Commitment: A behavioral approach to job involvement

This study views job involvement and commitment as interchangeable labels for the same job behavior. Work commitment behaviors were defined as a special class of socially acceptable work behaviors that exceed formal and/or normative expectations relevant to work. The main purpose of this study was the development of a measure of work commitment based on this definition. A daily record measured the amount of personal time that each subject devoted to work-related activities beyond the required working day. For a sample of 54 female elementary school teachers, the work commitment measure demonstrated moderate correlations with two attitudinal measures of job involvement and a job satisfaction scale. The feasibility and usefulness of defining and measuring involvement behaviorally were demonstrated.