1986/08/01 by Charles A. O’Reilly, Jennifer A. Chatman · 3,861 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · Chemistry · #Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior #Customer Service Quality and Loyalty #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics #Prosocial behavior #Internalization #Psychology #Compliance (psychology) #Organizational identification #Social psychology #Organizational behavior #Organizational commitment #Identification (biology) #Chemistry
paper · doi:10.1037/0021-9010.71.3.492
published in Journal of Applied Psychology 71(3), 492-499 (American Psychological Association)
openalex publication_date 1986/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/08
Previous research on organizational commitment has typically not focused on underlying dimensions of psychological attachment to organization. Results of two studies using university employees (N = 82) and students (N = 162) suggest that psychological attachment may be predicated on compliance, identification, and internalization (e.g., Kelman, 19S8). Identification and internalization are positively related to prosocial behaviors and negatively related to turnover. Internalization is predictive of financial donations to a fund-raising campaign. Overall, results suggest importance of clearly specifying underlying dimensions of commitment using notions of psychological attachment and various forms such attachment can take. In past decade, construct of organizational commitment has occupied a prominent place in organizational behavior research (Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982; Salancik, 1977; Staw & Ross, 1978). Unfortunately, as Morrow (1983, p. 486) has pointed out, the growth in commitment related concepts has not been accompanied by a careful segmentation of commitment's theoretical domain in terms of intended meaning of each concept or concepts' relationships among each other. By her count, there are over 25 commitment-related concepts and measures. Staw (1977), for instance, has noted that value of commitment as a separate construct distinct from other psychological concepts such as motivation, involvement, or behavioral intention remains to be demonstrated. What is needed are theoretical and operational definitions that clearly differentiate commitment and its components from other re