Can Commitment Be Managed? A Longitudinal Analysis of Employee Commitment and Human Resource Policies

Abstract

Tim Morris, Helen Lydka and Mark Fenton O'Creevy present data on a group of graduates during the first five years of employment. Dividing the sample into those who have remained with their original employer and those who have changed, they examine attitudinal commitment and tenure intentions against a set of human resource policies measured at three points in time. They find that those policies significantly associated with high commitment change over time; that attitudinal and behavioural commitment are conceptually distinct constructs; and that behavioural commitment is a less stable construct than attitudinal commitment. Generally, it appears that employee commitment is more provisional than is implied by much of the literature. Tim Morris is a Lecturer at the London Business School, Helen Lydka a researcher at the Henley Management College, and Mark Fenton O'Creevy a Research Fellow at the LBS Centre for Organisational Research.