Assessing Personal, Role, and Organizational Predictors of Managerial Commitment

Author(s): John M. Stevens, Janice M. Beyer and Harrison M. Trice

Source: The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Sep., 1978), pp. 380-396
Published by: Academy of Management
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Academy of Management Journal
1978, Vol. 21, No. 3. 380-396.

Assessing Personal Role, and

Organizational Predictors of
Managerial Commitment'
JOHN M. STEVENS
Pennsylvania State University
JANICE M. BEYER
State University of New York at Buffalo
HARRISON M. TRICE
Cornell University

Using a role and exchange theory framework, this

study examines the commitment to their organization and
to the federal service of 634 managers in 71 federal gov-
ernment organizations. Results indicate that certain role
factors such as tenure and work overload and personal
factors such as attitude toward change and job involve-
ment are strong influences on commitment. Implications
of the findings and the need for further theoretical and
methodological refinements are discussed.

Commitment to the organization, profession, and role has received wide

attention in recent organizational behavior literature (Sheldon, 1971;
Buchanan, 1974; Schoenherr & Greeley, 1974; Porter, Steers, Mowday &
Boulian, 1974; Alutto & Hrebiniak, 1975; Steers, 1977). In 1960, Becker
observed that the concept of commitment had enjoyed wide usage with little

John M. Stevens is Assistant Professor, Institute of Public Administration, The Pennsyl-

vania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania.
Janice M. Beyer is Associate Professor, School of Management, State University of New
York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York.
Harrison M. Trice is Professor, New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations,
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
1 This research was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism to the Cornell Program on Occupational Health and Alcoholism. The first two
authors would also like to acknowledge the support of the School of Management, SUNY
at Buffalo, and the Institute of Public Administration, The Pennsylvania State University.
This article is based on a Ph.D. dissertation prepared at SUNY at Buffalo by the first author,
who would like to thank Joseph A. Alutto and Douglas R. Bunker for their comments. An
earlier version of this paper was presented at the Academy of Management meetings in
Kansas City, August 12, 1976. All of the authors would like to thank those at Cornell who
helped in the data collection and analysis, especially Richard E. Hunt and Cynthia Coppess.
They would also like to thank R. Danforth Ross for his invaluable suggestions on the data
analysis.
380

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1978 Stevens, Beyer and Trice 381

formal analysis or concrete theoretical reasoning. He argued that commit-

ment involves "consistentlines of activity" in behavior that are produced by
exchange considerations that he called side-bets; examples of side-bets are
a pension that grows in proportion to years in the organization or man-
agerial prerogatives that are attached to an attained organizational office or
position. Ritzer and Trice (1969) developed an operationalization for the
Becker side-bet concept of commitment and tested aspects of the theory
on both organizational and occupational commitment. This research con-
tinues and extends this line of inquiry by examining commitment to the
organization and to the federal service in a sample of managers working in
71 organizations within the U.S. government.

Definitionsof Commitment

Despite substantial earlier work, Buchanan (1974) concluded that an

acceptable definition of organizational commitment was still lacking. A
more basic problem appears to be that there are at least two distinct ap-
proaches to defining commitment, the psychological approach and the ex-
change approach. In an example of the psychological approach, Sheldon
defines commitment as ". .. an attitude or an orientation toward the
organization which links or attaches the identity of the person to the or-
ganization" (1971, p. 143). Kanter (1968) and Buchanan (1974) also
emphasize the affective attachment of the individual to the organization. A
common deficiency in this approach is that commitment is treated as
discrete from complementary work attitudes without specifying the nature
or direction of links with these other orientations (e.g., loyalty, job in-
volvement, motivation, et cetera).
The exchange approach is exemplified by Becker (1960) and Becker and
Carper (1956), who advanced the notion of "side-bets" as influences that
produce a willingness to remain attached to the object of the commitment.
Becker argued that commitments come into being "when a person, by
making a side-bet, links extraneous interests with a consistent line of
activity" (1960, p. 32). When side-bets are made to an organization (e.g.,
pension plans or other accrued investments), the individual perceives as-
sociated benefits as positive elements in an exchange and, being reluctant to
lose these benefits, is more likely to stay with that organization. The indi-
vidual thus become organizationally committed. If other investments, such
as time or identification, are made to an occupation, the side-bet mechanism
operates to produce occupational commitment. With its economic rationale,
this approach gives us a general model for commitment that can be attached
to various objects and that allows for a variety of possible influences-
both positive and negative.
Neither the psychological or side-bet approaches has developed an inte-
grated consideration of the full range of relevant factors that may determine
the attachment of the individual to the organization or the leaving or stay-

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382 Academy of ManagementJournal September

ing behavior of organizational members. Both a clarification of the de-

finitional disagreements and a theoretical framework are badly needed.

TheoreticalFramework
The purpose of this research was to explain commitment as the result of
multiple forces including both psychological and structural (exchange)
determinants, thus working toward an integration of the two approaches
outlined above. A theoretical model that captures the complexity of the
organizational setting and includes individual factors has been advanced
by Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek and Rosenthal (1964) and Katz and
Kahn (1966). They argue persuasively that the context of role-taking is
important for understanding how multiple factors influence organiza-
tional behavior (Katz and Kahn, 1966, p. 186). They also state that role
expectations are determined by the technology of the organization, its
policies, structure, and set of rewards and penalties. Within this model of
role-taking, a manager may use perceived benefits and costs in an exchange
paradigm to evaluate multiple influences that structure his decisions about
ongoing activities (March & Simon, 1958; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959; Hom-
ans, 1961;Blau, 1964, 1974; Jacobs, 1971).
Figure 1 presents the role-taking and exchange framework that will be
tested in this research. Given the complexity of managerial role contexts,
the model incorporates personal, role-related, and organizational variables.
This is the first attempt, of which the authors are aware, to look at these
three types of determinants of organizational commitment simultaneously.
This model also provides for the integration of the two approaches discussed

FIGURE 1
Role TakingModelof CommitmentProcess

Personal Focal Manager

Attributes E E '
At>triut Ex E Propensityto Stay
Role-Related Perceived Ihac a1 Role
Wtor With or Leave
Factors Role Behavioror rganization or
'g t I Attitude Federal Service
Organiz e '- IAttitude
Organizational 0
Factors -"" n

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1978 Stevens, Beyer and Trice 383

earlier. To illustrate, in earlier career phases, managerial commitment may

be influenced more by psychological or personal factors than by side-bets,
since there has been little time for them to accrue. But with increasing
tenure, personal factors may recede in importance and the side-bet or cost-
benefit factors may "lock-in" certain fixed elements in the exchange equa-
tion, making it more costly to leave and thereby insuring a certain "type"
of commitment. Such managers are committed to the organization; they
may stay with it, but shift or orient their energies to interests outside the
organization or federal service (cf., Dubin, Champoux & Porter, 1975).
They are economically committed but not psychologically committed.
Any factor that accrues positive economic side-bets, such as organiza-
tional tenure, should increase commitment, unless outweighed by con-
comitant negative factors, such as lack of promotion or authority. Thus,
fixed factors (e.g., education, sex, job involvement) or positive dimensions
of the task (such as high managerial level or advanced technology) may
tend to promote commitment, while less fixed but negative factors (such
as too much time in one position and demands of work overload) promote
leaving attitudes. One relatively permanent characteristic that could tend
to lessen commitment is a propensity by the manager to favor change
per se. The relative influence of these factors may depend to a great extent
upon the manager's perceptions of his role and his assessments of what
constitute costs or benefits given competing influences. The fixed factors
may represent a personal, systemic equilibrium that represents commit-
ment, which may have to be disturbed by dynamic factors in order to pro-
duce external search or quitting behavior.

Dependent Variables
There are several reasons for using both organizational and federal
service commitment to explore managerial commitment in this study. First,
research has suggested that occupational and organizational commitment
or identifications are compatible (Ritzer & Trice, 1969; Rotondi, 1975)
and/or complementary (Ritzer & Trice, 1969; Hrebiniak & Alutto, 1972).
Second, federal service commitment shares some characteristics of occupa-
tional commitment: transferability across organizations, socially mandated
set of expectations (Hughes, 1958), and ".. . relatively continuous patterns
of activities" (Form, 1968). Third, as Ritzer and Trice (1969) suggest,
it is possible that members may be tied to organizations through their
commitment to an occupation, since the organization provides the op-
portunity to pursue the occupation. In this sample of federal managers, who
largely occupy positions that do not have an occupational identity outside
of government service, commitment may well be generated initially to a
position or role, which then generates commitment to the employing
organization because the manager cannot occupy that position or role in
other employment sectors. Finally, the federal service is the entity which

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384 Academy of Management Journal September

provides many of the economically based side-bets described by Becker,

especially job security, pensions, et cetera.

IndependentVariables
The personal or individual variables to be examined in this study are age,
educational level, sex, job involvement, and attitude toward change. Several
studies of commitment have used the age, education, and sex variables
(Ritzer & Trice, 1969; Alutto, Hrebiniak, & Alonso, 1973), but disparate
findings have emerged. Some ambiguity also exists with regard to job
involvement, used as a correlate of a behavioral measure of commitment
(Weiner & Gechman, 1975) or as a component (Buchanan, 1974). No
published research on commitment has investigated the influence of attitude
toward change (Hage & Dewar, 1973) as a predictor of commitment.
The general arguments for using such variables to predict commitment
can be derived from both role and exchange theory. For instance, Becker's
side-bet theory suggests that advancing age, being female, certain role
characteristics, and longer tenure increase an individual's investment in the
federal service or employing organization and therefore the costs associated
with leaving.
Job involvement, as operationalized and used in this research, concerns
an individual's ego involvement with the job, i.e.,,the degree to which his
self-esteem is affected by his work performance (Lodahl &Kejner, 1965). It
follows that individuals very involved in their job will also have substantial
side-bet investments in federal service and employing organizations, which
provide the opportunity for them to act out "internalized values about the
goodness of work" (Lodahl & Kejner, 1965, p. 24).
It is also logical to assume that an individual who is favorably disposed
toward change would incur less personal costs in leaving an organization as
a response to increasing pressures. If role conflict or overload increased, the
change-orientedmanager'sexchange equation would permit easier exit from
the situation. Positive attitudes toward change should thus be negatively
related to commitment.
Recent research indicates that role-related factors are important influ-
ences on commitment (Alutto & Hrebiniak, 1975; Steers, 1977), involve-
ment (Patchen, 1970), organizational identification (Lee, 1971), or-
ganizational socialization (Buchanan, 1974), and organizational attraction
(Dubin et al., 1975). The role-related variables to be used in this study
are: work overload, managerial level, organizational tenure, positional
tenure, task characteristics, and perceptions concerning the importance
for promotion of performance, seniority, and technical skills. Role variables
include more dynamic aspects of the job situation that may make staying
with a given organization or the federal service more or less attractive at a
given point in time: Work overload would be perceived as a cost and
negatively affect commitment. Too much time in any one position may be
perceived as career stagnation and have an adverse effect on commitment,

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1978 Stevens, Beyer and Trice 385

whereas length of time in an organization would mean increased side-bets

and lead to increased commitment.
Katz and Kahn (1966) and Kahn et al. (1964) contend that the division
of labor in organizations provides the major stable elements of roles and
directly influences the reward system. If the manager's task requires ad-
vanced skills, his importance to the organization is greater, which is
likely to increase his/her benefits, resulting in higher commitment. When
performance-andtechnical skills for promotion are more important, greater
commitment is expected because achievement-oriented, universalistic stan-
dards are consonant with the bureaucratizationexpected in public organiza-
tions. If seniority were perceived to be very important for career advance-
ment, the emphasis on achievement would be diluted, and commitment
would be weakened.
The organizational variables to be used are size (total number of full-
time employees), centralization (concentration of decision-making in-
fluence at top managerial levels), percent of supervision (total number of
supervisors divided by total number of employees), and presence of a
union.
Intuitively, size may appear to be a negative influence on commitment.
However, a large organization may require greater investments from the
manager in terms of coordination, control, and innovative behavior (Bald-
ridge & Burnham, 1975), or produce larger groups of peers and additional
opportunity for interpersonal interaction (Rice & Mitchell, 1973) which
would increase commitment. In addition, the concept of "empirebuliding" is
not unknown in governmental organizations, and a large organization may
increase chances for promotion or role enlargement that could enhance the
position of the officeholder.
As a measure of participation in decision making, more centralization
would mean that power resides in a few hands and lessens the individual
manager's autonomy and prerogatives in decision making. This condition
would probably be perceived as a cost and result in low levels of commit-
ment.
Ivancevich and Donnelly (1975) found a positive relationship between
span of control and attitudes such as self-actualization and anxiety-stress
in their study of salesmen. This suggests that commitment may also be
positively related to span of control. However, Ouchi and Dowling (1974)
pointed out that smaller spans of control permit greater closeness of con-
tact between a superior and his subordinates; thus larger spans of control
could conceivably have negative effects on commitment, suggesting an
inverse relationship. Recognizing the uncertainty, a positive relationship
will be hypothesized.
Past studies suggest that public sector unions decrease decision making
autonomy (Stanley & Cooper, 1972; Kochan, 1975; Kochan, Huber &
Cummings, 1975) and create conflict because of different goals and con-
stituencies than management. Thus, the presence of a union may detract

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386 Academy of ManagementJournal September

TABLE 1
Basic Statistics for Independent and Dependent Variables

Hypothesized
Relationship
with
Variable Mean sd Cases Commitmenta
Personal Attributes
1. Sex of supervisor .162 .369 620 +
2. Age of supervisor 3.069 1.019 623 +
3. Change attitude 4.354 .852 625
4. Job involvement 2.545 .399 627
5. Education in years 15.314 2.369 611
Role-Related
6. Manageriallevel 4.740 1.017 632 +
7. Work overload 2.140 .790 616
8. Years in organization 10.504 8.636 614 +
9. Years on position 4.573 4.672 612
10. Skill level of subordinates 3.609 1.326 614 +
11. Performance in promotion .008 .768 612 +
12. Technical skill in promotion .000 .999 613 +
13. Seniority in promotion .000 1.000 612
OrganizationalFactors
14. Organizationalsize 338.082 298.565 634 +
15. Union presence .821 .383 632
16. Percent of supervisionb 14.470 5.429 634 +
17. Centralizationof authority 1.189 4.440 634
Commitment
18. Organizational commitment 3.618 .937 608
19. Federal Service commitment 4.143 .922 610
a A + indicates a positive and a - indicates a negative relationship with both forms
of managerialcommitment.
b A measure of average span of control.

from decision making autonomy, create costs for the manager, drain re-
sources, and decrease commitment.
Independent and dependent variables, basic descriptive statistics, and the
direction of hypothesized relationships are presented in Table 1.

DATA AND METHODS

Sample and Data Collection
Data were collected by the Cornell Program on Occupational Health
and Alcoholism between April and September of 1974 from 634 super-
visors in 71 federal government installations in the Departments of Health,
Education and Welfare; Transportation; Justice; Agriculture; Commerce;
Housing and Urban Development; Interior; Treasury; and General Services
Administration. A random sample of installations located in the Boston,
New York, and Philadelphia civil service administrationregions was drawn,
using department, region, and organizational size as stratifying variables.
Within each installation, a systematic random sample of supervisors was
interviewed, with the size of that sample inversely proportional to the size
of the installation.

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1978 Stevens, Beyer and Trice 387

Five research instruments were devised, pretested, refined, and eventu-

ally administered within the sample installations. The data presented here
were taken from an instrument that collected structural data on the in-
stallation and from the supervisor instrument, which consisted primarily
of closed-ended questions with response formats in the form of yes-no,
Likert scales, semantic differentials, et cetera. Supervisory data were col-
lected in private face-to-face situations by interviewers trained specifically
for this project. Only one sample installation refused to cooperate with the
study and was replaced, and only six individual supervisors refused
cooperation.

Statisticsand Measurement
The principal method of data analysis used in this study is multiple
regression because of the multivariate relationships specified in the re-
search model. The primary strategies used to construct scales from multiple
item measures were factor analysis and standardization of measures [see
Stevens (1976) for further details].
To measure commitment, managers were asked if they would leave the
installation or the federal service given no, slight, or large increases in pay,
freedom, status, responsibility, and opportunity to get ahead. They re-
sponded by checking one of three categories: would definitely leave, un-
decided, or would definitely not leave. The object in constructing a scale
from such items was that respondents who would stay with certain induce-
ments were more committed than those who would leave with the same or
less inducements.
Because of controversy in the literature, two scales were used: The
Ritzer and Trice (1969) (R-T) scale composed of the five inducement
items (replicating their original scaling procedures) and the "slight change"
only items, favored by Hrebiniak and Alutto (1972).2
The operationalizations of most independent variables were based on the
responses of supervisors. Variables 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, and 13 (Table 1) were
multiple-item scales based on factor analytic results. Centralization was
based on a decision matrix approach to measuring influence in decision
making (Beyer & Lodahl, 1976). Further details on the operationalization
of these variables are available from the authors.

RESULTS
The intercorrelation matrix of all of the variables to be used in subse-
quent analyses is given in Table 2. In these results, seven of the 17 hypoth-

2 The
operationalizations,scale construction, and tests of reliability and validity for the
independent and dependent variables are discussed in detail in Stevens (1976). In addition,
questions regarding the appropriatenessof measures used by Alutto et al. (1973) to assess
the R-T scaling procedures are discussed in Beyer, Stevens, and Trice (1977).

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388 Academy of Management Journal September

TABLE
Correlation a Matrix for

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1. Sex
2. Age -.061
3. Change .098 .027
4. Job involvement -.047 .177 .130
5. Education -.206 -.179 .004 .117
6. Managerlevel -.148 -.007 -.094 .108 .255
7. Overload -.008 -.093 .113 -.012 .118 -.082
8. Years/organization .040 .442 .008 .044 -.198 -.112 -.022
9. Years/position -.083 .377 -.015 .018 -.103 -.058 -.032
10. Skill level -.164 -.078 -.049 .020 .454 .184 .033
11. Promotion/performance .020 -.014 .043 .054 -.090 .049 -.155
12. Promotion/technical -.025 .113 -.009 .043 -.109 -.060 -.055
13. Promotion/seniority .020 .160 .048 .122 -.145 -.109 .042
14. Organization size .072 .025 .037 .004 -.035 -.286 -.015
15. Unions .051 .044 .061 .031 -.053 -.124 .062
16. Percent of supervision --.117 .059 -.030 .026 .074 .018 .001
17. Centralization -.025 -.011 .036 .026 .044 .184 .019
18. Organizationcommitment .006 .117 -.074 .159 .045 .061 -.163
19. Federal commitment .062 .107 -.081 .042 -.204 -.037 -.250
a With 600 df, when r = .08, p = .05; r = .11, p = .01; r = .14, p = .001.

esized relations between independent variables and organizational com-

mitment are statistically significant; eight are significant for federal service
commitment. The two measures of commitment are correlated substantially
(r = .40) but exhibit sufficient independence to support the notion of
separate constructs and measures. Furthermore, two of the significant
correlates (job involvement and education) are clearly different across
measures, and another (skill level) produces relationships in opposite
directions.
As predicted, age, organizational tenure, and the importance of per-
formance and technical skills in promotion are positively related to both
types of commitment, while work overload is negatively related. In addition,
job involvement and skill level are positively related to organizational com-
mitment. The additional correlates of federal service commitment all show
negative relations: a positive attitude toward change, education, and skill
level. All but the last-cited relationship are in the hypothesized direction.
While these results largely support the hypotheses, they do not assess the
unique contribution of each of the variables.
Table 3 presents the results of the multiple regression analyses of the
two alternative measures of commitment on the personal (P), role (R),
and organizational (0) predictor variables. All of the independent variables
were entered into each regression equation. For brevity, only statistically
significant results are presented; however, if an independent variable was
found to be significantfor either of the two commitment scales, both results
for the variable are presented for comparability.
The regression results in Table 3a suggest very similar degrees of explan-

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1978 Stevens, Beyer and Trice 389

2
Commitment Study Variables

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

.446
-.104 -.083
-.045 -.039 -.039
.073 .042 -.022 .483
.055 .030 -.162 .052 .233
.204 -.019 -.022 .045 -.064 -.108
.114 .072 -.108 .124 .060 .031 .233
-.106 -.003 .158 -.098 .074 .071 -.395 -.262
.018 .020 -.021 .008 .031 .116 -.160 -.058 .116
.184 -.009 .104 .090 .087 -.014 .029 .032 -.032 -.023
.129 -.037 -.096 .172 .134 .012 .044 .078 -.065 -.014 .404

atory power for the two measures of organizational commitment. Four of

the variables significantly related to commitment are the same across both
measures.
Table 3b presents the results for federal service commitment. The explan-
atory power of the R-T measure is greater than for the "slight" measure.
Also, based upon the construct validation analysis in the scale construction
phase, reliability tests, the scale homogeneity criterion, and the advantages
of comparability with past studies and across types of commitment, the
Ritzer-Trice (R-T) scale was chosen as the central measure for both ele-
ments of managerial commitment. It is those results that will be discussed
unless otherwise noted.

Influenceson Commitment
In Table 3a, five role and personal variables are significant and another
personal variable is a marginally significant predictor of organizational
commitment, as measured by the R-T scale. Years in the organization
emerge as the best positive predictor and work overload as the largest
negative predictor, giving support to the exchange or side-bet approach to
commitment. Job involvement is also a strong positive predictor, underlining
the importance of psychological predispositions toward work. The findings
here generally support the hypotheses and usefulness of the composite
research model. In addition, the positive influence of skill level of sub-
ordinates suggests that job content can also be an important influence on
organizational commitment.
The finding that positional tenure is negatively related to organizational

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390 Academy of ManagementJournal September

TABLE 3
Regression Results for Alternative Measures of Managerial Commitment
on Personal, Role, and Organizational Variables

A. OrganizationalCommitment(n = 611)
StandardizedCoefficients
CommitmentMeasures Evaluated
Var.
Influence Cat. R-T Scale Slight
Work overload R -.15**** -.13***
Years in the organization R .24********
Job involvement P .15** 3***
Skill level of subordinates R .11* .14**
Positive change attitude P -.08* .01
Years in current position R -.12*** -.12***
Manager'sage P .04 .09*
R2 .13 .13
B. Federal Service Commitment(n = 610)
StandardizedCoefficients
CommitmentMeasures Evaluated
Var.
Influence Cat. R-T Scale Slight
Work overload R -.21**** .20****
Years in the organization R .13*** .06
Positive change attitude P -.08 -.03
Years in current position R -14*** -.15**
Level of education P -.14* -.10*
Importanceof performance
for promotion R .10** .07
R2 .15 .10
*p < .10
** p < .05
*** p < .01
**** p < .001

commitment refines the side-bet concept by indicating that as positive side-

bets or benefits accrue with longevity, negative perceptions or costs of
career stagnation may concurrently develop. An exchange framework may
thus be necessary to explain the relative increments and decrements in the
managerial role associated with varying levels of commitment.
As predicted, the findings also indicate that if a manager has a positive
attitude toward change, he is likely to be less committed to the organization.
Probably a manager who values change positively would be more disposed
to perceive a change in employers or organizations as an acceptable re-
sponse to increased costs of participation than a manager who dislikes the
idea of change.
The age of the manager was not significantly related to organizational
commitment in the multivariate analyses although they were significantly
correlated (r= .12). Taken together, these results suggest that the expected
side-bet relation between age and commitment found in other studies may

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1978 Stevens, Beyer and Trice 391

be spurious. Alternatively, moderating variables may affect the influence

that age has on commitment.
The significant results for federal service commitment (Table 3b) are
also in the hypothesized direction; however, certain propositions involving
the psychological and organizational factors for federal service commitment
are clearly not supported. Findings for education completed support the
hypotheses indicating that educational level negatively influences commit-
ment to the federal service. This result is understandablein terms of a link-
age between education and improved external alternatives, and also because
assimilation into professional value sets via education would lead to outside
identifications-in this case, outside the federal service. Additionally, it is
possible that the federal manager perceives the opportunity to use his educa-
tion to be better outside the federal service.
The perceived importance of performance criteria for promotion, which
include unit performance, quality of managerial performance, interpersonal
skills, and skills in applying formal policies, enters as a significant predictor
of federal service commitment but not of organizational commitment. This
result could mean that for the federal service, overall performance is
perceived as important for career advancement, but that within the or-
ganization, more immediate influences such as dimensions of task or in-
terpersonal considerations override performance considerations. This find-
ing is interesting for this managerial population because the conventional
wisdom may suggest that seniority would instead be an important in-
fluence on commitment of federal workers, but the belief that this criterion
is importantfor promotion was unrelated to either type of commitment. Nor
was technical skill found to be either a positive or negative influence on
organizational or federal service commitment in the regression results. The
findings suggest that managers who believe in the merit system are some-
what more committed to the federal service, but that technical expertise is
perhaps not seen as consistently rewarded in the merit system.

DISCUSSION

Overall in this study, role-related factors are more important predictors

of organizational and federal service commitment than other variables, even
though certain personal variables emerged as significant. It is possible that
other personal or organizational variables may be more important predictors
of commitment, but some of these (i.e., job satisfaction) would yield
results that are not likely to be surprising or hold much explanatory power.
Overall, of course, the amount of variance explained is very modest. Per-
haps this is because of the number of organizations used and the hetero-
geneity of organizational goals and tasks represented in the sample. If this
is the case, great caution must be used in generalizing from studies of single
organizations or homogeneous samples of managerial types beyond the
population sampled.

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392 Academy of ManagementJournal September

The results of both regression analyses indicate that factors with benefit
and cost implications are the most powerful influences on managerial com-
mitment. While some personal variables, such as job involvement and
change attitude, were important, other personal characteristics were not.
Unlike a previous study (Hrebiniak & Alutto, 1972), sex did not emerge as
a significantpredictor. The relationship may have been due to concentration
of one sex in the sample. In the earlier study, the sample consisted primarily
of female teachers and nurses; in this sample, only 16 percent of the federal
managers were females. Another possible interpretation is that sex differ-
ences may be less salient for commitment for the managerial as opposed to
the nonmanagerial employees, implying that female managers assess cost-
benefit exchanges similar to males. Samples with more equal concentrations
of males and females may be needed to adequately test this issue.
The major discrepancies between the hypotheses and findings were for
the organizational variables in the model. Organizational size, centraliza-
tion, and percent of supervision, were not found to be important influences
on managerial commitment. Though no direct relationshipswere found, it is
reasonable to suppose that the influence of organizational factors may be
moderated by role-related variables such as work overload.
Another consistent finding was that a positive attitude toward change was
a negative influence on both organizational and federal service commitment.
This finding may indicate that the value placed upon change as a strategy for
adaptation to societal or organizational expectations may be an important
variable in predicting job changes. It is likely that change values affect per-
sonal cost-benefit ratios by decreasing the psychological costs of leaving a
particular role, job, organization, et cetera and increasing the benefits of
leaving. It is also conceivable that the salience of certain perceived benefits
or costs varies with the manager's predisposition toward change. For
example, managers who tend to favor change or innovation may not be
committed to occupations or organizations where inflexibility or overt
formalization prevails. Other managers may self-select themselves for more
formalized organizations and away from roles calling for innovation.
Although traditionally considered a predictor of commitment, age was
not significantly related to either type of commitment in multivariate anal-
yses and only weakly (r = .12 and .11) in zero-order correlations. Other
variables may moderate the effects of age, especially job involvement (r -
.18 with age, p < .01) and educational level (r = -.18 with age, p < .01).
Work overload is the most significantnegative influence on organizational
and federal service commitment. Federal managers who perceive them-
selves as having too little authority to fulfill their responsibilities, bothered
by work overload, and having to finish the work of others have low
commitment. This finding is actually ratherencouraging, because it involves
a variable that is easier to change then some others. Management can
conceivably alter structural or other factors causing overload before its

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1978 Stevens, Beyer and Trice 393

effects cause negative on-the-job performance, leaving, or other personnel

problems.
In general, the results of the study indicate that managerial commitment
has multiple positive and negative determinants. Neither side-bet nor
psychological approaches alone explained the overall results; however, both
can be incorporated into a role-exchange model to examine the various
influences as either benefits or costs. For example, tenure can be a double-
edged factor. It may connote stability and accrued investments; however, it
may also point to decreased opportunity elsewhere and reduced mobility
within the organization itself. Though organizational factors may enter
the benefits/costs considerations of the exchange model through moderat-
ing role factors, the importance of personal factors and task dimensions
generally indicates that commitment to the organization centers on issues
of organizational participation. For both facets of commitment, con-
sistent negative influences such as change values and work overload
deserve further exploration because of the potential for important and
long-term administrative payoffs.

SystemConsiderations
In addition to the variables examined here, other factors may influence
commitment. The level of the multiple correlations obtained suggests that
some important variables may have been omitted in this research: in-
terpersonal influences emanating from peers or organizational socialization
processes may influence commitment to the organization or federal service
through commitment to the immediate work group or organizational unit.
Current conditions in the job market and economy can be expected to
affect costs of leaving or staying.
Also, commitment may be composed of multiple elements, some of
which may be causally or temporally antecedent to others (Stevens, 1976).
Other results suggest that a theoretical framework for ordering the pre-
cedence of various forms of commitment may be a valuable approach to
building a comprehensive theory of commitment.3 Such a theory would
ideally specify the relationships between elements or forms of commitment
and their determinants. A review of the relevant literature exposed both
overlap and ambiguity with regard to competing concepts of commitment.
Terms such as professional commitment, occupational commitment, or-
ganizational loyalty, organizational attraction, organizational identification,
organizational involvement, role commitment, job involvement, or job com-
mitment have been used interchangeably or with no clear differentiation
with regard to related constructs. These concepts could theoretically sub-
sume or complement the elements of commitment studied here or the

3 Earlier versions of this paper

(Stevens, 1976; Stevens, Beyer, & Trice, 1976) employed
path analysis for this purpose. Reviewers questioned the appropriatenessof this technique
because of its assumption of weak causal order and its nonrecursive properties. Readers
interested in these results may write to the first author for copies of the earlier
paper.

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394 Academy of Management Journal September

many related constructs found in the literature. A broader theoretical

framework for delineating precise standardized meanings and for the
examination of possible interrelationships among such concepts in varied
populations could form the basis for explaining and predicting an important
part of behavior in organizations.
Furthermore, it is possible that variables identified here or elsewhere
as predictors of commitment may interact, producing more complicated
effects than have been detected thus far. An empirical examination of such
interactions would seem to require additional theoretical development of
the central concept of commitment as a basis for the development of hy-
potheses about the nature of such interactions. Without such conceptual
guidelines, the search for interactions could produce a maze of confusing,
uninterpretable results. Such an investigation is beyond the scope of this
paper.
CONCLUSIONS
The results from this study show that both role and exchange theory are
useful in explaining commitment. The findings suggest that commitment
is a complex facet of organizational behavior that is only partially explained
by existing theories. A system-oriented model that captures additional
open-system factors such as socialization, interpersonal factors, the na-
tional economic situation, the existence of feasible alternatives for the
individual, and the interrelationships of these factors is needed. Ideally,
additional research should also relate commitment attitudes to job search
and leaving behaviors.
Some of the critical issues and questions remaining for students of
organizational behavior are: What are the various components of com-
mitment that overlap, supersede, subsume, or complement organizational
or occupational commitment? How can they be adequately measured and
compared? What are valid behavioral or attitudinal indicators of these
different types of commitment? What are the relevant kinds of commitment
(e.g., to organization, to occupation, to work-groups,to industry, et cetera)?
What are the organizational outcomes associated with different kinds of
commitment? What are the potential benefits of different methodological
approaches, such as path analysis or other causal analysis, to exploring
commitment and to explaining this potentially critical facet of organiza-
tional behavior? How are feasible alternatives to commitment such as
personal or nonorganizational central life interest specified within an
overall theoretical framework?
The regression and correlation analyses presented in this study partially
answer some of the questions by testing a model based on role and ex-
change theory. However, the need for additional work on pertinent con-
cepts, theoretical exploration, and explication of system factors is evident.
Thus far, findings from research on commitment have not been cumula-
tive or conceptually linked into a coherent framework that can be applied

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1978 Stevens, Beyer and Trice 395

to managerial practice within organizations. More conceptual work on a

general theory of commitment is needed to provide guidance for future
empirical studies on the many facets of the concept.

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