Trajectories of organizational commitment

Abstract

Developmental issues of organizational commitment have received little attention and have been mainly examined through cross-sectional or longitudinal designs which used predefined scales validated in an Anglo-Saxon cultural context. The present study aims to address this gap by examining the developmental processes as well as possible intersections among commitment components as experienced by Greek employees working in a public sector organization. As 25 interviews with employees of different tenure length suggested, employees’ experience of organizational commitment reflected culturally driven values and expectations. Specifically, the notion of organizational commitment was interwoven with that of self-definition. Shifts in employees’ psychological contract were found to follow commitment and self-definitional developments. Moreover, commitments to different work-related foci were intertwined with commitment to the organization in the discourse of less experienced employees, while perceptions of wants and obligations were found to change in nature and were increasingly interwoven as tenure increased. The implications of the study for cross-cultural management lay in furthering our understanding of organizational commitment in a less studied cultural context in management research, while pointing out that cultural diversity constitutes an additional aspect for understanding employees’ commitment to their workplace.