Impact of Organizational Structure and Culture on Job Satisfaction, Job Stress and Employee Motivation: a Survey of Existing Litreature

Measurement issues in the Meyer & Allen model of organizational commitment

Steve Jaros Southern University

Paper to be presented at the 2007 Academy of Management Meetings.

The Meyer/Allen three-component model of commitment arguably dominates organizational commitment research. Given its widespread use, the measures used to tap the affective, continuance, and normative commitment constructs merit close scrutiny. This paper will outline some of the key measurement problems and challenges associated with this model, and present recommendations for future research. First, I discuss the degree to which the three Meyer and Allen scales, the ACS, the CCS, and the NCS, tap their associated affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment constructs. Next, I discuss some measurement issues that pertain specifically to normative commitment. Third, I offer a discussion of measurement issues that pertain specifically to continuance commitment. I conclude with some comments about the model 's generalizability and relationship with recently-developed work attitudes that may overlap its conceptual domain.

I. Degree of correspondence between the ACS, CCS, and NCS and Meyer & Herscovitch 's (2001) conceptualizations of the underlying constructs How well do the ACS, CCS, and NCS reflect the underlying affective, normative, and continuance commitment constructs? In this section, I argue that there are some discrepancies between these scales and the constructs, as defined by Meyer & Herscovitch (2001) and, with respect to normative commitment, Meyer, Becker, & Van Dick (2006), that they are designed to reflect. Meyer & Herscovitch 's definitions of commitment. Meyer & Herscovitch (2001) propose that commitment is “a force that binds an individual to a course of action of relevance to one or more targets.” Employees are theorized to experience this force in the form of three mindsets:

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