COEVOLUTIONARY THEORY AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY IN BUREAUCRATIC BEHAVIOR

A major premise of this dissertation is that reliance upon traditional social science models of human behavior have hindered the development of a cumulative science of organizations. It is argued here that coevolutionary models offer a highly useful explanation of related social behaviors. By integration of theory and research on both biological and socio-cultural evolution we can gain insights into the dynamics of both organizational theory and behavior.

Extant research related to organizational commitment lacks a common definition of the construct. Most often it is seen as a belief in an organization's goals and values, a willingness to work hard for the organization, and a strong interest in maintaining membership in the organization. Existing research has also been conducted without an integrating theory which might link the scattered, correlational findings. The incorporation of a coevolutionary model of social behavior seeks to serve this purpose.

A review of theories and findings from evolutionary biology, ethology, and anthropology formed the basis for a broad theoretical orientation which, in turn, served as a guide for an exploratory field study. The field research, conducted at a mid-size public organization, provided empirical data for the construction of a grounded theory of organizational commitment. The field work employed mixed data collection methods including: participant-observation, structured interviews, and a standardized questionnaire instrument (Organizational Commitment Questionnaire).

The field data supported a general model of organizational commitment consistent with coevolutionary theory. This model suggests that commitment to an organization requires socio-cultural "technologies" which are capable of constraining and/or redirecting biobehaviorally grounded dispositions toward inter-group conflict. The dynamics of commitment within face-to-face work groups were found to follow patterns congruent with cross-cultural and cross-primate evidence, suggesting that these behaviors have biobehavioral antecedents.

Group-level commitment was distinguished from organization-wide commitment, which was found to be a function of two types of social technologies: (a) those that promote shared criterion images for monitoring group selfishness and anti-social behavior, and (b) those that foster perceptions of familial or kin-like relations among organizational members. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI