PREDICTING EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT TO COMPANY AND UNION - DIVERGENT MODELS

The adequacy of Mowday, Porter & Steers' (1982) model of organizational commitment for predicting both company and union commitment was assessed. Data were obtained from 100 members of a white‐collar union. Two months before this study, they had taken part in a three‐week strike and were still involved in a dispute with management. Measures of company and union commitment were regressed separately on work experiences (job satisfaction, job involvement and perceived organizational climate) and personal characteristics (educational level, sex, company and union tenure). In neither of the multiple regression analyses did the same predictor account for a significant portion of the variance in both union and company commitment. Job satisfaction, organizational climate and job involvement were significant predictors of company commitment, accounting for 17.8 per cent of the variance. Union tenure was the only significant predictor (5.3 per cent of the variance) of union commitment. The emergence of divergent predictors of company and union commitment suggests the need for greater specificity within the literature on ‘organizational commitment’. Consistent with the differing nature and function of unions and companies, it may be more appropriate to construct separate models of company and union commitment. 1990 The British Psychological Society