EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT - RESOLVING SOME ISSUES

There has been a recent upsurge of interest among sociologists in the organizational commitment of employees, with loyalty and intent to stay identified as distinct forms that this commitment can take. This article argues that progress in understanding organizational commitment will not be made until conceptual and empirical distinctions among various forms of employee commitment are recognized and demonstrated. With this as the objective, it was hypothesized that loyalty and intent to stay are conceptually and empirically distinct from each other as well as from two other forms of employee commitment: work commitment and career commitment. This was tested with confirmatory factor analysis and was supported across a variety of tests. Construct validation was obtained by supporting the hypothesis that the two forms of organizational commitment but not work or career commitment are less stable during the initial employment period but then stabilize with tenure. Finally, predictive validity was established for intent to stay by demonstrating that it predicted quit behavior, or turnover, but loyalty, work commitment, and career commitment did not. Implications for studying organizational commitment within the context of substantive sociological issues are discussed.