Organizational commitment and its effects on behavior

This study is an investigation into the complexities of organizational commitment and its effect(s) on people\u27s behaviors. In recent management literature, the concept of organizational commitment has developed along two separate lines of research. One holds commitment to be a set of positive attitudes towards an organization with motivational effects on performance and membership. The other views commitment as an outcome of investments in a relationship which retrospectively bind the individual to continued membership. Following an exploratory study into managers\u27 views on commitment , a measure of commitment to goals was added. All three types were compared to hypothesized outcome behaviors. An interactive effect between calculative commitment and job alternatives on intent to remain was included. A questionnaire was used to measure individual commitment on the three commitment scales and reported behavior on seven outcome variables. All ten measures were operationalized by combining existing measure with ideas drawn from the exploratory study. The questionnaire was administered to 250 people at two private companies. Factor analysis was conducted on related variable measures in order to examine discriminant validity. Correlation analysis, multiple regression, and LISREL analysis were conducted in order to test 26 separate hypotheses derived from two models. All three types of commitment were confirmed as separate constructs. As expected, both affective commitment and goal commitment appeared to have positive relationships with performance variables. Also as expected, affective and calculative commitment proved to be strong predictors of intent to remain . Affective commitment also a predicted low search behavior and high desire to remain . Contrary to expectations, the effect of affective commitment on performance variables was stronger than that of goal commitment . Also contrary, calculative commitment had a positive relationship with desire to remain and low search behavior . There was no evidence of an interactive effect between calculative commitment and job alternatives . The results confirm the power of affective commitment as a motivating phenomenon and suggest that its power exceeds that of commitment to goals . Results also suggest that calculative commitment is related to desire to remain a member, though not with a willingness to expend extra job effort