Four Commitment Profiles and Their Relationships to Empowerment, Service Recovery, and Work Attitudes

Abstract

Medical librarians were surveyed to determine the independent and interactive influence of career and organizational commitments on work-related outcomes. Employees dually committed to their organizations and careers reported the highest empowerment, willingness to engage in service recovery, and work satisfaction. This group was also more aware of the supervisory use of legitimate, reward, expert, and referent powers. All four commitment groups—dually committed, careerists, organizationists, and uncommitted—reported comparable avoidance of coercive power. As predicted, the ordering of reported job withdrawal intentions (ranging from highest to lowest) was uncommitted, careerists, organizationists, and dually committed; for career withdrawal intentions the ordering was uncommitted, organizationists, careerists, and dually committed.