Affective and continuance commitment to the organization: test of an integrated model in the Turkish context

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0147-1767(02)00032-9

The present study investigated organizational commitment in Turkey, a predominantly collectivist society. A model of antecedents and consequences of organizational commitment was tested, where commitment was conceptualized as composed of two dimensions, affective and continuance. Affective commitment was hypothesized to develop from positive work experiences and to predict desirable outcomes. Continuance commitment, on the other hand, was argued to be culture-bound. In line with Becker (Am. J. Sociol. 66 (1960) 32), it was proposed that in a collectivist culture like Turkey, the normative nature of the employment relationship would generate expectations for loyalty to the organization, and the perceived costs of violating these expectations would be reflected in increased continuance commitment. In particular, it was expected that the endorsement of generalized norms for loyalty to one's organization and informal recruitment would lead to higher levels of continuance commitment. The investigation involved two phases. In Study 1, in-depth interviews were conducted with Turkish employees to develop emic items for the scales of interest. In Study II, the proposed model was tested using structural equations modeling. The results not only confirmed the cross-cultural generalizability of the antecedents and consequences of affective commitment, but also indicated that loyalty norms and ingroup approval increased continuance commitment. The influence of norms and the ingroup was stronger for allocentrics. Furthermore, for allocentrics, continuance commitment was related to more positive job outcomes. The results underline the importance of normative concerns in understanding employee attachment in collectivist contexts and also point to a need for a better measurement of calculative commitment.