Organizational Management

Policies and Practices

Carolina Machado, Joao Paulo Davim, Carolina Machado, Joao Paulo Davim

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781349692439, 9781137473073
• eBook ISBN: 9781137473080
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

Organizations are increasingly facing continuous and highly complex changes that require more proactive strategies, policies and management practices. Conscious of this reality, this book provides information and debate on principles, strategies, models, techniques, methodologies and applications of organizational management in the field of industry, commerce and services.

Organizational Management communicates the latest developments and thinking on the organizational management subject world-wide, and seeks cultural and geographic diversity in studies and uses of organizational management that have a special impact on organizational communications, change processes and work practices. With an emphasis on the way organizations define and develop their management policies and practices in order to acquire more competitive advantages in the global market, this book is crucial to any practitioner or researcher of current organizational management.

1

What We Know About Organizational Commitment: An Overview of the Literature of the Last Decades

Santiago Gutiérr ez-Broncano , Pedro Jiménez Estévez and Mercedes Rubio-Andrés

1 Introduction

Although Organizational Commitment (OC) is not a new topic in the literature, it was not until 1991 that Meyer and Allen developed both a singular conceptualization about the construct of OC and a scale of measurement. Years later OC has became a very useful topic in business literature because it is directly related to turnover, turnover intention, absenteeism, and even organizational citizenship behavior (Meyer and Herscovitch, 2001). Moreover, OC has come to be regarded as an important variable to facilitate the understanding of an employee’s workplace behavior. Meyer, Allen and Smith (1993) argued that a better understanding of employee relationships with their organizations would improve organizational performance.

Over the last three decades, OC has been at the centre of the main studies of individual and organizational performance. It has emerged as a key concept in the study of work attitudes and behavior (Cohen, 2007). Despite this, there is still abundant controversy regarding how the construct is defined and measured (Conway and Monks, 2009). Most of the literature recognizes its complexity and views it as multifaceted (Conway and Monks, 2009).

In this chapter we start by defining OC and studying other related words. Then we show its main components and focus on the commitment process, including antecedents (mainly human resource practices), consequences, and correlates. After that, we compare different measurements of OC and close with a summary of the conclusions drawn and any pertinent reflections.

2 Definition and closely related constructs

The modern concept of commitment, presented in Fayol’s principles and developed during the 19th Century, did not emerge as a distinctive construct until the early 1960s and it has been used as both an independent and a dependent variable in studies since then (Swailes, 2002). Traditionally, OC has been defined as “a psychological state that characterizes the employee’s relationship with the organization and his implication for the decision to continue or discontinue membership in the organization.” (Meyer, Allen and Smith, 1993: 539)

Over the years, OC has been defined indirectly and in many different ways. For example, commitment in general is defined as an engagement which restricts freedom of action (Oxford English Dictionary, 1969), or the force that stabilizes the direction of individual behavior when conditions are not met and do not function (Scholl, 1981).

But commitment to what? To a project, a team, or a goal? We understand that individuals can commit to both entities and behaviors. Commitment can be regarded as an entity; the behavioral consequences are often implied. Similarly, when commitment is considered to be a course of action, the entity to which that behavior is relevant can often be inferred, even when not stated explicitly.

When identifying OC, Mowday, Steers and Porter (1979) talked about “the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organization”; several years later, in 1990, Allen and Meyer defined OC as “a psychological state that binds the individual to the organization.” (p. 14) Nowadays, there appears to be a consensus that the strength experienced is a mindset, although researchers have not reached an agreement about the nature of that mindset. Although the amount of attention devoted to the study of OC has been significant, there is considerable confusion and disagreement about what commitment is, where it is directed, how it develops, and how it affects behavior (Meyer and Hercsovitch, 2001). For instance, Mowday et al. (1982) highlighted the individual’s attachment or linkage to an organization, and defended the interchangeability of “attitudinal” and “organizational” commitment. However, this definition has been criticized for not separating the motives for commitment from their effects. Sometimes, a desire to remain with an organization can be seen as a consequence of commitment rather than as part of its definition (Peccei and Guest, 1993). Nevertheless, the most commonly studied type of OC has been attitudinal commitment, focusing on a psychological state more than on a reflection of dedication and responsibility. In contrast, Oliver (1990) supports the idea of commitment being towards actions rather than objects. So it is clear that no single definition of commitment has been universally adopted.

Recently, Meyers and Herscovitch (2001), defined OC as a multidimensional construct, assuming the existence of a core that characterizes the construct and distinguishes it from other constructs, like motives or attitudes. A construct closely related to commitment is loyalty. It can be defined as an affective response to identification with an organization based on a sense of duty and responsibility but different from an intent to stay. Thus they should be separated in research (Mueller et al., 1992). Yet, job satisfaction, job involvement, and occupational commitment are also related to commitment (Meyer et al., 2002).

3 Components of commitment

Allen and Meyer (1990) conformed a close conceptualization of attitudinal commitment and, based on the four tenets of OC (attitudinal, continuance, normative and behavioral), developed a model of commitment, differentiating between three components of commitment, which they labeled affective, continuance, and normative commitment. They named them components rather than types because, according to the authors, employees can experience each of these psychological states to varying degrees. The net sum of a person’s commitment to an organization reflects each of these separable psychological states. So the three components should not be seen as mutually exclusive, but as components that can co-exist in varying degrees. A person’s commitment can be based upon one, two, or all three factors. Employees with a strong affective commitment remain because they want to, those with a strong continuance commitment because they need to, and those with a strong normative commitment because they feel they ought to (Allen and Meyer, 1990).

Affective commitment is used to describe an affective orientation towards the organization, and it is defined as “the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organization;” (Mowday et al., 1979: 226) continuance commitment refers to an awareness of the opportunity costs associated with leaving the organization; and, finally, normative commitment derives from feelings of obligation to stay with the organization or continue employment.

These components of commitment are related to the three bases of commitment proposed by Etzioni (1961) when he talked about three forms of involvement: moral, calculative, and alienative. Moral involvement signifies a highly positive orientation towards an organization, where memberships internalize organizational norms; calculative involvement is more relevant to business organizations and represents a relationship with an organization based on the notion of an exchange; finally, alienative involvement arises when behaviors are severely constrained, understanding the organization as a prison.

Linking the three kinds of involvement, Swailes (2002) postulated three kinds of power: normative, remunerative, and coercive. In the same manner, individuals accept influence mainly due to three factors: internalization, identification, or compliance (O’Reilly and Chatman’s model). Internalization occurs when the external influence is accepted because the attitudes and behaviors one is being encouraged to adopt are congruent with existing values. Identification occurs when an individual accepts the influence to establish or maintain a satisfying relationship. Finally, compliance, also referred to as instrumental commitment, occurs when attitudes, and corresponding behaviors, are adopted in order to gain specific rewards. We can see some similarity among these concepts in Figure 1.1.

Taking all of the above into consideration, we can conclude that commitment components exert an influence on membership decisions through different mechanisms. Employees with a strong affective commitment stay with their organization based on the desire to do so, accept the norms because they believe in the goals of the organization and they share the same values. In contrast, employees with a strong normative commitment stay based on a perceived obligation to do so. As for the contribution of continuance commitment to employee retention, Vanderberghe and Tremblay (2008) distinguished between two subcomponents: the perceived sacrifice associated with leaving, and the perceived lack of alternatives (Bentein et al., 2005).

Figure 1.1 Relations between power, influence, commitment, and involvement

Source: Adapted from Swailes, 2002.

4 The commitment process: a general model

If we want to propose a global model of OC we have to incorporate antecedents, outcomes and correlates of commitment.

4.1 Antecedents to commitment

A wide range of variables have been identified as predictors for commitment, including personal characteristics (e.g. age, values, personality, and level of education), interpersonal factors (e.g. social influence and social exchange), job characteristics (e.g. autonomy, feedback, teamwork, work environment, and work pressure), and organizational characteristics (e.g. size, leadership style, career prospects, human resource policies, possibilities for future education, and participation in decision making) (Mowday et al., 1982). Each of the three components of commitment are developed by other antecedents.

For instance, Mowday et al. (1982) suggest that personal characteristics, job characteristics, work experience, and structural characteristics in general, could be antecedents to affective commitment. Employees whose experiences within the organization are consistent with their expectations and satisfy their basic needs, tend to develop stronger affective commitment. (Meyer and Allen, 1991). The mechanism to create this desire varies across the different conceptualizations, but includes involvement, shared value, and identification (Meyer and Herscovitch, 2001).

In the case of the continuance component, the antecedents depend on the degree of implication in the workplace and the perception of a lack of alternatives. These employees recognize that they have accumulated investments, which would be lost if they were to leave the organization, or they recognize that the availability of comparable alternatives is limited. They would be lost if they were to discontinue the activity (Meyer and Herscowitch, 2001).

Finally, the normative component of OC will be influenced by the individual’s experiences both prior to (familial/cultural socialization) and following (organizational socialization) entry into the organization (Wiener, 1982). Normative commitment develops as the result of socialization experiences that emphasize the appropriateness of remaining loyal to one’s employer, or through the receipt of benefits (e.g. tuition payments or skills training) that create within the employee a sense of obligation to reciprocate. Thus, employees have internalized a set of norms concerning appropriate conduct and, as the recipients of benefits, experience a need to reciprocate. The employee has a psychological contract with the organization (Meyer and Herscovitch, 2001).

As we have said before, human resource practices within organizational characteristics can be an antecedent to commitment. Due to the special importance of this relationship in business organizations, we have developed a new section for it.

4.2 Human resource practices as antecedents to commitment

The concept of OC is central to strategic human resource management literature. The resource-based view is frequently used to frame research which examines links between human resource management and performance (Qiao et al., 2009). Furthermore, the norm of reciprocity varies in different cultures and employees will reciprocate with some loyalty and commitment if organizations are able to show respect for their employees by sharing information with them, providing adequate training and benefits, being fair in performance appraisals, promoting from within, and providing communication between management and employees and between various groups of employees (Quiao et al., 2009).

Literature on human resource management shows many practices oriented towards employee commitment. Although there is little research exploring or analyzing the links between attitudes to human resource practices and commitment, the existence of such links cannot be denied (Conway and Monks, 2009). Only a few studies have linked employee experiences to multidimensional commitment, and findings show that attitudes towards vario...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  What We Know about Organizational Commitment: An Overview of the Literature of the Last Decades
• 2  Purpose, Change and Top Management in the Mid-1920s: Revisiting Selected Papers Presented at the Meetings of the Taylor Society
• 3  Managing Careers: Anchored, Plateaued or Drifting?
• 4  Other Organizational Perspectives on the Contribution of Human Resources Management to Organizational Performance
• 5  Training and Development from the SME Point of View: Portuguese Employers Input
• 6  Recruitment and Selection in the Expatriation Process: Comparing Perceptions between Organizations and Individuals
• 7  From Cooperative to Hybrid Organization: Internationalization, Financing and Crisis
• 8  Power and Micro-Politics in the Strategy Formation of Small and Medium Size Enterprises
• 9  Deigning Down or Learning Up? Lack of Voice and Dialogue in Change Management of Public Hospitals
• 10  About the Expatriation Process in SMEs: A Portuguese Look at the HRM Role
• Index