REFLECTIONS ON THE STUDY AND

RELEVANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL
COMMITMENT
Richard T. Mowday
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

In this essay, I reflect on the progress that has been made in the study of
organizational commitment in the twenty-five years since I first became
actively involved in research on this topic. In addition, given that important
changes have taken place in the employment relationship in the intervening
years, the question of whether employee commitment to organizations is as
relevant a concept for managers today as it seemed to be twenty-five years
ago is addressed.

The study of organizational commitment has a long history that has produced
a voluminous body of literature focusing on the attachments that form between
employees and their employing organization. My own involvement in the study
of commitment began 25 years ago when I was still a doctoral student at the
University of California, Irvine (Mowday, Porter & Dubin, 1974; Porter, Steers,
Mowday & Boulian, 1974). Twenty-five years is something of a milestone that
provides an occasion (or an excuse) to reflect on what has been learned in the
intervening years. More specifically, it seems useful to ask the question of
whether substantive progress has been made in our understanding of organi-
zational commitment and what remains to be learned. It also provides an
opportunity to ask the question of whether a concept that seemed so relevant
25 years ago is still relevant today. The nature of the employment relationship
appears to have changed considerably in the past 25 years and it is important
to understand the implications of these changes for future research on
organizational commitment.
What follows is not intended to be a scholarly review of organizational
commitment as a field of study. Very good scholarly reviews of this literature
are already available (e.g., Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Meyer & Allen, 1997) and it
would serve little purpose to try to duplicate prior efforts. Instead, what I have

Direct all correspondence to: Richard T. Mowday, University of Oregon, College of Business, Dept. of
Management, Eugene, Oregon 97403, USA.
Human Resource Management Review, Copyright # 1999
Volume 8, Number 4, 1998, pages 387±401 by Elsevier Science Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN : 1053 ± 4822
388 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOLUME 8, NUMBER 4, 1998

in mind is more of an essay or commentary that presents my own views of what

we have learned about organizational commitment and the future directions
our research should take, if any direction at all.
By way of background, I should say a few words about how I came to be
actively involved in the study of organizational commitment. It would be nice
to be able to argue that I was drawn to this topic as a result of independent
reflection about the key issues facing managers struggling with increasing the
effectiveness of the organizations they manage. Unfortunately, that would be
self-serving and not entirely accurate. I stumbled into this area as a graduate
student when I was hired to work as a research assistant on an Office of Naval
Research grant to Lyman Porter and Robert Dubin. Both Porter and Dubin
were interested in the relationship of individuals to work and organizations,
although they approached the topic in quite different ways. Porter had for
several years been exploring the concept of organizational commitment while
Dubin was pursuing his research on work as a central life interest. The
opportunity to work for these two eminent scholars, along with an outstanding
set of colleagues in the doctoral program who were also associated with the
project (Bill Crampon, Rick Steers, Eugene Stone, John VanMaanen, Joe
Champoux), made this an exciting and intellectually stimulating time. In
terms of my own personal involvement in the study of commitment, however,
it was a case of being in the right place at the right time.
As I indicated, Porter had developed an interest in the relationship of
employees to their work organizations several years earlier. By the time I
came along, he had already developed a new questionnaire to measure
organizational commitment (OCQ) and there was much to learn both about
the antecedents and consequences of commitment, as well as the OCQ
itself. Clearly, commitment had previously been studied by others, but
Porter's approach represented a new direction for research, both concep-
tually and methodologically.
It's always exciting to be associated with a relatively new area of study (the
excitement may be similar to that of a painter contemplating a blank pallet
compared to another painter contemplating a pallet in which 80% of the
painting had already been completed). Beyond that, there was a strong belief
that commitment was an important concept with considerable relevance for
both individual employees and organizations. For employees, commitment to
work and an organization represented a positive relationship that could
potentially add meaning to life (e.g., increase perceived self-worth). From
the perspective of organizations, we believed that having committed employ-
ees would be beneficial due to the potential for increased performance and
reduced turnover and absenteeism. If we could understand the process
through which employees become committed to organizations and how that
process can be managed, it would be of considerable benefit for both employees
and managers. This belief is naive in retrospect (i.e., there are downside risks
for both individuals and organizations of extreme levels of commitment).
Nonetheless, it provided powerful motivation to develop a knowledge base
on the concept of commitment.
THE STUDY AND RELEVANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT 389

THE PAST 25 YEARS OF RESEARCH ON COMMITMENT

A comprehensive current review of research on organizational commitment

has been provided by Meyer and Allen in their recent book entitled Commit-
ment in the Workplace: Theory, Research, and Application (1997). Their book is
an outstanding resource for scholars interested in this area of research and my
own thoughts about what has happened in the field over the past 25 years
draws heavily on Meyer and Allen's review.
What becomes immediately apparent from Meyer and Allen's review is that
organizational commitment has been a topic of considerable research interest
within organizational behavior during the past 25 years. Moreover, the
interest of scholars in studying commitment appears to have grown over time.
Simply counting their references by decade reveals 29 citations to articles
published in the 1970s, 100 in the 1980s, and 186 in the 1990s. Because there
may be a recency effect in the articles they cite, we need to be cautious about
these numbers. However, there is no evidence of diminished interest in
organizational commitment over the years and a hint that interest in this
topic has grown dramatically.
Although a great deal has been published on organizational commitment
since I first entered the field, it's important to ask whether these publica-
tions represent substantive progress in our understanding of the concept, as
well as its antecedents and consequences. I believe the answer is clearly yes.
Two important dimensions along which progress has been made standout in
my mind.

Conceptual Understanding of Employee ± Organization Linkages

Porter defined commitment in terms of the overall strength of an indivi-
dual's identification with and involvement in an organization. Although Porter
viewed commitment as having three components (a strong belief in and
acceptance of the organization's goals and values; a willingness to exert
considerable effort on behalf of the organization; and, a definite desire to
maintain organizational membership), commitment was viewed as unidimen-
sional construct focusing only on affective attachment. His measure of commit-
ment, the OCQ, produced a single score reflecting the employee's overall
commitment to the organization. The view that commitment was unidimen-
sional was supported by early factor analyses that found that the 15 items of
the OCQ loaded on a single factor (Mowday, Steers & Porter, 1979). Although
the reverse-scored items sometimes loaded on a second factor, this appeared to
be more of a methodological artifact than a reflection of the underlying
construct of commitment.
In the intervening years, at least two groups of scholars have expanded and
advanced our understanding of commitment by viewing it as having multiple
forms. It is important to note that these scholars were interested in a broader
set of bonds that exist between employees and organizations than Porter.
Whereas Porter focused on a bond characterized by acceptance of an organi-
390 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOLUME 8, NUMBER 4, 1998

zation's goals, subsequent researchers have broadened the focus of their

research to include other types of attachment that can account for employee
behavior and retention in the work place.
O'Reilly and Chatman (1986) drew on Kelman's (1958) work on attitude
and behavior change to conceptualize alternative forms of attachment. They
suggested the bond between an employee and an organization could take
three forms: compliance, identification, and internalization. Compliance
reflects instrumental behavior designed to gain rewards. Identification
occurs when employees behave because they want to maintain a relationship
with an organization due its attractive values or goals, even though the
values or goals may not be personally adopted. Internalization reflects
behavior driven by internal values or goals that are consistent with those
of the organization.
Subsequently, Meyer and Allen (1991) distinguished between three forms of
commitment: affective, continuance, and normative. Affective commitment
refers to the emotional attachment of individuals to organizations. Continu-
ance commitment is associated with the intention to remain with the organi-
zation due to the costs of leaving or the rewards for staying. Finally, normative
commitment reflects a felt obligation to remain a member of an organization.
Clearly, there is an overlap in the way that Porter conceptualized
commitment and the later work of both O'Reilly and Chatman (1986) and
Meyer and Allen (1991). Porter's approach to commitment is very similar to
O'Reilly and Chatman (1986) internalization dimension and Meyer and Allen
(1991) concept of affective commitment. In fact, Meyer and Allen (1991)
suggest that research using Porter's OCQ can be interpreted as reflecting
affective commitment.
There was nothing inherently wrong with Porter's decision to more narrowly
focus on the more affective concept of commitment. From a practical stand-
point, however, it is useful to recognize that the bonds that form between
employees and organizations can range from instrumental to emotional.
Identifying the different types of commitment suggest alternative manage-
ment strategies leading to desired behaviors in the workplace.
The subsequent work distinguishing different forms of commitment also
revealed some conceptual confusion in the OCQ because items reflecting the
various forms of commitment were combined into a single score. For example,
one OCQ item focuses on whether there is much to be gained by sticking with
the organization. Within the O'Reilly and Chatman (1986) framework, this
item might be considered compliance (instrumental behavior) while Meyer and
Allen (1991) would classify this item as measuring continuance commitment. It
is interesting to note that in recent research Porter has refined the OCQ to
contain only the items clearly associated with affective commitment (Tsui,
Pearce, Porter & Tripoli, 1997).
Recognizing that commitment may have multiple forms is an important
conceptual advance in our understanding of the construct. However, problems
remain in developing measures of each type of commitment. For example, the
identification and internalization forms discussed by O'Reilly and Chatman
THE STUDY AND RELEVANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT 391

have been difficult to empirically distinguish from each other (cf., Meyer
& Allen, 1991). Price (1997) similarly reports that not all studies of Meyer
and Allen's measures of commitment have demonstrated clear patterns of
convergent and discriminant validity. Even so, there is value in recognizing
different forms of commitment because it allows for a clearer under-
standing of the differential processes leading to the development of each
form of commitment.

Antecedents and Consequences of Commitment

The second dimension along which substantive progress has been made in
our understanding of commitment flows from the first. Early research on
organizational commitment focused on identifying its antecedents and con-
sequences (e.g., Buchanan, 1974; Steers, 1977). The study by Steers (1977) is
perhaps the prototype in this line of investigation because it has influenced
many investigations that came after it. He examined the extent to which
commitment was related to personal, work, role, and organizational character-
istics. In turn, he investigated relationships between commitment and several
important individual-level outcome variables, including absenteeism, turn-
over, and job performance. Subsequent research continued to explore the
antecendents and consequences of commitment, producing what Reichers
(1985) characterized as long a ``laundry list'' of variables that are correlated
with commitment. Because many of these studies were cross-sectional and
correlational in nature, it wasn't always entirely clear why specific variables
were related to commitment, however.
Identifying different forms of commitment allows us to decompose the
laundry lists of variables and to identify the specific antecendent variables
associated with each unique form of commitment. For example, the manage-
ment practices leading to continuance commitment on the part of employees
(e.g., piece-rate payment system at Lincoln Electric) may not be related to the
development of either affective or normative commitment. In addition, orga-
nizations that possess strong values and cultures may produce a different bond
with their employees than other organizations using market-based approaches
to binding employees. Meyer and Allen (1997) have done the most to advance
these lines of research and scholars interested in pursuing this area of inquiry
should examine their research closely.
Examining the antecedents of the different forms of commitment is im-
portant because it allows for the development of more comprehensive and
sophisticated conceptual models of the processes through which commitment is
developed than were available 25 years ago. It is perhaps in this area that the
greatest strides have been made and have yet to be made. Finding simple
correlations between, for example, job scope and organizational commitment
does not necessarily tell us how or why the specific characteristics of jobs lead
to tighter bonds between individuals and organizations. Meyer and Allen
(1997) present a conceptual model that highlights the processes through which
specific antecedent variables may lead to the various forms of commitment. For
392 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOLUME 8, NUMBER 4, 1998

example, they identify attribution processes, rationalization, met expectations,

person±job fit, and need satisfaction as particularly important to the develop-
ment of affective commitment but not leading to either continuance or
normative commitment. Clearly, there is a great deal left to be learned about
the processes linking work and organizational characteristics to commitment.
However, decomposing the concept of commitment into its different forms
allows from a more refined understanding of how commitment develops and
thus different strategies that managers can use.
In summary, important advances have been made in our understanding of
organizational commitment. Conceptual refinement of our understanding of
the construct has led to empirical research that has increased our knowledge
of the different types of bonds that develop between employees and organi-
zations. This, in turn, allows us to think more clearly about different
management practices and the different outcomes they will produce. While
I believe it is clear that our knowledge of commitment has advanced in the
past 25 years of research, there are important questions about how valuable
this knowledge is to the practice of management as we approach the year
2000. Should we have bothered? It is to that question that we turn in the
next section.

THE RELEVANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

Although much of the early research on commitment was driven by the strong
belief that the concept was of relevance to employees and managers, some
contemporary writers have questioned whether commitment is any longer a
relevant focus of research. The argument has been most forcefully advanced by
Baruch (1998). Noting recent trends in corporate downsizing driven, for
example, by process reeingineering, he argues that the nature of the employ-
ment relationship has fundamentally changed in the past 25 years in ways
that make employee commitment to organizations less relevant. As a result, he
states that ``the importance of OC as a leading concept in the management and
behavioral science is decreasing and this tendency will continue'' (Baruch,
1998, p. 138). It is useful to examine his argument and to contrast it with the
work of others who see commitment as having increased relevance in the
coming years.
The basis of Baruch's argument is that organizational commitment to
employees is an important, if not the most important, antecedent of employee
commitment to organizations. Widespread downsizing in recent years suggests
that corporations are unable or unwilling to give employees the same loyalty
they say they want from employees. Even Drucker (1992: 100), perhaps the
foremost popular writer on management, is skeptical of corporations who say
they value employees but act as if they don't.

All organizations now say routinely, ``People are our greatest asset.'' Yet few
practice what they preach, let alone truly believe it. Most still believe,
THE STUDY AND RELEVANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT 393

though perhaps unconsciously, what nineteenth-century employers be-

lieved: people need us more than we need them.

As organizational commitment to employees has decreased, employee com-

mitment to organizations should also diminish. In support of his argument,
Baruch (1998) presents evidence that correlations between commitment and
behaviors such as turnover have declined across time, suggesting that commit-
ment has become a less powerful predictor of who stays in organizations today
than it was in the 1970s.
At a general level, it's difficult to fault Baruch's logic. Research suggests
that organizational supportiveness of employees is clearly linked to employee
commitment to organizations (cf., Meyer & Allen, 1997). There is also
abundant evidence that many organizations have laidoff employees to reduce
costs and thus increase the ability to compete in increasingly competitive
global markets. Emshoff (1994) estimated that up to 90% of large corporations
have downsized. In an excellent series on changes in the workplace in the New
York Times (Uchiterlle and Kleinfield, 1996), it was estimated that 43 million
jobs disappeared in the American economy between 1979 and 1995. Remark-
ably, more jobs were created during this period were than were eliminated.
Even so, this figure reveals widespread employee movement among organiza-
tions and it is this dislocation that may have the most profound negative
impact on commitment.
It also appears that corporations are more routinely laying off employees
when they are profitable, not just when times are bad. They appear to do this
as a positive signal to financial analysts and thus as a way to increase
shareholder value in the short-term. For example, Reichheld (1996) noted that
when Xerox, which was profitable at the time, announced plans to cut staff by
10,000 employees in 1993, its stock price increased 7% the next day. It would
be truly surprising if employee commitment to Xerox didn't suffer as a
consequence of such actions.
The large number of mergers and acquisitions, although not mentioned by
Baruch, should also decrease employee commitment. As large corporations
acquire and sell assets on what appears to be an increasingly more frequent
basis, the object or focus of commitment becomes confused. Quite simply, it
becomes more difficult for employees to know what the organization is and
thus what they are committed to. There is only limited research that has
examined the effects of mergers on employee commitment (e.g., Schweiger &
DeNisi, 1991). However, changes in the composition of organizations through
mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures are likely to have important implica-
tions for employee commitment. Would an employee committed to McDonnell
Douglas, for example, easily transfer his or her commitment to Boeing after the
latter acquired the former? Alternatively, what happened to employee commit-
ment at Netscape among people working on their integrated applications
projects? In April 1996, Netscape spunoff this part of the business as Actra
Business Systems in a joint-venture with GE Information Services (GEIS). In
November 1997, Netscape bought out Actra from GEIS and reintegrated the
394 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOLUME 8, NUMBER 4, 1998

business within the larger corporation (Cusumano & Yoffie, 1998). Shortly
thereafter, Netscape was acquired by America On-Line. The speed at which
the composition of organizations change in the high tech industry makes one
wonder whether employees know from one day to the next who they are
working for, let alone what organization they are committed to, if any?
Clearly, an anecdotal case can be made that employee commitment to
organizations has, in all likelihood, diminished as changes have taken place
in the commitment of organizations to their employees. Is this a cause for
concern beyond whatever feelings we may have about the well-being and
security of the American workforce? Two influential recent books suggest that
corporate downsizing and cost cutting that negatively impacts employees are
short-sighted strategies that hurt corporations where it matters most Ð the
bottom-line. More importantly, they argue that organizations that pursue a
strategy of increasing employee commitment gain a competitive advantage
over other firms that have not followed this strategy.
Frederick Reichheld, Director of Bain and Company, argued in his book,
The Loyalty Effect (1996), that loyalty to customers, employees, and investors
is critical to value creation and thus an important source of growth, profits,
and competitive advantage. Of particular interest here are his thoughts on
why loyal employees are so valuable to companies. He argues that loyal
employees develop higher quality relationships with customers (thus contri-
buting to customer loyalty), have greater opportunities to learn and increase
efficiency, and reduce recruiting and training costs, producing resources that
can then be reinvested in other parts of the business. Reichheld (1996)
identified several companies (e.g., State Farm, Chick-Fil-A, A.G. Edwards)
that have pursued strategies of attracting, developing, and retaining the right
employees as evidence that loyalty to employees can be a powerful source of
competitive advantage.
Pfeffer (1998) makes the essentially the same argument in his recent book
entitled The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First. He
argued that firms that have pursued high involvement, high performance, and
high commitment management practices have produced superior economic
returns over the long-term. Taking Reichheld's arguments one step further,
Pfeffer identified a set of seven management practices (employment security,
selective hiring, self-managed teams and decentralization of decision making,
high compensation contingent on performance, employee training, reduced
status differentials, and sharing information) that lead to organizational
outcomes (organizational learning and skill development, innovation, custo-
mer service, productivity, cost reduction, and flexibility) related to superior
economic returns. Moreover, he argued that a people-centered strategy is an
important source of competitive advantage because, unlike technology, cost, or
new product development, it is difficult to imitate.
Both Reichheld and Pfeffer's books were written for practicing managers
and thus may fall one step below the scholarly level of evidence that is
needed to establish a clear link between management practices that en-
hance employee commitment and firm performance. Several studies re-
THE STUDY AND RELEVANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT 395

viewed by Meyer and Allen (1997), however, provide empirical evidence,

even if fragmented, in support of Reichheld and Pfeffer's arguments. This
evidence is found both at the level of specific human resource management
practices and broader human resource management systems or strategies.
For example, Ogilvie (1986) and Gaertner and Nollen (1989) found relation-
ships between specific human resource management practices (e.g., perfor-
mance evaluation, promotion policies, compensation and benefits) and
affective commitment.
More recently, several researchers have reported organization-level rela-
tionships between human resource management systems or strategies and
organizational outcome measures such as employee retention, productivity,
quality, and corporate financial success (Arthur, 1994; Huselid, 1995; Mac-
Duffie, 1995). Because these human resource management systems are char-
acterized as high performance, high commitment strategies, the assumption is
that integrated sets of human resource management practices focusing on
commitment (as opposed to control) produce high levels of employee affective
commitment and subsequent organizational performance. The linkage be-
tween human resource management strategies and individual-level employee
commitment, less clear in earlier research, was recently demonstrated by Tsui
et al. (1997). They found organizational investment in employees was asso-
ciated with higher levels of employee affective commitment, as well as higher
levels of citizenship behavior, greater intention to stay with the organization,
and fewer unexcused absences. Unfortunately, they did not investigate orga-
nizational level outcomes such as financial success.
There appears to be clear and compelling evidence linking specific human
resource management systems with overall organization performance and
with affective commitment at the level of the individual employees. What
remains to be demonstrated in a single study, however, is whether employee
affective commitment is a critical intervening variable linking human resource
management systems and organizational performance. The evidence to date is
high suggestive, though.
How do we assess Baruch (1998) argument that organizational commit-
ment is a management construct of limited future relevance? There is
evidence that many organizations are pursuing strategies of downsizing and
cost-reduction. For these firms, developing high levels of employee commit-
ment is apparently perceived as a less relevant strategy for achieving
economic success than one that might be characterized as ``lean and mean.''
Thus, in terms of actual management practice, one might argue that employee
commitment has become less relevant simply because fewer organizations
seem to be pursuing strategies to enhance it. In this regard, Baruch (1998)
may be partially correct.
On another dimension, however, there is mounting evidence that organiza-
tions pursuing high performance, high commitment human resource strategies
can produce superior economic returns. From this perspective, employee
commitment is very relevant as a management construct because it can lead
to competitive advantage and financial success. In fact, it may be the key
396 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOLUME 8, NUMBER 4, 1998

source of competitive advantage. In this regard, employee commitment is

highly relevant as a competitive strategy, contrary to Baruch (1998) argument.
In my own opinion, employee commitment to organizations has as much, if
not greater, relevance to managers today than it did 25 years ago. The research
linking human resource management practices and systems with employee
commitment and firm financial performance is perhaps the most exciting new
development in this field of study in many years. As businesses face increasing
competitive challenges, a strategy of developing committed and loyal employ-
ees holds the promise of superior financial returns. In a recent survey in
Fortune identifying the 100 best companies to work for (Branch, 1999), it was
found that the 55 companies on the list whose stock had been publicly traded
for at least 5 years had an average annual appreciation of 25% compared to
19% for the Russell Stock Index. Clearly, this is a win±win for employees and
organizations, not to mention their shareholders.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH ON ORGANIZATIONAL

COMMITMENT

As I have tried to indicate in this essay, considerable progress has been made
in our understanding of organizational commitment in the past 25 years.
However, it is also evident from a review of the literature that additional
progress remains to be made. There are several areas in which continuing
research on commitment may yield important dividends.
First, our understanding of the processes through which specific work and
organizational practices produce employee commitment remains limited.
Meyer and Allen (1997) provide valuable insights by identifying the most
likely processes leading to higher levels of employee commitment. However,
the research evidence to date has not produced a clear understanding of how
this happens. In part, this is a consequence of research that has been primarily
cross-sectional and correlational in nature. Much more research of a long-
itudinal nature is needed if the processes leading to commitment are to become
better understood. Moreover, there appears to be some conceptual confusion
surrounding the processes themselves. For instance, in one place in their book
Meyer and Allen (1997) suggest that self-worth is an antecedent of affective
commitment but in another place they appear to argue that affective commit-
ment leads to self-worth. Clearly, this is an area that would benefit from
additional theoretical and empirical work.
Second, although the evidence linking human resource management sys-
tems, employee commitment and organizational performance is perhaps the
most exciting new direction for research on commitment, it is limited and thus
more research is needed. We especially need studies that focus on financial
indicators of organizational performance. There are several studies that have
documented the relationship between human resource management systems
and outcomes such as employee retention, absenteeism, and productivity.
Although these outcomes are important, top level executives who have the
THE STUDY AND RELEVANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT 397

responsibility for setting firm strategy may pay greater attention to outcome
measures such as profitability, return on investment, cash flow, and share-
holder wealth. In his exemplary study, Huselid (1995) included measures of
market value added by management (Tobin's q), gross rate of return on capital,
and sales per employee. If we are to get the attention of top level executives, we
need more studies like Huselid's that focus on the outcome measures of
greatest relevance to them or that clearly demonstrate how outcomes such
as increased employee commitment contributes to the bottom-line.
In this regard, one suggestive bit of evidence (which supports Reichheld's
arguments) can found in the recent turnaround at Sears under Arthur
Martinez, CEO. (Rucci, Kirn, & Quinn, 1998). Sears developed a model of
performance indicators relevant to retail stores that suggests that creating a
compelling place to work leads to creating a compelling place to shop, which in
turn creates a compelling place to invest (financial performance indicators).
They developed measures of each major component of their model and
investigated the causal paths linking the components. They found that a
5-point improvement in two key attitude measures (attitudes toward the job
and organization) resulted in a 1.3 point improvement in customer satisfaction
and, ultimately, a 0.5% improvement in revenue growth. What's interesting is
their finding that improving employee attitudes toward the organization has a
direct impact on customer satisfaction and an indirect influence on store
revenues. Although the items Sears uses to measure attitude toward the
organization differ from those commonly found in measures of affective
commitment, this finding is suggestive of a relationship between employee
affective commitment to the organization and the financial performance of
their stores. This is an area in which additional research might be very useful,
both in developing a better understanding of the consequences of commitment
and in getting the attention of managers who may wonder whether invest-
ments in their human resources can produce tangible financial results.
In demonstrating the importance of human resource management systems
to organizations, it would also be useful to have more powerful typologies of
these systems that show how different policies and practices are integrated
into more coherent strategies. Past research has often focused on the simple
control vs. commitment typology suggested by Walton (1985). However, other
typologies need to be identified and studied. For example, Beer, Spector,
Lawrence, Mills, and Walton (1985) presented a typology of integrated human
resource management practices that focus on three types: bureaucratic (em-
ployee involved as subordinate), market (employee involved as contractor), and
clan (employee involved as a member). Moreover, they identified the specific
human resource management practices associated with each type and the
likely outcomes of pursuing the different types. Their typology is a bit more
comprehensive than those that have been used in commitment research and
thus may provide a useful conceptual lense for future research.
Third, as noted in the discussion of research linking human resource
systems with organizational outcomes, there is a missing linkage that would
clearly establish the importance of employee commitment. Research has
398 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOLUME 8, NUMBER 4, 1998

Figure 1. Relationships Among Human Resource Management Practices, Employee

Commitment, and Outcome Measures

demonstrated that human resource management systems are related to

employee commitment and to organizational outcomes. However, these stu-
dies have yet to conclusively demonstrate that organization or business unit
levels of employee commitment are related to organizational outcomes. Inter-
estingly, one of the very first commitment studies in which I was involved
(Mowday et al., 1974) found levels of average levels of employee commitment
in bank branches were related to measures of customer service performance.
As suggested in Figure 1, we need more comprehensive studies that investi-
gate linkages between human resource management practices, employee
commitment, and performance outcomes at both the organizational and
individual levels of analyses. Most importantly, we need studies clearly
demonstrating that the level of employee commitment is the critical interven-
ing variable linking human resource strategies and systems and organiza-
tional performance outcomes.
Fourth, it might be interesting to ask the question of whether employee
commitment to organizations is more important in some organizational set-
tings than others with respect to producing positive financial results. The work
at Sears discussed above and the earlier study I was involved in (Mowday et
al., 1974) both took place in service environments. It's possible that employee
commitment to organizations results in greater positive returns in the service
sector of the economy than in, for example, manufacturing. It's also possible
that employee commitment may play a more important role in industries
characterized by rapid change and highly competitive environments than more
stable industries. The Huselid (1995) study included 928 firms but did not
distinguish between service and manufacturing firms or try to control for
industry characteristics. Future studies may want to examine this question to
see if developing employee commitment to the organization produces more
positive results in some firms than in others.
THE STUDY AND RELEVANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT 399

Finally, while we have made important strides in defining and measuring

organizational commitment, the measures have exclusively involved ques-
tionnaires that must be administered to employees in surveys. Unfortu-
nately, employee surveys are both costly and intrusive to organizations. Are
there alternative indicators of commitment that we can provide managers
that will help them track employee commitment? For example, Reichheld
(1996) indicated that Bain and Company looks at several surrogate mea-
sures, including retention, yield rates in hiring, and employee productivity
as indicators of employee loyalty. Similarly, Ulrich, Zenger, and Smallwood
(1999) advocate the use of productivity and retention as surrogate measures
of employee commitment. These types of measures may be much more
accessible to managers on a month-to-month basis than paper and pencil
measures of commitment such as the OCQ or Meyer and Allen's (1997)
questionnaire. Perhaps technology will make it easier to administer com-
mitment questionnaires in the future (e.g., electronically via the web). Even
so, having alternative measures that managers can track over time will
have the benefit of increasing the attention managers pay to employee
commitment. As the old management adage suggests, what gets measured
gets managed (Bethune, 1998). More accessible measures of commitment
may increase the likelihood that managers will proactively ``manage''
employee commitment.

CONCLUSIONS

In the past 25 years there is clear evidence of progress in our understanding of

employee commitment to organizations, both conceptually and more practi-
cally in terms of the positive consequences for organizations of having com-
mitted employees. Beyond having made progress, the study of commitment
may be more interesting and promising today than it was for me 25 years ago.
The research of people like Huselid (1995) and Tsui et al. (1997) is exciting, if
only because their findings hold the promise of changing the way executives
think about their employees and how to manage them. Moreover, finding
relationships between human resource management practices, employee com-
mitment, and the financial performance of firms has important implications
for better integrating research across several business school disciplines. My
colleagues in finance and accounting, for example, routinely argue that the
only important stakeholder group in organizations is the shareholders. Evi-
dence suggesting that making investments in employees can have positive
financial consequences for firms and their shareholders may help broaden
their (in my opinion) narrow view of the world.
Clearly, additional research is needed in the area of organizational commit-
ment to understand the processes through which it is developed and the
implications of having committed employees for the performance of firms.
Research conducted in the past 25 years, however, has provided a solid
foundation and sense of direction for future research efforts.
400 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOLUME 8, NUMBER 4, 1998

REFERENCES

Arthur, J. B. (1994). Effects of human resource systems on manufacturing performance

and turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 37, 670 ± 687.
Baruch, Y. (1998). The rise and fall of organizational commitment. Human Systems
Management, 17, 135 ± 143.
Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence, P. R., Mills, D. Q., & Walton, R. E. (1985). Human
resource management: A general manager's perspective. New York: The Free
Press.
Bethune, G. (1998). From worst to first. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Branch, S. (1999). The 100 best companies to work for in America. Fortune, 139(1),
118 ± 144.
Buchanan, B. (1974). Building organizational commitment: The socialization of man-
agers in work organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 19, 533 ± 546.
Cusumano, M. A., & Yoffie, D. B. (1998). Competing on internet time. New York: The
Free Press.
Drucker, P. F. (1992). The new society of organizations. Harvard Business Review
(September ± October), 100.
Emshoff, J. R. (1994). How to increase employee loyalty while you downsize. Business
Horizons, 37, 49 ± 57.
Gaertner, K. N., & Nollen, S. D. (1989). Career experiences, perceptions of employment
practices, and psychological commitment to the organization. Human Relations,
42, 975 ± 991.
Huselid, M. A. (1995). The impact of human resource management practices on turn-
over, productivity, and corporate financial performance. Academy of Management
Journal, 38, 635 ± 672.
Kelman, H. C. (1958). Compliance, identification, and internalization: Three processes
of attitude change. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2, 51± 60.
MacDuffie, J. P. (1995). Human resource bundles and manufacturing performance:
Organizational logic and flexible production systems in the world auto industry.
Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 48, 197± 221.
Mathieu, J. E., & Zajac, D. (1990). A review and meta-analysis of the antecedents,
correlates, and consequences of organizational commitment. Psychological Bulle-
tin, 108, 171±194.
Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1991). A three-component conceptualization of organiza-
tional commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 1, 61 ± 89.
Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1997). Commitment in the workplace. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage Publications.
Mowday, R. T., Porter, L. W., & Dubin, R. (1974). Unit performance, situational factors,
and employee attitudes. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 12,
231 ± 248.
Mowday, R. T., Steers, R. M., & Porter, L. W. (1979). The measurement of organiza-
tional commitment. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14, 224 ± 247.
Ogilvie, J. R. (1986). The role of human resource management practices in predicting
organizational commitment. Group and Organization Studies, 11, 335 ± 359.
O'Reilly, C. A., & Chatman, J. (1986). Organizational commitment and psychological
attachment: The effects of compliance, identification, and internationalization on
prosocial behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71, 492 ± 499.
Pfeffer, J. (1998). The human equation. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
THE STUDY AND RELEVANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT 401

Porter, L. W., Steers, R. M., Mowday, R. T., & Boulian, R. T. (1974). Organizational
commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover among psychiatric technicians. Jour-
nal of Applied Psychology, 59, 603±609.
Price, J. (1997). Handbook of organizational measurement. International Journal of
Manpower, 18, 303±558.
Reichers, A. E. (1985). A review and reconceptualization of organizational commit-
ment. Academy of Management Review, 10, 465 ± 476.
Reichheld, F. R. (1996). The loyalty effect. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Rucci, A. J., Kirn, S. P., & Quinn, R. T. (1998). The employee ± customer-profit chain at
Sears. Harvard Business Review (January ± February), 81.
Schweiger, D. M., & DeNisi, A. S. (1991). Communication with employees following a
merger: A longitudinal field experiment. Academy of Management Journal, 34,
110 ± 135.
Steers, R. M. (1977). Antecedents and outcomes of organizational commitment. Admin-
istrative Science Quarterly, 22, 46 ± 56.
Tsui, A. S., Pearce, J. L., Porter, L. W., & Tripoli, A. M. (1997). Alternative approaches
to the employee-organization relationship: Does investment in employees pay off?
Academy of Management Journal, 40, 1089 ± 1121.
Uchitelle, L., & Kleinfield, N. R. (1996). On the battlefields of business, millions of
casualties. New York Times, March 3, 1996.
Ulrich, D., Zenger, J., & Smallwood, N. (1999). Results-based leadership. Boston:
Harvard Business School Press.
Walton, R. E. (1985). Toward a strategy of eliciting employee commitment based on
policies of mutuality. In R. E. Walton, & P. R. Lawrence (Eds.), Human resource
management trends and challenges. Boston: Harvard Business School.