen (2016),

Psychology and Work Today: An Introduction to Industrial
and Organizational Psychology (10th edition), Routledge,
New York.