Beyond the Three-Component Model of Organizational Commitment

Adding to empirically based critique in the last 15 years, this paper offers a critical conceptual analysis of the three-component model of organizational commitment in order to arrive at a unequivocal grounding of the concept in standard attitudinal theory. Using the attitude-behavior model by Eagly & Chaiken (1993), we demonstrate that the three-component model combines fundamentally different attitudinal phenomena. Instead, we argue that general organizational commitment can best be conceived of as affective commitment only, being a genuine attitude towards an object: the organization. Normative and continuance commitment, in contrast, appear to be attitudes regarding specific forms of behavior (i.e., staying or leaving) that may or may not follow from the affective bond with the organization. The conclusion of our analysis is that the threecomponent model fails to qualify as a general model of organizational commitment, but instead represents a specific model to predict turnover behavior. Therefore, we suggest limiting the use of the TCM to predicting turnover and to abandon it as a general model of employee commitment. We propose to return to the conceptualization of organizational commitment as an attitude towards the organization and to use Eagly & Chaiken’s model to generate specific models for predicting a broad range of organizational behaviors. Finally, we discuss the definition and measurement of organizational commitment, arguing that covering affective, cognitive and behavioral facets of this attitude helps to differentiate the construct from other constructs and to enhance the construct validity of measurement instruments.