The measurement and consequences of military organizational commitment in soldiers and spouses

Based on the work of Meyer and Allen (1997), we derived a set of abbreviated scales to measure affective and continuance organizational commitment and conducted an extensive examination of the factor structure and reliability of these scales. The relation of these 2 abbreviated scales of organizational commitment to critical organizational outcomes was examined and tested. Results showed that affective and continuance commitment combined to influence subsequent soldier performance on job knowledge tests in opposite ways, suggesting a causal link between commitment and performance. Relations between affective and continuance commitment combinations and soldier-reported retention intentions, morale, and readiness were also explored. Scales developed to measure spouse commitment to the Army showed a factor structure that was comparable to that of soldiers and consistent with the dimensions of affective and continuance commitment.