Commitment in Organizations: Accumulated Wisdom and New Directions

As editors of this book, we had a core set of objectives that we presented to the authors as questions to be answered in their chapters: What do we know now? How useful is what we know? Are current commitment theories adequate, and if not, what theoretical developments are needed? What can we learn from relevant theory and research outside of commitment within industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology, and from theory and research on commitment outside of I/O psychology? What do we need to know and do? In this concluding chapter, we review and synthesize the information compiled by the authors in addressing these questions. We deal with each in turn, with emphasis on the nal question. Our objectives are to demonstrate the importance of commitment for organizations and their employees, to identify key gaps in our current understanding of the commitment process, and to provide an agenda for future research