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Commitment in the Workplace: Theory, Research and Application, by John P Meyer and Natalie J. Allen. (1997). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 150 pp., $34.00 cloth, $15.95 paper.
In Commitment in the Workplace, John Meyer and Natalie Allen have achieved their objective to "summarize what we have learned over the past decade and a half about what commitment is, how it develops, and what its implications are for both employees and their organizations" (p. viii).
The book-one of Sage Publications' Advanced Topics in Organizational Behavior series-provides an overview of academic and popular perspectives on what committed employees look like and how they gain that characteristic. It explores the multiple faces of commitment and the links that have been established between its various forms and organizational behavior. It also discusses questions concerning individual differences, organizational characteristics, and work experiences associated with commitment. The book concludes with a discussion of what organizations can do to manage commitment effectively, even during more difficult circumstances such as merger and acquisition, downsizing, and relocation.
In the Preface and Introduction (Chapter One), the authors present a case for why organizations must understand the nature of commitment and know how to develop the right kinds of commitment in their core employees.
Chapter Two, "The Meaning of Commitment," discusses how an employees organizational commitment can be viewed as a collection of that individual's many commitments. The authors offer a multidimensional view incorporating affective commitment (emotional attachment and identification with an organization), continuance commitment (related to an awareness of the costs associated with leaving an organization), and normative commitment (a feeling of obligation to continue working in an organization) (Allen and Meyer, 1991). Employees may also feel committed to different constituencies. They may be committed locally to their own supervisors or workgroups or globally to top management and the organization. They may be committed to professions, unions, or other entities; to groups outside of the immediate workplace; or to any combination of these (p. 19, citing Becker and Billings, 1993).
Chapter Three, "Consequences of Organizational Commitment,"...