Organizational commitment: Toward a different understanding of the ways people feel attached to their organizations

Arménio Rego, Regina Leite, Teresa Carvalho, Carla Freire, Armando Vieira

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the three-dimensional model of organizational commitment proposed by Meyer and Allen (e.g., 1991). It focuses on whether continuance commitment should be considered one-dimensional or bidimensional (low alternatives; high sacrifices). Whether affective commitment should be divided into two components (affective commitment; future in common) or if it should remain as a one-dimensional construct is also discussed. The paper also considers a “new” factor identified by Rego (2003), which he named “psychological absence," but which we denominated here as accommodating commitment. Besides the confirmatory factor analysis, the paper shows how four dimensions of organizational justice (distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational) explain organizational commitment. The sample comprises 366 individuals from 22 organizations operating in Portugal. The predictive value of the justice perceptions for both instrumental commitment components is quite weak, despite ranging from 25 percent to 36 percent for the other components. Procedural and interpersonal justice are the main predictors. The accommodating dimension improves the fit indices of the factorial model, but its meaning is not clear. It is also not clear whether one should consider it as a new component of commitment or whether its items should be removed from the measuring instruments. The findings suggest that some gains can be achieved in the partition of the affective and instrumental commitment, but further research is necessary to clarify the issue.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)201-218
Number of pages18
JournalManagement Research
Volume2
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2004

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