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Employee commitment is a hot topic in the business world. Recent reports show U.S. workforce commitment lags behind other countries. In the past year, commitment declined or improved slightly. Business leaders and HR professionals are concerned that job and benefits cuts are negatively impacting commitment in their firms. Anxiety levels increase when the leaders hear top performers are exploring other opportunities as the economy improves. Given the level of interest in the topic, HR professionals need a complete discussion of the concept to fully understand how it has been defined, measured and applied, to improve human relations in U.S. organizations.
Employee Commitment
Commitment is a comparatively new term in the business world. Research on commitment in communes by Rosabeth Moss Kantor first sparked interest in the 1970s. In the 1980s, U.S. managers looked closely at Japanese firms whose success was attributed, in part, to a fiercely loyal workforce. Fueled by the booming economy, interest increased in the 1990s as concern grew regarding the impact worker mobility had on employee commitment. Downsizing and talent scarcity have helped the interest thrive (International Survey Research 2002(1)). Major surveys measure employee commitment every few years, with retention being the primary concern.
Semantics
While the term "commitment" may be a recent addition to everyday business usage, the concept is not new as it is arguably a synonym for the older term, "loyalty." "Loyalty" may have fallen from favor because it appears irrelevant to current issues. It also may have been perceived as a weaker term than "commitment" - a term associated with stronger bonds, such as "marriage" (Meyer, Becker and Vandenberghe 2004).
Continuing the courtship/marriage terminology, a similar concept, "employee engagement," recently entered the business lexicon and vies for attention with commitment. Results from a recent survey by Towers Perrin are reported in this publication (O'Neal and Gebauer 2006).
John P. Meyer and other researchers admit that commitment has been difficult to define (Meyer, Becker and Vandenberghe 2004). To paraphrase their definition, commitment is a force that binds an individual to a course of action that is of relevance to a particular target.
The greatest research and practical interest has been on an individual's psychological attachment to an organization. According to these researchers, a most significant development in commitment...