1st Edition
Multiple Commitments in the Workplace An Integrative Approach
The growing interest in multiple commitments among researchers and practitioners is evinced by the greater attention in the literature to the broader concept of work commitment. This includes specific objects of commitment, such as organization, work group, occupation, the union, and one's job. In the last several years a sizable body of research has accumulated on the multidimensional approach to commitment. This knowledge needs to be marshaled, its strengths highlighted, and its importance, as well as some of its weaknesses made known, with the aim of guiding future research on commitment based on a multidimensional approach. This book's purpose is to summarize this knowledge, as well as to suggest ideas and directions for future research. Most of the book addresses what seems to be the important aspects of commitment by a multidimensional approach: the differences among these forms, the definition and boundaries of commitment foci as part of a multidimensional approach, their interrelationships, and their effect on outcomes, mainly work outcomes. Two chapters concern aspects rarely examined--the relationship of commitment foci to aspects of nonwork domains and cross-cultural aspects of commitment foci--that should be important topics for future research.
Addressing innovative focuses of multiple commitments at work, this book:
*suggests a provocative and innovative approach on how to conceptualize and understand multiple commitments in the workplace;
*provides a thorough and updated review of the existing research on multiple commitments;
*analyzes the relationships among commitment forms and how they might affect behavior at work; and
*covers topics rarely covered in multiple commitment research and includes all common scales of commitment forms that can assist researchers and practitioners in measuring commitment forms.
Biography
Aaron Cohen
"In this book, Cohen provides a comprehensive and in-depth treatment of the topic of work commitment. The tone of the work is scholarly and research oriented, and the book is likely to be most appealing to researchers in the area of work commitment, and to faculty teaching graduate courses focusing on this rather specialized area..Two noteworthy features are found at the end of the book, specially a comprehensive and rich list of references on work commitment and a helpful appendix that brings together into one convenient location various scales (28 in all) for measuring different forms of work commitment, including organizational commitment, job involvement, work values, career or occupational commitment, work group or team commitment, and union commitment..This appendix by itself may be worth the price of the book for readers who are interested in the topic or work commitment."
—Personnel Psychology"Doctoral students and faculty looking for the current state of knowledge about commitment will be impressed by the multipage tables within the text that summarize the types of commitment used in various studies of commitment, the methodologies used, and populations, studied..The greatest strength of the book by far, then, is its attention to issues of conceptualization and operationalization. The author provides rigorous definitions of various terms in the commitment literature, he explains the interrelationships among different kinds of commitment, he differentiates commitment from other related constructs in the field (such as job involvement) and he does a scrupulous job of explaining measurement issues and challenges in conducting empirical research."
—Academy of Management Review"Reading the book has enhanced my appreciation of the potential of multiple commitments approaches as well as the associated difficulties....a thought-provoking book, providing substantial detail that should be of value to scholars planning to explore multiple commitments."
—Administrative Science Quarterly
