Dissecting Organizational Commitment and Its Relationship with Employee Behavior

In theory, organizational commitment should have a moderately strong relationship with employee performance, but empirical studies have generally found only a weak relationship. We present a new model of the organizational commitment process in which different components of organizational commitment have different relationships with employee behaviors. We argue that the empirical relationship between organizational commitment and performance is weak for two reasons: First, one component of organizational commitment, the desire to remain a member of the organization, often has a weak, uncertain relationship with performance. Second, organizational commitment does not include perceived rewards for high performance, a variable that is a significant determinant of performance. The results, based on a sample of 246 men and women from diverse industries and occupations, were consistent with these explanations.