Organizational commitment

Organizational commitment in the fields of Organizational Behavior and Industrial/Organizational Psychology is, in a general sense, the employee's psychological attachment to the organization. It can be contrasted with other work-related attitudes, such as job satisfaction, defined as an employee's feelings about their job, and organizational identification, defined as the degree to which an employee experiences a 'sense of oneness' with their organization.

Beyond this general sense, organizational scientists have developed many nuanced definitions of organizational commitment, and numerous scales to measure them. Exemplary of this work is Meyer & Allen's model of commitment, which was developed to integrate numerous definitions of commitment that had proliferated in the literature.

Model of commitment

According to Meyer and Allen's (1991) three-component model of commitment, prior research indicated that there are three "mind sets" which can characterize an employee's commitment to the organization:

Affective Commitment

AC is defined as the employee's positive emotional attachment to the organization. An employee who is affectively committed strongly identifies with the goals of the organization and desires to remain a part of the organization. This employee commits to the organization because he/she "wants to". In developing this concept, Meyer and Allen drew largely on Mowday, Porter, and Steers's (1982)^{[citation needed]} concept of commitment, which in turn drew on earlier work by Kanter (1968)^{[citation needed]}.

Continuance Commitment

The individual commits to the organization because he/she perceives high costs of losing organizational membership (cf. Becker's 1960 "side bet theory"^{[citation needed]}),including economic costs (such as pension accruals) and social costs (friendship ties with co-workers) that would be incurred. The employee remains a member of the organization because he/she "has to".

Normative Commitment

The individual commits to and remains with an organization because of feelings of obligation. These feelings may derive from many sources. For example, the organization may have invested resources in training an employee who then feels a 'moral' obligation to put forth effort on the job and stay with the organization to 'repay the debt.' It may also reflect an internalized norm, developed before the person joins the organization through family or other socialization processes, that one should be loyal to one's organization. The employee stays with the organization because he/she "ought to".

Types of employee discharge

• Intellectual Commitment(full)
• Emotional Commitment (full)
• Financial Commitment (phased)

Guidelines to enhance organizational commitment.

Five rules help to enhance organizational commitment:

Commit to people-first values

Put it in writing, hire the right-kind managers, and walk the talk.

Clarify and communicate your mission

Clarify the mission and ideology; make it charismatic; use value-based hiring practices; stress values-based orientation and training; build tradition.

Guarantee organizational justice

Have a comprehensive grievance procedure; provide for extensive two-way communications.

Community of practice

Build value-based homogeneity; share and share alike; emphasize barnraising, cross-utilization, and teamwork; getting people to work together.

Support employee development

Commit to actualizing; provide first-year job challenge; enrich and empower; promote from within; provide developmental activities; provide employee security without guarantees.

See also

• Organizational Justice
• Onboarding