Organizational commitment and psychological attachment: The effects of compliance, identification, and internalization on prosocial behavior.

TLDR

Organizational commitment research has proliferated many concepts but has rarely examined the underlying dimensions of psychological attachment, leaving the construct’s distinctiveness and theoretical boundaries unclear. The authors aim to develop clear theoretical and operational definitions that differentiate commitment and its components from other related constructs. The studies show that compliance, identification, and internalization constitute distinct dimensions of psychological attachment, with identification and internalization linked to increased prosocial behavior and reduced turnover, and internalization predicting financial donations, underscoring the need to delineate commitment components.

Abstract

Previous research on organizational commitment has typically not focused on underlying dimensions of psychological attachment to organization. Results of two studies using university employees (N = 82) and students (N = 162) suggest that psychological attachment may be predicated on compliance, identification, and internalization (e.g., Kelman, 19S8). Identification and internalization are positively related to prosocial behaviors and negatively related to turnover. Internalization is predictive of financial donations to a fund-raising campaign. Overall, results suggest importance of clearly specifying underlying dimensions of commitment using notions of psychological attachment and various forms such attachment can take. In past decade, construct of organizational commitment has occupied a prominent place in organizational behavior research (Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982; Salancik, 1977; Staw & Ross, 1978). Unfortunately, as Morrow (1983, p. 486) has pointed out, the growth in commitment related concepts has not been accompanied by a careful segmentation of commitment's theoretical domain in terms of intended meaning of each concept or concepts' relationships among each other. By her count, there are over 25 commitment-related concepts and measures. Staw (1977), for instance, has noted that value of commitment as a separate construct distinct from other psychological concepts such as motivation, involvement, or behavioral intention remains to be demonstrated. What is needed are theoretical and operational definitions that clearly differentiate commitment and its components from other re