<p> There is a perceived impending shortage of skilled talent for the corporate world, as well as the US federal and state governments (Herman, 2004). This issue is much fodder for discussion of how to retain employees, how to develop loyalty and the birth of catch phrases such as "global employer of choice." The concept of engaging employees for greater firm performance; and for finding ways to continuously engage employees with the idea of becoming an employer of choice may be one of those areas that scholars, consultants and practitioners have the right idea, but translation to an executable plan is difficult. </p><p> This phenomenological study contributes to the literature on organizational commitment, and employee identity networks through the lived experiences of the participants. This study focuses on why people stay through the conceptual framework of Allen and Meyers' (1991) work organizational commitment and their affective commitment prong. Participants were interviewed twice and the interview data was analyzed utilizing Moustaka's (1998) empirical psychological phenomenological method (EPPM). </p><p> Given the turnover of employees with short tenure, one question is whether organizations are providing the right elements to foster organizational commitment, job embeddedness or engagement. More specifically, what keeps employees at companies? This study takes a comparative look at the lived experience of a diverse sample of employees who have stayed with the company between 5-7 years. The study looks at the perspectives of African Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, Hispanic Americans, who participated in an employee identity network and the perspectives of White American males who did not participate in an employee identity network. </p><p> Findings revealed five themes that contributed to the development of affective commitment. The study has concluded that actions taken by both the company and the participant around a critical event were paramount in why people stayed and that employee identity networks provide much of the antecedents to affective commitment and ultimately to the decision to stay despite a difficult critical career event.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3686189 |
| Date | 28 March 2015 |
| Creators | Besson, Paul S. |
| Publisher | The George Washington University |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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