پروفایل تعهد : ترکیب شکل های تعهد سازمانی و نتایج شغلی

Although the three-component model of organizational commitment by Meyer and Allen (1991) posits that an employee can experience the three components concurrently, previous research has been largely variable-centered, looking at the antecedents and outcomes of each component separately. Two studies explored how the three components combine to create distinct “profiles” of commitment and the implications of different profiles. In Study 1, six clusters were identified using k-means cluster analysis. These were labeled as the Highly committed, Non-committed, Neutral, Affective dominant, Continuance dominant and the Affective–Normative dominant profiles. Analysis of variance results indicated that the Highly committed, Affective–Normative dominant and the Affective dominant profiles demonstrated the most desirable job behaviors. The Non-committed profile showed the least desirable outcomes, followed by the Continuance dominant profile. Study 2 largely replicated these findings. The results suggest that affective commitment is the primary driver of positive outcomes, especially when combined with low levels of continuance commitment.

Research on organizational commitment dates back to the 1960s. The early conceptualizations of the construct were unidimensional, and commitment was defined as a consistent line of activity due to a recognition of costs associated with quitting (Becker, 1960) or more popularly, as an emotional attachment to the organization (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979). Over the years, the increasing interest in the area added to the lack of consensus on the definition of organizational commitment. While inhibiting a meaningful accumulation of research, this state of affairs underlined the multidimensional nature of commitment. Indeed, although several alternative models of commitment were proposed in the 1980s and early 1990s, multidimensionality was common to all (e.g., Meyer and Allen, 1991, O’Reilly and Chatman, 1986 and Penley and Gould, 1988). Of these multidimensional conceptualizations, the model by Meyer and Allen (1991) has gained substantial popularity. According to this model, organizational commitment is composed of three components. The affective component refers to employees’ emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization. The continuance component refers to commitment based on the costs that employees associate with leaving the organization. Finally, the normative component refers to employees’ feelings of obligation to remain with the organization. While each commitment component reflects a psychological state that has implications to continue or discontinue membership in the organization, the nature of these states differs. Employees with strong affective commitment remain in the organization because they want to, those with strong continuance commitment because they need to, those with strong normative commitment because they feel they ought to do so. Further, each of the three components of commitment is proposed to develop as a function of different antecedents and to have different implications for work relevant behavior other than turnover (Allen and Meyer, 1990 and Meyer and Allen, 1991). Nevertheless, affective, continuance, and normative commitment are best viewed as distinguishable components or forms, rather than types of commitment as employees can simultaneously experience each of these psychological states to varying degrees. The three-component model of organizational commitment has received considerable empirical support (see Allen and Meyer, 1996 and Meyer et al., 2002). The three components have been shown to be related yet distinguishable from each other. The meta-analysis by Meyer et al. (2002) indicates that affective commitment develops primarily from positive work-related experiences, whereas lack of job alternatives and investments in the organization are predictive of continuance commitment. Although there is insufficient research to substantiate the proposition, normative commitment is arguably determined by early socialization experiences or the organization’s investment in the employee. In terms of job-related outcomes, all three forms of commitment relate negatively to withdrawal cognitions and turnover behavior, with affective commitment showing the strongest correlations, followed by normative commitment and then continuance commitment (Meyer et al., 2002). The implications for other job-related behaviors differ across the three forms. While affective commitment has the strongest relations with desirable work-related outcomes such as organizational citizenship behaviors, attendance and performance, continuance commitment is either negatively related or unrelated to these behaviors. Normative commitment also appears to predict positive job outcomes, albeit less strongly than affective commitment (Meyer et al., 2002). In recent years, researchers have also been interested in the links between commitment and employee-related outcomes such as well-being. While some researchers have argued that affective commitment would buffer the negative effects of job stressors on employee health and well-being (e.g., Begley & Czajka, 1993), others (e.g., Reilly, 1994) have suggested that committed employees may be more sensitive to the negative effects of such stressors. The meta-analysis by Meyer et al. (2002) has provided support for the former argument and has shown that affective commitment is negatively related to self-reported stress and work-family conflict, whereas continuance commitment is positively related to both variables. Although the validation evidence that has accumulated in the last decade has greatly contributed to our understanding of organizational commitment, many research gaps remain. One issue that has been neglected is the coexistence of the commitment components or forms and its implications. Previous research has been largely variable-centered, looking at the antecedents and outcomes of each commitment form separately through correlational or regressional analysis. This type of analysis fails to recognize the fact that employees endorse varying levels of affective, continuance, and normative commitment concurrently. Recently, Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) underlined the need to look at combinations of the three commitment forms. Specifically, they argued that the varying levels of the three forms will create a distinct “profile” of commitment for each employee, and different profiles will have different implications for job outcomes. Drawing on the theoretical possibility that every employee can be characterized as being either high or low on each of the three forms of organizational commitment, Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) proposed 8 (23) possible commitment profiles. For example, a “pure” affective commitment profile describes an individual with high levels of affective commitment but low levels of normative and continuance commitment. Another example is a profile characterized by an individual who is high on all three components of commitment. Based on previous empirical findings, which show that affective commitment has the strongest relations to outcomes of interest, Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) proposed that the likelihood that an individual would enact a desirable behavior would be highest in the case of “pure” affective commitment profile, followed by “pure” normative commitment profile and then “pure” continuance commitment profile. The argument is that employees who are committed primarily out of desire might be more likely to follow through on their commitment than employees who are committed out of obligation or to avoid costs. Especially, the latter “trapped” group is likely to look for ways to get out of their commitment. With respect to profiles characterized by high levels of multiple commitment forms, Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) speculated that high affective commitment accompanied by high levels of normative or in particular, continuance commitment would be worse than a pure affective commitment profile in terms of predicting desirable behavior. In other words, they proposed that an obligation or a cost-avoidance mind-set would reduce the positive impact of a desire-based mind-set. However, they argued that profiles characterized by high affective commitment, irrespective of the accompanying levels of normative and/or continuance commitment, would relate more strongly to behaviors of interest than would be the pure normative or continuance commitment profiles. Regarding profiles characterized by low levels of affective commitment, they further speculated that a pure normative commitment profile would be better than a profile characterized by high levels of normative and continuance commitment or pure continuance commitment. Finally, the lowest likelihood of positive behavior is arguably associated with the profile characterized by low levels of all three types of commitment. Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) argued that these propositions would hold across a variety of job-related behaviors, although there would be some nuances across what they called focal versus discretionary behaviors. Given the current operationalization of the three commitment forms, the focal behavior, in other words, the primary outcome of interest can be specified as retention (Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002). Discretionary behaviors would thus be behaviors like citizenship, performance, or attendance. The argument is that the above propositions will be more valid for the focal behavior than for the discretionary behaviors. In addition, with respect to exhibiting discretionary behaviors, a pure continuance commitment profile is predicted to be as undesirable as a profile characterized by low levels of all commitment forms because it is expected that a cost-based mind-set is likely to undertake minimal job requirements only, such as maintaining organizational membership. To date, surprisingly little research has investigated the implications of interactions involving two or more forms of organizational commitment (e.g., Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002, Jaros, 1997, Meyer et al., 1989 and Randall et al., 1990). Although the effects have been found to be weak, there is some support for the above propositions. In particular, patterns of two-by-two interactions suggest that the likelihood of desirable job outcomes is greater when affective or normative commitment is high but continuance commitment is low. In other words, continuance commitment seems to attenuate the impact of affective or normative commitment. Beyond this, however, little is known about the combined influence of commitment forms. Thus, the coexistence of the three forms needs to be explored further for a more complete and indeed a more realistic understanding of organizational commitment. The present study used a cluster-analytic approach to this end. In contrast to the studies that treat each form of commitment as a separate variable, cluster analysis enables the identification of commitment “profiles” and in turn, an investigation of their implications. Thus, this study provides an empirical assessment of the propositions outlined by Meyer and Herscovitch (2001). So far, the only study to test these propositions was by the authors themselves. Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) obtained reasonable support for their arguments by showing higher outcome scores for profiles with high affective and/or high normative commitment as well as obtaining some evidence for the tempering effect of continuance commitment. However, the authors specifically investigated profiles of “commitment to change” and their implications for resistance to organizational change. Furthermore, they created the profiles theoretically based on median splits of the commitment scores, which were also fairly small regarding sample size. This investigation, in contrast, identified profiles of organizational commitment using cluster analysis and analyzed their implications for both job and employee-related outcomes. As such, it provides an extended empirical validation of the core model and of the preliminary evidence offered by the authors. Two survey studies were undertaken to this end; with the second study conducted as a partial replication of Study 1.

Prior to the cluster analysis, the revised organizational commitment scales were validated using confirmatory factor analysis. The three-factor model was found to be significantly better than all other models (χ2/df = 2.24; GFI = .97; AGFI = .94; CFI = .97, RMSEA = .06). Next, a measurement model was fitted to the sample using all scales. The results indicated a satisfactory fit (χ2/df = 1.81; GFI = .93; AGFI = .90; CFI = .96, RMSEA = .05). Table 2 provides factor loadings obtained for the multi-item indicators created for each latent variable. As described in Study 1, the commitment items were summed into scale scores; each scale score was standardized and submitted to k-means cluster analysis. To provide a comparable replication, the 6-cluster solution was chosen over the 7- and 8-cluster solutions (which also yielded unacceptably lower cell sizes [e.g., n = 6] and in certain instances, less clear profiles). As can be seen in Fig. 2, the results display considerable similarity to Study 1. Again, one group’s profile is characterized by below average levels of affective, normative and continuance commitment (the “Non-committed” [n = 59]) and another group consists of individuals with above average levels of affective, normative as well as continuance commitment (the “Highly committed” [n = 82]). Four other profiles emerged between these two extremes with three of these profiles mimicking those obtained in Study 1: The CC-dominant (n = 51), the AC-dominant (n = 37) and the AC–NC dominant (n = 57). The only profile that is different than Study 1 is the group consisting of individuals who displayed below average levels of affective commitment, but above average levels of continuance and normative commitment (n = 50). This group was thus labeled as the “Normative-Continuance dominant” profile (NC–CC dominant).