Commitment in Business Jargon

Commitment is a very frequently used jargon in day to day life, especially in corporate human relations atmosphere. But then what is normally understood and practiced need not be the intrinsic meaning of organizational commitment. Although the term is used frequently, it tends to lack a clear definition. This is the inference one gets after reading Chapter Six, "Multiple Commitments in the Workplace," in the book entitled Commitment in the Workplace: Theory, Research and Application (1997) written by John P. Meyer and Natalic J. Allen.

Chapter Six opens with a very interesting poser. What made some volunteers in non-profit organizations so highly committed to their work and how might this sense of commitment be instilled in others? The authors claim that as they tried to unravel the puzzling term called "commitment," they found little consensus on the very meaning of the term. In fact, the authors identify two distinct paradigms for analyzing the term of "commitment." The first paradigm involves the nature of commitment, and the second involves the focus of commitment.

Chapter Six of this book emphasizes both paradigms of the concept of commitment. It begins by clarifying the nature of commitment--meaning, the development and consequences of affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization as a whole. Chapter Six then moves on to emphasize the focus of commitment--that is, upon which entities inside and outside the organization does an employee commit th

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eels that s/he ought to remain with the organization because it is his/her duty to do so. This reflects a clear parallel to Freud's Id, Ego and Superego concepts in which personal loyalties are split between a trilogy of competing needs and or desires. Unlike in the latter, commitment researchers advocate strongly for affective commitment (Id) rather than other two (Ego and Superego) which tend not to be based on rationality. This three component model of commitment as described in Chapter Six forms the fundamental theory of the book. Most of the research and findings in the remaining chapters revolve around it and therefore calls for a very thorough understanding of this model. Chapter Six deals with the affective, continuance and normative commitment as components, rather than types, of a single factor called commitment and on this basis, analyzes their differential association with work relevant behaviors, such as absenteeism, job performance citizenship behavior, etc. This perception introduces a new dimension to consider in real life situations. Of course, Chapter Six just touches upon certain other classification schemes like the theory which states that the psychological bond between an employee and an organization can tak

Category: Business - C