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Introduction
With the globalization of markets, the emergence of flexible work arrangements, and an increased focus on short-term benefits among organizations, the nature of the linkages between employees and organizations has evolved. While affective organizational commitment (hereafter organizational commitment), or an individual’s emotional attachment to the organization’s goals and values (Meyer et al., 2002), remains relevant owing to its positive contributions to performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and retention (Cooper-Hakim and Viswesvaran, 2005; Meyer et al., 2002), considering other foci of commitment may be required to improve the understanding of other aspects of employee behavior, in the context of flexible labor markets.
As individuals are nowadays expected to take care of their employment and career, one’s commitment to the advancement of career goals represents a useful form of commitment to consider. Through developing commitment to their career goals, individuals can ensure that they entertain a line of work that gives way to valuable jobs in organizations of their choice. Career-oriented commitment thus refers to people’s commitment to the development of individual career goals (Den Hartog and Belschak, 2007; Ellemers et al., 1998). The attachment to such goals results in individuals working to achieve self-interested advancement in their careers as this encourages them to focus on behaviors that are instrumental to attainment of their career goals. In that sense, career-oriented commitment, owing to its self-interested nature, differs from occupational commitment, which includes a prosocial orientation (e.g. nurses; Meyer et al., 1993). Career-oriented commitment also differs from the traditional view of career commitment (e.g. Blau, 1985), which “encompasses one’s commitment or dedication to one’s career, profession, or occupation” (Cooper-Hakim and Viswesvaran, 2005, p. 244).
This study intends to further explore the distinctive nature of organizational and career-oriented commitment (Den Hartog and Belschak, 2007). There is indeed a gap in the literature regarding the specific antecedents and consequences of organizational vs career-oriented commitment. Prior research indicates that organizational commitment is rooted in a social exchange account of individual behavior (Blau, 1964; Meyer et al., 2002). In contrast, career-oriented commitment emanates from a self-interested model of the behavior (Ellemers et al., 1998; Miller, 1999) in which an individualistic orientation (Jiang et al., 2012; Peltokorpi et al., 2015) dominates. Still, research has not...