employee commitment: a review of the background, determinants and theoretical perspectives

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Employee Commitment: A Review of the Background,Determinants and Theoretical PerspectivesJung-Won Kim a & Chris Rowley ba Department of Business Administration , Kaya University , South Koreab Faculty of Management, Cass Business School , City University , LondonPublished online: 24 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Jung-Won Kim & Chris Rowley (2005) Employee Commitment: A Review of the Background, Determinantsand Theoretical Perspectives, Asia Pacific Business Review, 11:1, 105-124, DOI: 10.1080/1360238052000298407

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Employee Commitment: A Reviewof the Background, Determinantsand Theoretical Perspectives

JUNG-WON KIM* & CHRIS ROWLEY***Department of Business Administration, Kaya University, South Korea

**Faculty of Management, Cass Business School, City University, London

ABSTRACT Commitment, and its perceived attendant benefits, is of perennial and topical interestto academics, employees, businesses and policy makers. Also, more recently commitment hasbecome important in many countries, not least in terms of efforts to establish social partnershiparrangements with trade unions and their underpinnings. In this paper we review research onemployee commitment, in terms of commitment to organizations, trade unions and both, dualcommitment. The approaches taken and problems encountered with each are explored. We point outthe need for more precise measures, theory and greater care in designing research that examines therelationship between commitment and its predictors. We go on to develop a theoreticallyunderpinned research framework on dual commitment and suggest its possible use in Asian contexts.This will form the context of a later empirical paper.

KEY WORDS: Employee Commitment, Companies, Dual Commitment Determinants, Theory,Trade Unions

Introduction

The days of docile and cheap labour in some Asian countries, such as SouthKorea, have ended. Labour union representation, along with economic growth andpolitical democratization, has led to wage rises. Then the 1997 Asian FinancialCrisis hit. In order to assist in resurrecting prior high economic growth it wasargued that companies and unions must share the responsibility of seeing thatemployment relations (ER) function smoothly (Bognanno, 1988). Within this, thecommitment of employees may serve to facilitate such cooperation. Given somerecent calls for cooperation between unions and industry in the form of integrativebargaining (Park and No, 2001), dual commitment is a topic of increasedimportance to some Asian economies. Both labour and management can benefitfrom commitment to their respective organizations.

Yet, evidence often suggests organizational commitment is closely related tosuch important behavioural outcomes as employee turnover and job satisfaction(Mowday et al., 1982; Meyer and Allen, 1984; Koch and Steers, 1978). Therefore,

1360-2381 Print/1743-792X Online/05/010105–20 q 2005 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/1360238052000298407

Correspondence Address: Jung-Won Kim, Department of Business Administration, Kaya University,

60 Samgye-Dong, Kimhae, Kyung Nam, 621-748, South Korea. Email: [email protected]

Asia Pacific Business ReviewVol. 11, No. 1, 105–124, March 2005

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we may expect that the Asian Crisis adversely impacted on such aspects.Furthermore, commitment is often seen as zero sum’ or mutually exclusive, eitherto the company on the one hand or to the union on the other. Is this the case?

The nature of the ER between unions and companies can be categorized inseveral ways, from unitary to plural and radical. Commonly, ER is seen asadversarial, with basic conflicts of interests between management concerns (thatis, maximizing profit) and union concerns (such as increasing member benefits).Commitment to unions was assumed to preclude commitment to companies andvice versa, a competing allegiance expectation. Yet, in contrast, unioncommitment was found by some to coincide with commitment to the companyin some early (Derber et al., 1965) and later (Kochan and Osterman, 1994)research. For instance, Purcell (1954) discovered 73 per cent of employees(within a sample of 192 union members at a single plant) showed positiveattitudes towards both union and company, while only 11 per cent held negative orneutral attitudes towards both. Positive attitudes towards both union and companywere also found by Dean (1954) and Stagner (1954). However, some later studiescast doubt on this (Stevens et al., 1978; Martin, 1978).

Some of the other reasons for this article are to broaden and widen knowledgeabout, and interest in, commitment and its long history in the literature. We wish toappeal to those less familiar with the specialism and to those with a more generalinterest in management, as with the readership of this journal, rather than justthose of North American and specialist journals, such as psychology and industrialrelations, where much of the traditional literature is embedded. Also, while a nicephrase, numerous problems around theorizing, conceptualizing and measuringcommitment still abound. We discuss these and present a theoreticallyunderpinned research framework and set of hypothesis concerning variablesassociated with dual commitment. This set of points forms the structure of the restof this article to advance the understanding of commitment. These will form thebackground and framework for a later, empirical, article.

Literature Review

Of course, much of the commitment literature has been from western, especiallyNorth American, approaches, perspectives and sources, with the attendant issuesthis raises. Nevertheless, there is a growing body of other work, including on Asia,to which we will add. This includes, inter alia, from Europe, such as the UK(Guest and Dewe, 1991), Sweden (Sverke and Sjoberg, 1994) and the Netherlands(Klandermans, 1989), parts of the Pacific region, such as Hong Kong (Snape andChan, 2000) and Japan (Reed et al., 1994), as well as New Zealand (Iversonand Ballard, 1996) and Australia (Kuruvilla and Iverson, 1993; Deery et al., 1994)and also South Africa (Fullagar, 1986). While we cannot be comprehensive andthere are gaps, the following gives a flavour and indication of the field.

Theoretical Framework

Commitment has been extensively and variably defined, measured and studied.Despite this, it continues to draw criticism for a lack of a common theoretical base

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and for concept redundancy (Morrow, 1983). The term ‘commitment’ has beenused, for example, to describe such diverse phenomena as a ‘state of being’ inwhich individuals become bound by their actions (Salancik, 1977), the willingnessof social actors to give energy and loyalty to social systems (Kanter, 1968), anawareness of the impossibility of choosing a different social identity or ofrejecting a particular expectation, under force of penalty, or an affectiveattachment to an organization apart from the purely instrumental worth of therelationship (Buchanan, 1974). Two main theories underpin commitment –exchange theory and role conflict theory.

First, Exchange Theory, which views commitment as an outcome ofinducement/contribution transactions between the organization and member,with explicit emphasis on the instrumentalities of membership as the primarydeterminant of the member’s accrual of advantage or disadvantage in the ongoingprocess of exchange (Mowday et al., 1982; Stevens et al., 1978). The basic logiccan be expressed in the fashionable term, the ‘psychological contract’ (Jeong,1990). This is taken as an implicit agreement in which many obligations and rightsremain unspecified, in contrast to legal contracts. Another aspect of ExchangeTheory is the mechanism of reciprocation, based on the norm of ‘reciprocity’.Here employees bring certain expectations with them and exert effort in return forcompanies meeting these (March and Simon, 1958; Hrebiniak and Alutto, 1972)or giving equitable treatment (Gouldner, 1960; Angle and Perry, 1983).

A number of early researchers discussed commitment in terms of exchangelogic, that is Becker’s (1960) side-bet theory (see Stevens et al., 1978).Attachments to organizations are influenced strongly by ‘side bets’, accruedextrinsic benefits that would be lost if membership were terminated. Accordingly,individuals invest in organizations (place side-bets) by staking something theyvalue in them. The greater the side-bet at stake, the greater the commitment.Commitment is regarded as primarily a function of accrued investments. Forinstance, the longer individuals stay with organizations, the older they become,the more accrued pension benefits they have, the less their inter-organizationalmobility, and so forth, all of which make them less likely to leave the organization(Alutto et al., 1973).

Several researchers, however, challenged Exchange Theory as to its relianceonly on an economic rationale underlying commitment (Ritzer and Trice, 1969,1970; Meyer and Allen, 1984). For instance, there may be increases in affective, aswell as continuance, commitment the longer employees stay with organizations.

The second main theory underpinning commitment is Role Conflict Theory,where organizations are seen as made up of many sub-organizations within whichindividuals have multiple roles. Simultaneous occurrence of multiple roles tendsto increase the feeling of role conflict within individuals, especially when the roleshave very different characteristics and demands (Katz and Kahn, 1966). Forinstance, employees who are union members have multiple roles because theysimultaneously belong to different, but partially overlapping, organizations whosegoals are quite different and sometimes conflicting (Angle and Perry, 1986; Rizzoet al., 1970). Transition from such role conflict to role congruence withinindividuals involves a continuing cyclical process that socializes individuals into

Employee Commitment 107

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their organizational roles, sets standards for their behaviour and providescorrective feedback (Katz and Kahn, 1966).

Based on Role Conflict Theory, the degree of congruence among individuals’roles can affect their level of commitment to organizations. The more (less)congruent individuals’ perceived roles are with expected roles, the more (less)individuals will be committed to organizations. As individuals may belong tomore than one organization simultaneously, and/or most organizations consist ofmultiple sub-organizations, role conflict theory can explain commitment to asingle organization as well as multiple commitment to several organizations(Jeong, 1990).

Company and Union Commitment

The study of organizational commitment has received attention as an attitudinalpart of the employee attitude–behaviour relationship (Mowday et al., 1979;Zamutto et al., 1979; Angle and Perry, 1981; Fukami and Larson, 1984) with arange of beneficial employment related outcomes. Major meta-analysis oforganisational commitment include, inter alia, Mathieu and Zajac (1990) andMeyer et al. (2002).

The study of union commitment is important as well. Unions play an importantrole in labour–management relationships and their ability to accomplish theirgoals relies heavily on members’ loyalty (Stagner, 1956). Commitment to unionsis related to willingness to voluntarily perform services (Gordon et al., 1980) andfavourable perceptions towards union decision making (Magenau et al., 1988).Major analysis of union commitment include, inter alia, Bamberger et al. (1999).

Some distinguish between union commitment ‘types’ as: ‘affective’ commitment,reflecting a sense of shared values, identity and pride in unions; and ‘instrumental’commitment, based on perceived benefits flowing from unions. Much of the theoryconnected with union commitment has been derived from organizationalcommitment research. This focused primarily on two definitional categories ofcommitment: ‘behavioural’ (Becker, 1960); and ‘attitudinal’ (Mowday et al.,1979, 1982), an individual’s psychological attachment to the organization apartfrom its instrumental worth (Buchanan, 1974). Essentially, the difference betweenthem is that if individuals are attitudinally committed to organizations, they want tobe there, while if behaviourally committed, they perceive they need to be there givenalternative courses of action (Meyer et al., 1989).

The difference between attitudinal and behavioural commitment results inindividuals having different objects for commitment and diverse orientationstowards their organizations. For attitudinal commitment, an internalization ofbeliefs, values, and so on, takes place associated with pro-social behaviour(O’Reilly and Chatman, 1986); behaviour which goes beyond what is expected.Behavioural commitment, by contrast, is connected with continuance with theorganization based on an exchange relationship. Employees perceive leaving to becostly, or at least more costly than staying. In some cases, employees’ perceptionsmay be so limited that they actually believe they have no choice but to remain withthe organization.


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The organizational behaviour theory of commitment emphasized the influenceof attitudes on behaviour, whereas social psychological theory emphasized theinfluence of committing behaviour on attitudes. Staw (1980) argued that thequestion of which dimension is superior is not an issue; rather the concept ofcommitment is clarified by viewing these two dimensions as interrelated.Confirming this position, Mowday et al. (1982) stated the need to recognize thatcommitment may be developed through a ‘subtle interplay’ of attitudes andbehaviours over time.

There is, however, diversity among researchers on how best to conceptualizeand measure organizational commitment (Morris and Sherman, 1981). Steers(1977) defines organizational commitment as the relative strength of anindividual’s identification with, and involvement in, a particular organization.Porter et al. (1974) and Buchanan (1974), building on exchange theory, suggestorganizational commitment can be defined as a construct which has at least threeprimary factors:

1. willingness to exert high levels of effort on behalf of the organization;2. strong desire to stay or degree of belongingness or loyalty;3. acceptance of major goals and values.

In other words, an employee who is highly committed to an organizationintends to stay with it and to work hard towards its goals. We develop these as thecomponents of organizational or company commitment in Figure 1.

Definitions of union commitment closely parallel those of companycommitment. In a review of the literature (Gordon et al., 1980), factor analysisof the union commitment scale revealed three primary factors:

1) loyalty to the union and desire to maintain membership;2) feeling of responsibility to the union;3) belief in, and acceptance of, values and goals of the union.

Figure 1. Summary of components of company commitment

Figure 2. Summary of components of union commitment


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We develop this in Figure 2 by adding in:

4) willingness to work for the union.

A second approach, based initially on the work of Becker (1960), proposes amore calculative instrumental construct whereby commitment reflects agreementto a contract or an effort-reward bargain.

Definition and Construct of Dual Commitment

Dual commitment received wide attention from the 1950s (Dean, 1954; Purcell,1954; Stagner, 1954; Gallagher, 1984; Angle and Perry, 1986; Magenau et al.,1988; Sherer and Morishima, 1989). Major analysis of dual commitment includes,inter alia, Reed et al. (1994). Dual commitment has been explained by some(Magenau et al., 1988) as based on:

1) Integrated Whole Perspective – organizations and unions are notdistinct, but part of a larger entity;

2) Cognitive Consistency Theory – relations between unions andmanagement are perceived as positive;

3) Exchange Theory – perceptions of a beneficial exchanges (see earlier).

Dual commitment can be defined as ‘the phenomenon that occurs whenindividuals possess positive attitudes towards two groups (or social systems)which may make competing demands on the individuals’ (Webster’s Dictionary,1973) As Gordon and Ladd (1990) note, there has been no consensus or theory-based model regarding the antecedents of dual commitment. At the heart of anumber of methodological problems related with this is a failure to clearlyconceptualize dual commitment.

A review by Gordon and Ladd (1990) revealed dual commitment described as:

1) employees who feel highly loyal to their employers also usually feel highlyloyal to the unions that represent them (Schriesheim and Tsui, 1980);

2) the relationship between employee attitudes towards their company andunion (England, 1960);

3) under normal union–management relationships, employees who havepositive attitudes towards their union will also have positive attitudestowards their employer (Martin, 1981).

From these simultaneous descriptions, dual commitment may be seen as:

1) a characteristic of workers (that is, those who are highly loyal to bothcompany and union);

2) a relationship between two variables (that is, attitudes towards companyand union);

3) a situationally dependent phenomenon (that is, manifest only undernormal union–management relations).

One of the critical issues is whether dual commitment is merely anepiphenomenon that is an accessory to more fundamental behavioural phenomena


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or an independent construct (Gordon and Ladd, 1990) One definition of aconstruct is ‘an idea or perception resulting from the orderly arrangement of facts,impressions, etc.’ (Webster’s Dictionary, 1968) On this basis, dual commitment,which is conceptually defined as an individual’s multiple commitments to bothorganizations, can be treated as a construct (Jeong, 1990)

However, Cronbach and Meehl (1955) defined a construct as:

1) ‘some postulated attribute of people, assumed to be reflected in testperformance’; and

2) ‘in test validation the attribute about which we make statements ininterpreting a test’.

Following this, it is not easy to consider dual commitment as a constructThe issue is related with how to measure individuals’ dual commitment and testand interpret their relationships with other characteristics of individuals and bothorganizations (Jeong, 1990). In some previous studies dual commitment was notmeasured directly using scales (except Angle and Perry, 1986) and itsrelationships with other variables have often not been tested and interpretedmeaningfully.

Juxtaposed against this controversy about the dual commitment construct, someresearchers question the adequacy of organizational commitment as a construct(Adkins and Reavlin, 1991). Morrow (1983) criticizes conceptualizations oforganizational commitment as lacking precision and containing conceptredundancy. Reichers (1985) suggests, in response, that organizationalcommitment may be better conceptualized as commitment to the organization’smultiple (dual) constituencies (including unions) rather than as a global construct.

Measures of Dual Commitment

To bypass such controversies surrounding the dual commitment construct and tooperationalize the dual commitment concept, four different types of workingdefinitions of dual commitment are proposed, primarily associated with dataanalysis methods (Fukami and Larson, 1984; Gordon and Ladd, 1990). Theseapproaches – Taxonomic, Dimensional, Direct Measure, Parallel Model –generally attempt to decide on the dimensionality of commitment empiricallywithout theoretical perspectives regarding the construct.

First, the Taxonomic Approach, which focuses on the individual as the unit ofanalysis in that it seeks to classify employees into a priori taxons in terms ofcompany and union commitment by bifurcating both into low and high on thebasis of mid-points of separate commitment scales, and then identify other traitsthat are characteristic of the members of each level. Cohen and Jermier (1989)classified the states of commitment using cluster analysis techniques. Othersclassified employees into categories of dual commitment by dichotomizing thesample on company and union commitment respectively, and using cross-tabulation (Magenau et al., 1988; Dean, 1954; Purcell, 1954). Gordon and Ladd(1990) further exacerbated the classification problem by suggesting that if dualcommitment is an independent construct it should be operationalized as an


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interaction between company and union commitment and should offerexplanatory power above and beyond that of its component constructs.

In addition to problems pertaining to the usual methods of definingtaxons, as well as the stability of their classification, the definition of dualcommitment under the Taxonomic Approach is limited to the extent thatit precludes unilaterally committed and dually dis-committed groups fromconsideration (Jeong, 1991). In short, simply classifying employees reporting highlevels of both organizational and union commitment as dually committed has notbeen without controversy.

Second, the Dimensional Approach, which is reflected by the existence of acorrelation between employees’ commitment to company and union. Thiscalculates the correlation coefficient between company and union commitmentscores. If both are highly correlated in the positive direction, dual commitment isprevalent. This approach can be examined empirically by looking at themagnitude of the correlation between the two commitment measures. Unlike theTaxonomic Approach, this does not preclude any class of employees in a samplefrom consideration. Potentially different interpretations of observed correlations,however, often require factor analysis of the pool of company and unioncommitment items as an initial step (Gordon and Ladd, 1990).

Although both these two approaches above made advances, unresolvedfundamental issues remain in measuring dual commitment. Its dimensions shouldreflect not only all components of the predetermined construct, but alsomeaningful combinations among them, and the selection of latent variables anddevelopment of questionnaires should be done based on the dimensions ofcommitment.1

A third view is the Direct Measure Approach. As a way of dealing with continuingtheoretical problems in assessing commitment, Angle and Perry (1986) consideredan individual’s dual commitment as a single construct and used a single measurewith six items of employees’ perceptions of role conflict engendered by membershipof union and company, a direct measure of dual commitment. The manifest contentof the items of their measure addresses the possibility of being committed to bothunion and company as a consequence of low perceived role conflict. This approachuses a single scale to measure dual commitment, or calculates composite scores fromseparate measures of commitment to company and union by adding or multiplyingcompany and union commitment measures (Martin et al., 1986; Gallagher et al.,1988). Even though this approach contributes to a better understanding, byproposing the possibility of measuring dual commitment directly, the controversyrelated to the construct and dimensions of dual commitment is still unsolved, i.e.about dual commitment as a construct in itself.

Angle and Perry (1986) also noted the issue of a potential biaspresented in previous research when identifying the existence of dualcommitment. Specifically, they claimed that combining the scores from companyand union commitment scales could result in a positive response biasleading to more individuals being identified as possessing dual commitment.In conclusion, they suggest the usage of a separate dual commitment scale tominimize potential bias.


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Fourth, there is the Parallel Models Approach. Here company and unioncommitment are each regressed on a set of the same independent variables. Thisavoids problems with validity and reliability seen in the composite and DirectMeasure (Beauvais et al., 1991), and it employs separate measures for company andunion commitment. Some literature demonstrates that employees can be highlycommitted to both company and union (Magenau et al., 1988). However, attemptsto find common predictors of dual commitment (Fukami and Larson, 1984;Gallagher et al., 1988; Jeong, 1990; Deery et al., 1994), found only the ER climatevariable of significance. Instead, results mostly presented unilateral commitment tocompany or union, but not to both (Lee and Shin, 2001).

Research Framework and Hypothesis

While earlier studies focused on whether individuals could be dually committed toorganizations and unions (Dean, 1954; Stagner, 1954; Purcell, 1954), there hasbeen an increase in effort since the 1980s to investigate individual correlates andsituational factors related to both organizational and union commitment(Gallagher, 1984; Angle and Perry, 1986; Martin et al., 1986; Fukamiand Larson, 1984; Martin, 1981). This research draws on empirical andtheoretical developments in the study of organizational commitment (Mowdayet al., 1979; Porter et al., 1976) and led to the development of Parallel Measuresand models of both organizational and union commitment (Conlon and Gallagher,1987).

The general basis of the conceptual framework used for understandingcommitment is provided by Mowday et al. (1982), who grouped the antecedentsof commitment into four broad categories of characteristics:

1) Personal;2) Role-Related;3) Work Experience;4) Structural.

Yet, there is little parsimony as to which factors are related with individualunilateral commitment and with dual commitment as an independent construct(Martin et al., 1986). Many researchers do not explain on what grounds theychoose specific variables. For instance, many personal (demographic) variablesare included without adequate theoretical rationale (Martin et al., 1986; Fukamiand Larson, 1984; Brief and Aldag, 1977). Even though providing a theoreticalbackground for selecting possible predictors may rely on the purpose of theresearch, noting the theoretical background for selection of predicted variables isdesirable.2

In defining the variables of company and union commitment, our workconcentrates on four broad areas of characteristics. These are:

1) Demographic, including age, gender, education level, marital status,number of children, income, company, job and union membership tenure;2) Job (Company) Related, including job satisfaction and intention to quitcompany;


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3) Union Related, including union satisfaction, intention to quit union andperceived general union attitude;4) Labour–Management Relationship Climate.

Demographic Characteristics

Personal variables have been found to relate to organization commitment Theseinclude age (Angle and Perry, 1983; Steers, 1977; Fukami and Larson, 1984),marriage (Martin et al., 1986; Brief and Aldag, 1977), children (Martin et al.,1986; Brief and Aldag, 1977), income/wage (Sherer and Morishima, 1989),tenure, both company/job (Cohen and Jermier, 1989; Barling et al., 1990; Morrisand Sherman, 1981), and union (Fukami and Larson, 1984; Sherer andMorishima, 1989; Hrebiniak, 1974). However, there is much less evidence ofa relationship between some demographic characteristics with union commitment(Adkins and Reavlin, 1991).

Given a high degree of correlation between age and tenure, a theoreticalrationale for their relationship to company and union commitment, asMarch and Simon (1958) noted, derives from the fact that as ageand organizational (job) tenure increase, employee investments in theorganization increase and socialization becomes more complete; so individualstend to have greater perceived attractiveness toward their currentorganization or job. This causes higher psychological attachment, a result ofmore limited opportunities for alternative employment. The relationships of ageand company (job) tenure to company commitment can be explained on thebasis of side-bet theory. Older employees with longer organizational (job)tenure are more likely to be committed to the company since they might havegreater investments or larger number of side-bets in their organization (job).They do not want to take a chance of losing benefits by changing organizations.Sherer and Morishima (1989) state that employees earn rewards in their continuedcontribution to their company, and age and company (job) tenure serve as proxiesfor these gains.

Similarly, older members with longer membership tenure are predictedto be more committed to unions since they may develop more benefits, includinglay-off protection, promotion, vacations, for older workers (Freeman andMedoff, 1984). These benefits become greater as union membership tenurebecomes longer, even though unions may not provide as much direct benefit toolder members as companies do to older employees. This produces our first set ofhypothesis:

1a: Age will affect company commitment in a positive direction.1b: Age will affect union commitment in a positive direction.2a: Company tenure will affect company commitment in a positive

direction.2b: Company tenure will affect union commitment in a positive direction.3a: Job tenure will affect company commitment in a positive direction.3b: Job tenure will affect union commitment in a positive direction.4a: Union membership tenure will affect company commitment in

a positive direction.


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4b: Union membership tenure will affect union commitment in a positivedirection.

Less frequently used demographic characteristic variables are marital status andnumber of children. These may increase an individual’s responsibilities and,therefore, make them less willing to lose investments in organizations. Based onside-bet theory, these are expected to be positively related with both organizationand union commitment (Magenau and Martin, 1985; Martin et al., 1986).Married employees and/or employees with children take their spouse and/orchildren into consideration when making important decisions, such as changingcompany. Therefore, being married and having children may become side-bets, which may influence employees to continue with organizations. Somemanagers believe married employees are more committed and responsible(Martin et al., 1986) because they may be financially more dependent on theorganization. This leads to our second set of hypothesis:

5a: Married marital status will affect company commitment in a positivedirection.

5b: Married marital status will affect union commitment in a positivedirection.

6a: Number of children will affect company commitment in a positivedirection.

6b: Number of children will affect union commitment in a positivedirection.

It is argued that high job income (salary) is positively related with commitmentto both organization (Angle and Perry, 1983; Sherer and Morishima, 1989) andunion (Sherer and Morishima, 1989; Fukami and Larson, 1984). This is based onBecker’s (1960) theory that those with higher wages have more to lose and,therefore, would be less likely to leave, and more likely to be committed to,organizations. Exchange Theory also explains the positive relationship betweenhigh wages and both types of commitment. Higher wages indicate larger returnson investments and needs gratification, which then leads to more committedemployees. In unionized companies wages are the most important issue forcollective bargaining, suggesting a relationship between wages and unioncommitment (Korea Labor Institute, 1990).

However, there are few consistently observed relationships between wages andunion commitment (Martin et al., 1986). Unionism is, as Klandermans (1989)notes, a positive income elastic good, such that it is more valued by thoseemployees who have more, rather than less, money (Sherer and Morishima, 1989).This relates to our third set of hypothesis:

7a: Income level will affect company commitment in a positive direction.7b: Income level will affect union commitment in a positive direction.

Education level may be inversely related to both forms of commitment (Angle andPerry, 1981; Martin et al., 1986; Fukami and Larson, 1984; Morris and Steers, 1980).This is based on side-bet theory as less educated employees have fewer alternativeemployment opportunities outside the organization. Therefore, they must make a


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greater number of side-bets in their employing organization, and be more committedto their current organization. Role Conflict Theory can also be relevant. Given thatorganizations may not be able to gratify the greater expectations of more educatedemployees (whose expectations concerning the organization may be differentfrom their actual experiences), they may be differently or inversely committed tothe organization. This produces a fourth set of hypothesis:

8a: Educational level will affect company commitment in a negativedirection.

8b: Educational level will affect union commitment in a negativedirection.

Gender is another characteristic. Males may be more committed thanfemales to companies (Angle and Perry, 1983; Sherer and Morishima, 1989).However, gender has been found to have a relatively inconsistent relationship withcommitment (Angle and Perry, 1981; Hrebiniak and Alutto, 1972). The relationshipbetween gender and company commitment can be explained via side-bet theory.Men tend to make more effort to attain their current positions and to advance inresponse to greater expectations and responsibilities. This may be more typicalin Asian societies. Men usually receive greater monetary returns on theirinvestments in organizations because of longer working periods and higher jobpositions. On the other hand, females may be more committed than males to unions.

The relationship between gender and union commitment is connected toExchange Theory (Mowday et al., 1982) as women may think there is more to begained from being a union member since they are in a weaker position in terms ofemployment conditions. Freeman and Medoff (1984) note this is the case asthe union wage effect, for instance, is greater for women than for men(Sherer and Morishima, 1989). This produces our fifth set of hypothesis:

9a: Male gender will affect company commitment in a positive direction.9b: Male gender will affect union commitment in a negative direction.

Job (Company) Related Characteristics

Employees with greater job satisfaction have been found to be more committed toorganizations than those with lower job satisfaction (Schriesheim and Tsui, 1980;Conlon and Gallagher, 1987; Barling et al., 1990; Sherer and Morishima, 1989).Exchange Theory explanations see employees with higher job satisfaction givingcommitment to organizations in reciprocation for equitable treatment. Cohen andJermier (1989) found employees with low job satisfaction to be more committedto unions. Sherer and Morishima (1989) also found facets of job dissatisfaction,such as supervisor dissatisfaction, related to union commitment. This producesour sixth set of hypothesis:

10a: Job satisfaction will affect company commitment in a positivedirection.

10b: Job satisfaction will affect union commitment in a negativedirection.


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Job quitting intention is predicted to be negatively related toorganization commitment. Ritzer and Trice (1969) note that highlycommitted individuals are not likely to have been mobile. Mowday et al.(1982) also state that the strongest or most predictable behavioural outcomeof employee commitment should be reduced turnover. Mobley et al. (1979)conclude an inverse relationship between turnover and company commitment:the more accrued benefits, the more committed to the organization, and so forth,all of which make individuals less likely to leave (Alutto et al., 1973).This produces our seventh set of hypothesis:

11a: Intention to quit job will affect company commitment in a negativedirection.

11b: Intention to quit job will affect union commitment in a negativedirection.

Union Related Characteristics

The relationship between union satisfaction and union commitment may be positive(Mcshane, 1985). The theoretical rationale is similar to that of job and companysatisfaction. Based on Exchange Theory, commitment patterns, as Magenau et al.(1988) note, rely on how satisfied individuals are with specific exchanges with eachorganization, such as unions. In this respect, dual commitment may occur ifexchanges with both union and company are satisfactory, whereas unilateralcommitment may exist if individuals are more strongly involved with one than theother (Stagner and Rosen, 1965). This relates to our eighth set of hypothesis:

12a: Union satisfaction will affect company commitment in a negativedirection.

12b: Union satisfaction will affect union commitment in a positivedirection.

Using a similar logic as applied to intention to quit a job, union quittingintention may be negatively related with union commitment. That is, highlycommitted employees by definition are desirous of remaining with theorganization and working towards organizational goals and should hence beless likely to leave (Mowday et al., 1982). Additionally, Conlon and Gallagher(1987) found employees who left the union, but remained in the organization, hadlower commitment to the organization than both union members and non-unionmembers. This produces our ninth set of hypothesis:

13a: Intention to quit union will affect company commitment in a negativedirection.

13b: Intention to quit union will affect union commitment in a negativedirection.

Despite its increasing importance in many areas of ER research (McShane,1986), general union attitude has been less frequently included in studies. Notsurprisingly, employees’ positive general attitudes towards unions are deeplyinvolved with union commitment (Gordon et al., 1980). The rationale is explained


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as employees having a favourable attitude and belief towards a union leading to anincrease in union commitment. This relates to our next hypothesis:

14: General union attitude will affect union commitment in a positivedirection.

Labour–Management Relationship Climate

Some propose that dual commitment is a function of the climate of the labour–management relationship (Heider, 1958). The moderating effects of such a climatehave been analysed (Fuller and Hester, 1998). In developing their model, Angle andPerry (1986) depended heavily on the theoretical basis of cognitive consistency.According to this, it is difficult to have simultaneous commitment to both companyand union that are in conflict with one another (Kiesler, 1971). Thus, dualcommitment is possiblewhen the ER between company and union are favourable, butthe emergence of strong conflict tends to push employees towards unilateralcommitment to one side or the other (Angle and Perry, 1986). On the other hand,in situations where relative cooperation and peace exist between company and union,dual commitment would flourish, even among employees who are deeply involvedin one of the organizations (Magenau et al., 1988). Angle and Perry (1986)

Table 1. Hypotheses between dependent variables and predictor variables

Hypothesis:

Independent Variable No. Company Union

Theoretical

Justification

1. Demographic Characteristics

Age (AGE) 1. þ þ S

Company tenure (CTENURE) 2. þ þ S

Job tenure (JTENURE) 3. þ þ S

Union membership tenure (CUNION) 4. þ þ S

Marital status (MARITAL) single &

divorced ¼ 0, married ¼ 1

5. þ þ S

Number of children (NCHILD) 6. þ þ S

Income level (SALARY) 7. þ þ E & S

Educational level (EDUCATION) 8. 2 2 S & R

Gender (GENDER) female ¼ 0, male ¼ 1 9. þ 2 S & E

2. Job Related Characteristics

Job satisfaction (JS) 10. þ 2 E

Intention to quit job (IQC) 11. 2 2 E & R

3. Union Related Characteristics

Union satisfaction (US) 12. 2 þ E

Intention to quit union (IQU) 13. 2 2 E & R

General union attitude (GU) 14. þ

4. Labour–Management Relationship

Labour–management relationship Climate (LM) 15. þ þ R

Notes: E: Exchange theory; S: Side-bet theory; R: Role conflict theory.


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report that the labour–management relationship climate is positively correlatedwith dual commitment. Furthermore, a negative labour–management relationshipclimate is related with unilateral commitment (Cohen and Jermier, 1989).

The climate of the labour–management relationship is an important determinantof both company and union commitment (Angle and Perry, 1986). Dual commitmentis thought to come about in part from employees giving credit to both managementand union whenever the relations between the two are good (Dean, 1954).This produces our next set of hypothesis:

15a: Labour–management relationship climate will affect companycommitment in a positive direction.

15b: Labour–management relationship climate will affect unioncommitment in a positive direction.

Table 1 summarizes the hypotheses developed. For each predictor variable theexpected directionality of the relationships with company and union commitmentand the theoretical justification which underlies the expectation, is briefly noted.

Discussion and Implications

There are limitations to our work, of course. The review cannot be total and thereare both gaps and, of course, issues common to social science. These includevariability in empirical samples, biased and low response rates, focus onintentions over behaviours, and multiple, not just dual, commitment (Reichers,1985). However, the overview does give an indication and flavour of the field andits historical development, especially for management generalists and for thosewith less knowledge of the area.

Another important discussion point, of course, is the generalizability of largelywestern, mostly North American in origin, research and findings on dualcommitment. This is a common issue with various areas of management, especiallypeople management. Some research on areas, such as performance appraisal, hastaken this into account (Rowley, 2004). For instance, how do we take intoconsideration the impact of different national cultures, such as the individualismof the USA with variants of Buddhism in Thailand and Confucianism inSouth Korea? The ethnocentricism of much research needs to be recognized.

Linked to this are practical issues, such as definitions, multiple commitment,causality and bias. In short, what is meant by commitment, especially in Asia?Of course, there may not just be commitment that is dual, but rather multiple, toseveral bodies. How do we know the direction of causality, are characteristics thecause of commitment or the result? Much research is via questionnaires, yet notonly how representative are these, but what about their bias? Perhaps only themost committed bother to complete them?

Nevertheless, this work counters ideas that commitment is zero sum andmutually exclusive, that is, employees committed to unions cannot be simulta-neously committed to companies or vice versa. While unitarist perspectives inorganizations and management are seemingly prevalent, especially in the Americanviewpoint, the realities are that pluralist views exist and can be widespread.


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Commitment to unions need not be seen by management as a threat or evendysfunctional. There may be concurrent commitment. Management needs torecognize the positive functions of unions in order to maintain better labour–management relations and in turn enhanced performance. Such points also havemore widespread relevance for management in other countries.

In Asia, prior to political reform, the subject of ER, including union and dualcommitment had not been rigorously studied and debated because of its sensitivenature. For instance, in South Korea most researchers tended to deal with thesubject in a general manner (Kim, 1988; Park, 1991). Studies are alsounsatisfactory in terms of the quality of work since the justifications and measuresof commitment are not theory-based through extensive literature reviews. Theiroverall results, however, showed the generalizability of some predictors (such aslabour–management relationship, union tenure and union participation).

This work has attempted to ground the discussion of dual commitment within aframework, arguing that determination on dimensionality can be usefully based ontheory, rather than on explorative empiricism. Our study also included a number ofvariables and then grouped them into several categories and predictors, suchas company and union related, associated with both company and union(i.e. labour–management relationship climate), and demographic aspects. Moreimportantly, a company, union and dual commitment scale were included.

Conclusion

Much of management remains concerned with the area of commitment, especiallygiven the benefits that are seen to flow from it. In this paper we reviewed studies interms of organizational, union and dual commitment. The approaches taken andproblems encountered in this pointed to the need for more precise measures andgreater care in designing research examining relationships among commitmentand its predictors. Theoretical explanations were also sometimes lacking orunderdeveloped. Accordingly, we developed a theoretically underpinned researchframework on dual commitment. This can be applied to Asian organizations.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the referees for comments on earlier versions of thispaper. All remaining mistakes remain their own.

Notes1 This type of accuracy of measurement is often called construct validity (Thorndike and Hagen, 1977),

the degree to which a measurement instrument measures the trait/dimension it is designed to measure

(Cook and Campbell, 1979). Schwab (1980) also defines construct validity as representing the

correspondence between a construct (conceptual definition of a variable) and the operational procedure

to measure or manipulate that construct. From this definition we can think of construct validity as

representing the correlation coefficient between the construct and the measure. The main danger of

defining construct validity in correlational terms is that it may be interpreted as suggesting that the

construct is real in some operational way and that some real measure of it is obtainable. Such an

interpretation would be incorrect. As Nunnaly (1967) stated: ‘the problem of regarding the construct as

real is not that of searching for a needle in the haystack, but that of searching for a needle that is not in


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the haystack’. It is imperative that the conceptual nature of the construct be kept in mind: the construct

is nothing more or less than our mental definition of a variable. Generally, construct validity is

demonstrated through the correlation of the construct with other variables with which it should

correlate on theoretical grounds, e.g. related constructs. Based on the researcher’s knowledge of the

construct, predictions are made as to how a measure of the construct should behave in diverse

situations. If the measure behaves in a manner consistent with the theory of the construct, then that is

evidence of construct validity (Kuruvilla, 1989).2. Failure to provide acceptable theoretical bases when selecting predictor variables may result in

specification error, a common problem in behaviuoral science studies (Jeong, 1990).

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employee commitment: a review of the background, determinants and theoretical perspectives

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