The present research investigates three current debates in commitment research. In order to contribute to these debates and to provide novel insights, the present research consistently applies a differentiated multi-target approach by distinguishing between employees’ commitments to the organization and their commitments to its constituents top management, supervisors, and workgroups. In addition, it considers recent developments in the conceptual refinement of commitment and consistently aims to strongly build on established basic theoretical foundations of social psychology as well as on incorporating methodological advancements. The first study investigated the debated relationship between values and commitment. Specifically, it compared the relevance of employee values, commitment target values, and of their congruence for employee’s multiple commitments. Results indicate that targets’ values are most important for commitment, especially the targets’ people-centered values. In contrast, value congruence between targets and employees appears to play a less important role than implied in much previous research. The second study investigated the debated relationship between commitments and employees’ readiness for change. Again applying a multi-target perspective, results showed that the association was only positive when the different commitment targets were perceived to advocate changes. If the target’s change advocacy was low, the association between commitment and change readiness disappeared or even turned negative. Finally, the third study investigated the debated relationship between global commitment to the organization and specific commitments to its constituents. This research question again implied the use of a multitarget perspective and was investigated in a multi-cohort cross-lagged panel design to
understand the influences between commitments. Results indicate that global
commitment influences the specific commitments of low-tenured employees; however, in medium- and high-tenured employees the different commitments grow independent of each other. Taken together, the studies demonstrate that reassessing the debated associations with higher differentiation and a multi-target perspective can contribute to explaining the mixed findings in previous research. Moreover, moderations and conditions identified in the present research shed more light onto the processes that underlie commitment development and effects. Most importantly, the present research strongly encourages researchers and practitioners to consider the multiple targets of commitment and their values and goals in order to better understand and manage employee commitment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uni-osnabrueck.de/oai:repositorium.ub.uni-osnabrueck.de:urn:nbn:de:gbv:700-2017110616327 |
| Date | 06 November 2017 |
| Creators | Seggewiß, Britta Janina |
| Contributors | Prof. Dr. Karsten Müller, Prof. Dr. Julia Becker |
| Source Sets | Universität Osnabrück |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | doc-type:doctoralThesis |
| Format | application/zip, application/pdf |
| Rights | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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