In organizational behavior and industrial and organizational psychology, organizational commitment is an individual's psychological attachment to the organization. Organizational scientists have also developed many nuanced definitions of organizational commitment, and numerous scales to measure them. Exemplary of this work is Meyer and Allen's model of commitment, which was developed to integrate numerous definitions of commitment that had been proliferated in the literature. Meyer and Allen's model has also been critiqued because the model is not consistent with empirical findings. It may also not be fully applicable in domains such as customer behavior. There has also been debate surrounding what Meyers and Allen's model was trying to achieve. The basis behind many of these studies was to find ways to improve how workers feel about their jobs so that these workers would become more committed to their organizations. Organizational commitment predicts work variables such as turnover, organizational citizenship behavior, and job performance. Some of the factors such as role stress, empowerment, job insecurity and employability, and distribution of leadership have been shown to be connected to a worker's sense of organizational commitment.
Model of commitment Meyer and Allen's (1991) three-component model of commitment was created to argue that commitment has three different components that correspond with different psychological states. Meyer and Allen created this model for two reasons: first "aid in the interpretation of existing research" and second "to serve as a framework for future research". Their study was based mainly around previous studies of organizational commitment. Meyer and Allen's research indicated that there are three "mind sets" which can characterize an employee's commitment to the organization. Mercurio (2015) extended this model by reviewing the empirical and theoretical studies on organizational commitment. Mercurio posits that emotional, or affective commitment is the core essence of organizational commitment.
Affective commitment Affective Commitment is defined as the employee's positive emotional attachment to the organization. Meyer and Allen pegged AC as the "desire" component of organizational commitment. 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 they "want to". This commitment can be influenced by many different demographic characteristics: age, tenure, sex, and education but these influences are neither strong nor consistent. The problem with these characteristics is that while they can be seen, they cannot be clearly defined. Meyer and Allen gave this example that "positive relationships between tenure and commitment maybe due to tenure-related differences in job status and quality" In developing this concept, Meyer and Allen drew largely on Mowday, Porter, and Steers's (2006) concept of commitment, which in turn drew on earlier work by Kanter (1968). Mercurio (2015) stated that..."affective commitment was found to be an enduring, demonstrably indispensable, and central characteristic of organizational commitment".
Continuance commitment Continuance commitment is the "need" component or the gains versus losses of working in an organization. "Side bets", or investments, are the gains and losses that may occur should an individual stay or leave an organization. An individual may commit to the organization because he/she perceives a high cost of losing organizational membership (cf. Becker's 1960 "side bet theory"). Things like economic costs (such as pension accruals) and social costs (friendship ties with co-workers) would be costs of losing organizational membership. But an individual doesn't see the positive costs as enough to stay with an organization they must also take into account the availability of alternatives (such as another organization), disrupt personal relationships, and other "side bets" that would be incurred from leaving their organization. The problem with this is that these "side bets" don't occur at once but that they "accumulate with age and tenure".
Normative commitment The individual commits to and remains with an organization because of feelings of obligation, the last component of organizational commitment. These feelings may derive from a strain on an individual before and after joining an organization. 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". But generally if an individual invest a great deal they will receive "advanced rewards". Normative commitment is higher in organizations that value loyalty and systematically communicate the fact to employees with rewards, incentives and other strategies. Normative commitment in employees is also high where employees regularly see visible examples of the employer being committed to employee well-being. An employee with greater organizational commitment has a greater chance of contributing to organizational success and will also experience higher levels of job satisfaction. High levels of job satisfaction, in turn, reduces employee turnover and increases the organization's ability to recruit and retain talent. Meyer and Allen based their research in this area more on theoretical evidence rather than empirical, which may explain the lack of depth in this section of their study compared to the others. They drew off Wiener's (2005) research for this commitment component.
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