Rewards, investments, alternatives and organizational commitment: Empirical evidence and theoretical development

This paper reports the findings of a study into organizational commitment in a large producer cooperative. The proposition that commitment could be explained as an additive function of rewards, investments and alternatives was explored using a range of attitudinal and behavioural indices of commitment. Multiple regression analysis did not provide support for the full model. Factor analysis of the multiple commitment indices produced little evidence of a general organizational commitment construct. These findings support the view that there are conceptual problems with the organizational commitment construct. It is argued that concentrating on actions rather than entities as commitment targets may be a useful way for research to proceed in this field.