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Article Excerpt
For over three decades, the antecedents, correlates and outcomes of organizational commitment have received significant research attention (Fields, 2002; Meyer, Becker, & Vandenberghe, 2004). Of the three main types of commitment (attitudinal, normative, calculative/continuance) attitudinal commitment has been identified as most strongly (positively) related to job performance, attendance and organizational citizenship behaviours (Meyer et al., 2004). However, the construct has been operationalized in a wide variety of ways (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990), with each way capturing some aspects of prior definitions while omitting others. In an effort to provide a dear, integrated definition and operationalization of attitudinal commitment, this study examines existing definitions and measurement of the construct and offers theoretical and empirical support for attitudinal commitment as three-dimensional. As a result of this research, future studies in this area will be able to further this work and determine whether the three dimensions identified herein have differential antecedents and outcomes.
Theoretical background
Dimensions of attitudinal commitment
As key scholars in the area of attitudinal commitment, Mowday, Porter, and Dubin (1974), O'Reilly and Chatman (1986) (1) and Allen and Meyer (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Meyer & Allen, 1991; Meyer, Allen, & Gellatly, 1990) (2) have clearly overlapped in their formulations and definitions of attitudinal commitment (see Table 1 for their definitions). All of those scholars have characterized the construct as a psychological attachment to the organization driven by an employee's identification and involvement with the organization. However, inconsistencies across their research exist and are potentially problematic, as operational and definitional omissions increase the potential for omitted variable biases in study results. For example, concepts of willingness to exert effort and pride have been dropped from previous conceptualizations and measurements with no theoretical justification offered for doing so. Moreover, despite the fact that scholars have suggested identification and attachment are conceptually and empirically different (e.g. Kacmar, Carlson, & Brymer, 1999; Mael, 1988), the Meyer and Allen (1991) scale and Mowday, Steers, and Porter (1979) measure combine the two. Further, the concept of positive affect for the organization is implied in these scholarly works (Meyer and Allen use the term in their label for this type of commitment) but is either not explicitly referred to in definitions or measured. Finally, the notion of involvement in the organization, which is in all definitions, is not captured by either O'Reilly and Chatman (1986) or Meyer et al., (1990), and is only captured somewhat by one item in the Mowday et al. scale. Thus, while there has been agreement as to the fundamental basis of attitudinal commitment (attachment and identification), there has not been consensus on how to best operationalize it. Table 1 depicts this lack of consensus and outlines the three conceptualizations described above.
Consideration of whether these omissions are theoretically justified and whether or not attitudinal commitment is multidimensional is warranted because of the potential for omitted variable bias research in this area. Moreover, if different dimensions do underlie the construct, they may have differential antecedents and consequences. Considering theory, definitions and the corresponding items outlined in Table 1, attitudinal commitment appears to be comprised of three related but unique dimensions.
Willingness to exert effort
As indicated in Table 1, willingness to exert effort is measured with only one item across all three measures. While involvement is mentioned in the theoretical definition of commitment by both O'Reilly and Chatman (1986) and Allen and Meyer (1990), willingness to exert effort, a key indicator of being involved, is noticeably absent from their measures. Mowday et al. (1974) describe the willingness to exert effort on behalf of the organization as one of three equal conditions of commitment, and then operationalize it with just one item of 15 in their instrument, the OCQ (Mowday et al., 1979). Steers (1977), however, cautions researchers from combining active and passive components of commitment into a single measure, and suggests that passive commitment represents affective responses to the organization and active commitment represents behaviour intentions, such as willingness to exert high levels of effort on behalf of the organization. These active, behavioural intentions may lead to different types of performance than the other dimensions of commitment, and thus willingness to exert effort should be considered as related, but separate from other dimensions.
Identification with the organization
Prior research suggests that notions of affective commitment become confused with identification, arguing that identification is a 'concept frequently subsumed...
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