can commitment be managed? a longitudinal analysis of employee commitment and human resource...

CAN COMMITMENT BE MANAQED? A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT AND

HUMAN RESOURCE POLICIES Tim Morris, London Business School

Helen Lydka, Henley Management College Mark Fenton OCreevy, LBS Centre for Organisational Research

INTRODUCTION

One of the central aims of human resource strategies in recent years has been to increase employee commitment to the organisation. This appears to be because high commitment is thought to result in lower labour turnover, better product quality, a greater capacity to innovate, and employee flexibility, each of which can enhance the ability of the firm to achieve competitive advantage (Walton, 1985a). As with the growth of interest in human resource management in general, management preoccupations with commitment have been closely linked to interest in the success of Japanese companies, where employee commitment seems to be relatively strong, and exemplars of ‘excellence’ in the West. Commitment is a well-researched concept, but the human resource literature has tended to assert uncritically that it is a desired goal without demonstrating empirically that it has positive consequences for organisational performance or that commitment can be managed through human resource policies.

One reason for this failure to demonstrate the purported organisational benefits of high employee commitment is that most studies are cross-sectional. While they have been able to measure correlations between aspects of work or company policies and employee commitment at particular points in time, the impact and utility of policies over time have not been so well monitored. The antecedents of commitment may well alter depending on stage of career and job change as well asnon-work factors (Arthur et al., 1989; Nicholson and West, 1988). Companies wishing to implement policies which enhance commitment may therefore have to takeintoaccount thechangingattitudesof their employeesand the factors which affect these. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of companies’ human resource policies on the commitment of a group of employees over a period of five years after graduation and entry to work and to consider which factors influenced levels of commitment. We address the questions of what sort of policies impact on commitment and are they the same at different times? If they do alter, to what is this due?

Briefly, our results show the following. First, human resource policies appeared to influence levels of organisational commitment. Second, important differences in our results could be seen between those who have stayed with their employer (stayers) and those who left to work elsewhere (leavers). Third, human resource policies had a differential impact over time on commitment. Fourth, tenure intentions and attitudinal commitment were influenced by different human resource policies but, fifth, notwithstanding these differences, the most important policy affecting stayers’ and leavers’ commitment after five years of employment was career prospects.

The following section briefly reviews the perceived importance of organisational commitment in the human resource literature and considers research on the antecedents of commitment. Then we describe the research sample and method in detail before presenting the results. Finally, the implications for theory and practice are considered.

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL VOL 3 NO 3 21

TIM MORRIS, HELEN LYDKA A N D MARK FENTON OCREEVEY

COMMITMENT AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Although human resource management does not have a unified theoretical framework, it is commonly seen to encompass a set of policies designed to achieve certain organisational outcomes, including higher employee commitment and motivation, on the assumption that these outcomes will support the achievement of the company's business strategy (Guest, 1987; Storey, 1989). Commitment, which broadly involves the notion of attachment and loyalty by an individual to an organisation or subunit of it, such as an establishment or branch, has been seen as a central objective of human resource management because its supposed benefits, including psychological well-being and enhanced self-esteem, will mean a more satisfied, productive and adaptable workforce (Beer et al., 1984; Walton, 1985b).

However, the capacity of firms to engender higher commitment from their staff has been called into question for numerous reasons, particularly in the UK. These include: a general climate of low trust in employment relationships (Fox, 1974; Guest and Dewe, 1991); suspicion among managers and employees of human resource management as yet another 'fad' which is in reality little more than a repackaging of traditional personnel management; pressures imposed on managers to adopt short-term solutions to problems through financial control systems, in multidivisional firms in particular (Purcell, 1989); and the inability of human resource specialists to develop and implement consistent strategies over the longer term, not least because of their lack of power at the top levels of organisations (MacInnes, 1987; Morris and Wood, 1991; Sisson, 1989).

From the perspective of the human resource literature, managing commitment requires attention to matters such as selection, socialisation, training and development, job design, and organisational reward systems (Fombrun et al., 1984; Iles et al., 1990). The importance of employee perceptions that the organisation can offer opportunities for advancement as well as act fairly in staffing decisions and provide challenging jobs has also been stressed (Beer et al., 1984). Other specific human resource policies which have been associated with enhanced commitment include the perceived fairness of promotion practices; accuracy of merit assessment; and performance feedback followed by goal setting (Folger and Konovsky, 1989; Ogilvie, 1986; Tziner and Latham, 1989). Clearly articulated career paths and organisational values have also been positively correlated with employee commitment (Caldwell et al., 1990).

However, the causal factors or antecedents of organisational commitment have proved moredifficult todetermine thanitscorrelates. Because it correlates strongly with motivation and overall job satisfaction, Mathieu and Zajak (1990) have concluded that commitment is part of an individual's generalised affective response to the work environment and that the more proximal factors in that work environment, such as job design, will influence employee reactions more than distant factors such as size or overall structure. But in seeking to manage commitment the task is complicated by virtue of there being few factors which have been shown to have a clear causal relationship with commitment and, throughout an employee's working life, the antecedents are likely to alter (Mowday et al., 1982).

Summarising this area, Guest (1992) groups potential causes into five categories: personal characteristics; role related experiences; work experiences; structural factors; and personnel policies. Placing greater weight on the results of longitudinal studies, which might be

22 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL VOL 3 N O 3

CAN COMMITMENT BE MANAGED?

expected to shed more light on causal relationships, Guest focuses on the importance of met expectations in jobs and work involvement, although he notes the need for involvement may vary between individuals. In policy terms, this means that providing job interest and challenge is important and that policies such as selection, induction and development match the reality of employment conditions rather than over-selling the organisation. Less weight is generally placed on more macro-level company policies such as fair treatment and job security or structural issues including the degree of centralisation of decision-making. The reason for this is that while organisation structure and commitment may be correlated, it is the actual impact of structural arrangements on work processes and job characteristics which will affect commitment levels.

It is this emphasis on individual or workgroup practices which bridges the theoretical work with the more normative approaches. The latter have tended to focus on employee involvement at the workgroup level as the central component of innovative human resource philosophies but have arguably placed insufficient emphasis on the need for careful implementation of human resource policies over time and the need for consistency of approach with other areas of decision-making if high commitment is to be achieved.

Finally, given the nature of our sample, graduates in the first five years of work, it seems reasonable to argue that they will have certain specific concerns which will affect their commitment. It is likely that they would see job challenge in terms of both the application of technical knowledge and managerial opportunities. Furthermore, career progress, measured through greater responsibilities, higher pay and status will become progressively more important over the first few years of full-time work and they will be committed to the sort of employers who can provide these (Arnold and Mackenzie Davey, 1992).

Against this background, the questions we want to address in the remainder of the article are: what sorts of policies do appear to have influenced the commitment of the employees in our sample over a period of five years and are there differences between the stayers and leavers? How have levels of commitment varied over time? What are the implications for organisations wishing to influence the commitment levels of employees?

DEFINITIONS OF ORGANISATIONAL COMMITMENT

It is now commonly noted that consensus over the definition of commitment does not exist but, primarily, commitment has been divided into two types, attitudinal and behavioural (Coopey and Hartley, 1991; Mowday et al., 1982). Attitudinal commitment indicates an affective response by members to the organisation which involves loyalty and support (Buchanan, 1974). The definition which has most frequently been adopted is that coined by Porter et al. (1974604) as the 'relative strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organisation'. Operationally, this definition has been broken down into three factors - a strong belief in and acceptance of the organisation's goals and values; a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organisation; and a strong desire to maintain membership of the organisation - and has been measured using the fifteen item Organisational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) which has been widely employed in many research studies (eg. Angle and Perry, 1983; Bateman and Strasser, 1984; Curry et al., 1986; Mabey, 1986; Porter et al., 1974). As a result of the wide usage of the OCQ Reichers


TIM MORRIS, HELEN LYDKA AND MARK FENTON OCREEVEY

(1985:467) suggested that this has become “‘the” approach to commitment‘. Another form of commitment is behavioural. This has received less research attention

than attitudinal commitment and focuses more on why employees choose to retain membership of an organisation or to quit (Angle and Perry, 1983). The two main proponents of a behavioural model of commitment are Salancik (1977) and Becker (1960). In Salancik’s model behavioural commitment develops from an individual’s actions which bind him or her to the organisation. These actions often surround the circumstances of job choice, eg. the freedom of job choice and its perceived irrevocability, and attitudes are subsequently brought in line with behaviours in a desire to maintain cognitive consistency (Festinger, 1957). Salancikalsoargues that past and present commitment to an organisation arestrongly linked to future tenure intentions, thus high behavioural commitment will be associated with a desire to remain with the same organisation in the future. Partial support for Salancik‘s work has been provided by Kline and Peters (1991) and O‘Reilly and Caldwell (1981).

Becker‘s model of commitment is derived from the proposition that individuals become committed as a result of investments, or side-bets, in the organisation which would be lost, at some perceived cost to the individual, if the employee were to leave. Side-bets may include pension schemes, share options, status and organisation-speafic training, and commitment develops after investments have accumulated and have been recognised. To date, support for the side-bets model has been weak but this may be a result of inadequate measures (Cohen and Lawenberg, 1990; Meyer and Allen, 1984).

Attitudinal and behavioural commitment share common outcomes but explain these in different ways. One such outcome is the maintenance of organisational membership, but while the former suggests this is a positive decision resulting from organisational identification and loyalty, the latter suggests it is a passive result of prior actions which constrain the individual to stay. Both forms of commitment are based, to some extent, on instrumental or calculative considerations so that employees commit themselves to an organisation in the expectation of receiving tangible benefits in exchange (Angle and Perry, 1983; Mottaz, 1988; Steers, 1977). However, while theories of attitudinal commitment suggest this is exchanged for valued organisational rewards, behavioural commitment involves a calculation of the costs or penalties incurred by leaving rather than the rewards to be gained by staying with the organisation. By focusing on the sunk costs incurred by employees over time, theories of behavioural commitment can explain why employees may remain with an organisation even when the current exchange relationship is perceived to be unbalanced.

Recently, the possibility that commitment is a multidimensional concept combining elements of attitudinal and behavioural (and possibly other) components has been pro- posed. Mowday et al. (1982) have argued that a reciprocal relationship may exist between attitudinal and behavioural commitment in which attitudes influence behaviour and vice versa, while others have suggested that future conceptualising should concentrate on a framework which envelops both approaches to commitment (Angle and Perry, 1983; Oliver, 1990).

Probably the most ambitious attempt to develop such a framework has been undertaken by Allen and Meyer (1990) in proposing that there are three components of attitudinal commitment. These are affective commitment which involves the idea of wanting to remain

24 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL VOL 3 NO 3


with the organisation becauseof positive work experiences; continuance commitment which involves the idea of needing to remain with the organisation because of accumulated investments and a lack of employment alternatives (cf. Becker‘s sidebets model); and normative commitment which involves the idea of feeling one ought to remain with the organisation because of personal nonns and values. Meyer and Allen (1991) distinguish these components of attitudinal commitment from behavioural commitment by which they refer specifically to Salancik’s theory which focuses on job choice circumstances. They suggest all three commitment components have a common link with turnover but that each component may ’develop somewhat independently ... as a function of different antecedents’ (Allen and Meyer, 19904). To date, their results suggest that while affective and continuance commitment are empirically distinguishable there is no conclusive evidence of a normative element distinct from affective commitment. Similar conclusions have been reached by Caldwell et al. (1990) using different terms and conditions. In short, while there is agreement that commitment refers to a state of psychological attachment by the individual to the organisation, different types of attachment exist ranging from instrumental to normative, and whatever the nature of the attachment, it may vary in strength between individuals and over time.

There is also the issue of the antecedents of commitment. For those seeking to manage it, the problem could be phrased in terms of the extent to which commitment is determined by individual or member-based factors as opposed to being influenced by organisational factors. Models of behavioural commitment are strongly member-based because the locus of events that culminate in commitment is the individual’s prior behaviour and situation (Angle and Perry, 1983). Some of these may be imposed by circumstance such as age, sex, education level and family background, others may be voluntary such as job choice; all are side-bets because they have cost or forfeiture implications.

Although studies have found correlations between certain biographical details and organisational commitment (see the meta-analysis of Mathieu and Zajak, 1990, for an overview), in general these do not appear to play a large role in determining commitment (Mottaz, 1988). Several studies have revealed a negative relationshipbetween education and attitudinal commitment (Angle and Perry, 1981; Morris and Sherman, 1981) and Meyer and Allen (1988) found that respondents with graduate degrees (as in this research) were less committed than those with undergraduate degrees after only eleven months of employment. The evidence on the relationship between personality and commitment is more complex. Some researchers stress the importance of personal predisposition in determining levels of organisational commitment, suggesting that some people are more likely to develop commitment toward a particular organisation than others (eg. Lee et al., 1990; Weiner, 1982). Others have failed to find any strongly significant relationships between personality variablesand commitment (Batemanand Strasser, 1984; Guest and Dewe, 1991). Probably the strongest denunciation has been made by DeCotiis and Summers (1987 465) who concluded ’there is no “commitment type” of individual; that is, it is not true that certain individuals are more predisposed to commitment to an organization by virtue of some unique configuration of personal characteristics than others’.

Even if certain individualsdo have a greater propensity towards commitment than others, organisational experiences are a critical intervening variable. Factors such as pre-entry



expectations as well as experiences in the workplace have been found to influence levels of commitment significantly (Allen and Meyer, 1990; Buchanan, 1974; Meyer and Allen, 1988). The literature suggests, therefore, that company policies can play an important role in providing or inhibiting opportunities for employees to develop commitment.

The following section details the sample of individuals and our method. We then present the results which show levels of commitment over a five year period, and indicate which human resource policies were associated with commitment at particular times and over time for both those whose who stayed with and those who left their original employers. In the last part of the article we discuss some of the implications of the findings.

METHOD Longitudinal data were collected from a sample of 98 UK graduates at three points in time:'

H): pre-entry data were collected three/four weeks prior to graduates' organisational entry (September 1981).

tl: data were collected six months into respondents' employment (March 1982).

t2: data were collected five years into respondents' employment (September 1986-March 1987).

On each occasion the data were collected by means of a postal questionnaire which was mailed to respondents' home addresses in order to stress the confidential nature of the survey.

Sample

At H) access was secured to the graduate intake of eighteen companies in the UK engineering sector. The first questionnaire (H)) was sent to 354 graduates, primarily although not exclusively from Engineering and Science disciplines, of which 214 were returned (60%). The second questionnaire (tl) was sent to the 214 graduates who had responded at t0 of which there were 135 responses (63% of 214). The third questionnaire (t2) was sent out to 172 employees: all 135 who had responded at t l and, where a home address was available, to those who had responded at to only. Ninety-eight usable questionnaires were returned at t2 (57% of 172) and these 98 questionnaires were used for the current data analysis. Of these 98respondents,82(84%) had responded onall threeoccasions, ie. to, tl andt2, while 16 (16%) had responded at t0 and t2 only. The overwhelming majority of the sample were males (90%) in their late twenties; 85% had degrees in Science and Engineering subjects with 40% of the sample having pursued a sandwich course; 18% of respondents were sponsored on their first degree.

By t2, as a result of organisational changes such as mergers and acquisitions and respondent mobility, 42 companies were represented. Fifty-six of the 98 respondents (57%) were still employed with their original organisation (henceforth referred to as stayers) while



42 respondents (43%) had left their original organisations (henceforth referred to as leavers). The similarities/differencesbetween thestayers and leavers identified in the current sample were examined as a way of further understanding the factors related to turnover. In crosstabulations none of the biographical, educational or family circumstance variables revealed any significant associations with attitudinal commitment, tenure intentions or turnover, ie. whether respondents were stayers or leavers. Of the leavers, 31 (74%) had left their original company within the first three years of employment while 11 (26%) had left their original company after four years or more. Seven of the leavers (17%) had been with their current employer for four or more years while 35 (83%) had been with their current company for three years or less. The stayers had all been with their employers for between five and six years.

Dependent variables Attitudinal commitment. Attitudinal commitment was measured at t l and t2 using the 15- item version of the Organisational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) (Porter et al., 1974). Six of the items were reverse scored to reduce response set bias. Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement with fifteen statements related to organisational commitment (eg. I am proud to tell others that I am part of this organisation) and responses were measured using a five-point Likert-type scale (5=Strongly agree; l=Strongly disagree). An overall measure of attitudinal commitment was obtained by using the mean score for the fifteen items. The psychometric properties of this measure have already been demonstrated (Mowday et al., 1979) and, in the present study,Cronbach’s alpha was0.87and 0.91 at t l and t2 respectively.

It should be noted that the OCQ has been criticised for conflating values (eg. I find that my values and the values of this organisation are very similar) and behavioural outcomes (eg. a desire to retain organisational membership) (Caldwell et al., 1990; Guest and Dewe, 1991) so that significant correlations between the OCQ responses and turnover behaviour are not surprising. However, the OCQ questions which do refer to organisational membership all concern an active desire to retain membership rather than a passive need to stay because of sunk costs or a perceived lack of alternatives. This means that the OCQ is not measuring behavioural commitment as it is defined by Salancik and Becker. The OCQ has also been widely used in other studies of organisational commitment and it is only relatively recently that an alternative scale for all types of workers has been developed (Allen and Meyer, 1990):

Tenure intentions. The measure of behavioural commitment used in this study was based on respondents’ tenure intentions and data were collected at tl and t2. Respondents‘ tenure intentions have been cited as predictive of actual behaviour Wine and Peters, 1991; Kraut, 1975; Michaels and Spector, 1982). Our measure was the same as that used by OReilly and Caldwell (1981) to test behavioural commitment. Respondents indicated on a five-point scale the likelihood of working with the same company in three years’ time, with a high score (5=Certainly) representing high behavioural commitment and a low score (l=Certainly not) representing low behavioural commitment.



This measure of tenure intentions is limited because it is based on a single-item question and cannot therefore be subjected to a test of reliability. While caution has to be exercised in interpreting the results the use of this measure does give some indication of influences on levels of behavioural commitment and how these may differ from influences on attitudinal commitment. As with attitudinal commitment, it is only relatively recently that a more generic scale of continuance (behavioural) commitment has been developed (Allen and Meyer, 1990).

Independent variables: human resource (HR) policies The independent variables studied encompassed pre-entry expectations and post-entry experiences of various human resource policies.

Pre-entry erpecta tions. Data concerning respondents' pre-entry expectations were assessed at H), ie. prior to organisational entry, by asking them a battery of questions about the human resource policies of their prospective employers. An overall measure of respondents' levels of pre-entry expectations was obtained by calculating the mean score of their responses with high scores (5=Accuratedescnption) indicating high expectationsand low scores (2=Totally inaccurate description) representing low expectations.

Post-entry experiences. These were assessed by asking respondents to state the accuracy of a battery of statements concerning human resource policies as listed in Table 1. Data concerning respondents' perceptions of human resource policies were collected at tl, six months into employment, and t2, five years into employment. Positive or favourable experiences were indicated by a high score (5=Accurate description) and negative or unfavourable experiences by a low score (2=Totally inaccurate description).

TABLE 1 Measures of Human Resource Policies

Pre-entry expectations Quality of induction Individual graduate training given Further training and education encouraged Job offers high responsibility Job offers supervisory responsibilities Good career prospects Relatively good salary

The job involves variety The job uses individual abilities The job provides intellectual achievement The work is interesting Company policies are fair Management has concern for people The company offers job security Working conditions are good

In examining the whole set of human resource variables two problems arose: (a) given that many cases had missing values on one or more variables (distributed in a fairly random pattern), listwise deletion of missing values produced a substantially reduced data set; and (b) high intercorrelation between the human resource variables meant that there was a



.7651" 1.oooO .3302

.4338"

.2758

.1390 .3051

problem of multicollinearity in regression analysis making B coefficients hard to interpret. Factor analysis was unhelpful here as any scale of HR variables will tend to have more missing values than an individual item thus reducing the number of cases available for analysis.

Given the above, a subset of variables were selected based on the following criteria:

.4511"

.3302' 1.oooO

.2059

.1588

.1733 ,2151

1. They covered the range of the HR areas. 2. They accounted for nearly as much variance in the dependent variables as the whole set. 3. They were reasonably orthogonal.

The HR variables selected were:

1. Good career prospects. 2. Interesting work. 3. Fair company policies. 4. Relatively good salary. 5. Job security.

The variable interesting work was subsequently replaced with job uses abilities because the high mean and decreased varianceof interesting workat t2 suggested a possible problem with restriction of range. The two variables were highly correlated. The means and standard deviations for all the variables are available from the second author on request. The intercorrelations at tl for the HR variables selected for use in this study are presented in Table 2.

TABLE 2 Intercorrelations for HR Variables at Time 1 ( t 2 )

Correlations

A/C T/I Career opportunities Fair policies Good salary Job security Job uses Abilities

A/C

1 .m .7651" .4511"

4 1 4 " .2909 .1769 .4460-

T/I Career 1 OPPS

N of cases: 66.2-tailed Signif * = .01 " = .001

A/C = attitudinal commitment T/I = tenure intentions

Fair Policies

4 1 4 " .4338" .2509

1 .m .1436 .1620 .5123"

Good Salary

.2909

.2758

.1588

.1436 1 .m .0957 .0641

.1769

.1390

.1733

.1620

.0957 1 .m .lo52

.4460"

.3051

.2151

.5123"

.0641

.lo52

.m


TIM MORRIS, HELEN LYDKA AND MARK F'ENTON OCREEVEY

Since correlations between the HR variables at tl and dependent variables at t2 were low, crosslagged correlations could not be used to exploit the longitudinal nature of the data. One explanation of this may be that the five year time lag is large compared with the time taken for the human resource policies to impact attitudes.

RESULTS

To try and establish whether there was any causal ordering we undertook regression analyses of attitudinal commitment and tenure intentions on the HR variables at tl and t2. The Beta scores are the standardised regression coefficients when all five variables are entered and these betas, shown in Tables 3 and 4, represent the change in commitment when each variable is entered last, indicating theunique contribution of that variable to explained variance. The results are shown for stayers and leavers, the purpose of this division being to aid analysis given that one dependent variable is tenure intentions and that an outcome of high commitment is the desire to remain in employment with one's employer.

TABLE 3 Regression Analyses of Attitudinal Commitment on H R Variables

Fair licies G s s a l a r y Job security Job uses abilities Good career opportunties Adj R

Stayers Leavers Stayers BETA B

.093 I .480' I .211 .145 .089 .267" .591-

.280" 1 .399" 1 .599-

Adj: R significance: .05 = *; .01 = "; .001 = ... TABLE 4 Regression Analyses of Terrure Intentions on HR Variables

p x l i c i e s salary

Job security Job uses abilities Good career opportunties Adj R

Leavers L3

257' .167

-.118 . 2 w .433"

.588"'

Time 2 I Time 1

Stayers is I

.lo4

.282 -.142 .200 .242

.213'

Leavers

,614"

-.299 -359

.213'

Stayers is

.181

.197

.033

.096

.310'

.196"

Leavers B

.383'

.049

.094

.020 276

.186'

Adj: R significance: .05 = '; .01 = "; -001 = -



Comparisons at time 1 and time 2 ( t l and t2) The results of the regression analysis at specific points in time indicate some interesting differences and similarities between the stayers and leavers. At t l the sigruficant predictors of attitudinal commitment differed completely: for stayers the predictors were, in order of magnitude, use of abilities, salary, and security. For leavers, career prospects and fair company policies were significant. At t2, much greater consistency between the two groups emerged with good career opportunitiesbeing the most important predictor for both stayers and leavers, by a large margin, followed by use of abilities on the job. For leavers, one other variable, fair company policies, was also significant. Differences between the two groups regarding tenure intentions were greater. At tl, there were no significant predictors for stayers in the itemised HR variables, but for leavers fair policies was highly significant. At t2, nearly five years later, fair company policies continued to be a significant predictor for the group of leavers, while for stayers, career prospects had become a significant factor. Overall, less variance in tenure intentions than attitudinal commitment could be explained by HR policies and the inter-group convergence between tl and t2 in the significant predictors of attitudinal commitment was not replicated.

One further piece of evidence pointing to early differences between stayers and leavers was revealed by entering the pre-entry expectations variable after the HR variables. Leavers (ie. those who changed employer in their first five years of employment) had significantly lower pre-entry expectations of the HR policies of their first employer than stayers (Beta in = .304;R2=.080;p=<.05). Tenure intentions therefore appear to have been influenced by perceptions of the prospective employer prior to starting work, although since it is impossible to control for levels of commitment at to, ie. prior to organisational entry, some caution has to be exercised in interpreting this result.

Independent t-tests on the comparison of stayers and leavers showed one significant difference between the two groups at tl, ie. in early employment: leavers had significantly lower levels of tenure intentions than stayers. There were no significant differences between stayers and leavers for levels of attitudinal commitment or for their perceptions of the HR variables. By t2, no significant differences between the groups were evident either for their levels of tenure intentions or attitudinal commitment but, with regard to the HR variables, leavers had significantly better perceptions of the fairness of company policies and of the use of abilities in their jobs.

Comparisons over time

The paired t-tests shown in Table 5 provide evidence of how perceptions of the HR policies held by stayers and leavers changed over the five year period.

In particular, stayers reported worsening perceptions of the fairness of their companies’ policies and deteriorating career opportunities. However, the extent to which their jobs made use of their abilities was perceived to improve over time. Leavers similarly reported an improvement in the use of their abilities but no other changes over time were significant. Over this period, it is the stayers whose commitment declined significantly, despite their having had higher pre-entry expectations and having remained with their original


TIM MORRIS, HELEN LYDKA AND MARK FENTON O'CREEVEY

TABLE 5 Paired t-Test over Time for Staym and Learn

Variable

Fair policies Good salary Job security Job uses abilities Good career opportunties A/C T/I

t l mean

4.05 3.72 4.20 3.30

4.07

3.48 3.85

Stayers

t2 mean

3.64 3.72 4.25 3.61

3.71

3.16 3.61

v&e

2.65' 0.00 0.26 2.26'

3.08"

3.99- 1.40

tl mean

3.80 3.44 3.94 3.17

3.88

3.23 2.00

Leavers

t2 mean

3.00 3.82 3.85 4.08

3.82

3.29 3.26

vaLe

1.18 1.55 0.37 4.21-

0.24

0.36 0.85

Significant at: .05 = *; .01 = "; .001 = - A/C = attitudinal commitment T/I = tenure intentions

employer, while leavers showed no significant change and actually recorded a marpally higher mean score than the stayers on the attitudinal commitment measure after five years. For neither group did tenure intentions alter signhcantly. However, the results of the correlations over time (tl to t2) for stayers and leavers shown in Table 6 indicate that there was noticeable stability only among the stayers for either the HR variables or the dependent variables over time. This suggests that, in general, the stayers are a more homogeneous group than the leavers.

TABLE 6 Correlations over Time (tZ-t2)

Variable

Fair policies Good salary Job security Job uses abilities Good career opportunties A/C T/I

Stayers

.090

.250

.057 ,272

.38OU

.623*** 4(jo***

Significant at: .05 = '; .01 ="; .001 = - A/C = attitudinal commitment T/I = tenure intentions

Leavers

.141 -.234 .193 .120

-.475**

-.232 -.314



Relating these results back to the predictors of commitment and tenure intentions, it is of note that for stayers, perceived career opportunities worsened during the same period in which this issue became the most important determinant of commitment. On the other hand, the second most significant predictor, use of abilities, did improve. Perceptions of certain policies could change but not influence commitment. For stayers, the fairness of company policies did not significantly affect the level of commitment at t2, despite having worsened over time. For the leavers, neither attitudinal commitment nor tenure intentions changed despite a significant improvement in their perceptions of their jobs making use of abilities, a factor which the results suggest was an important influence on commitment five years into employment.

Comparing attitudinal commitment and tenure intentions, the regressions suggest that not only are there differences in the predictors of each at the two points in time, but for both stayers and leavers the amount of variance in attitudinal commitment explained by the HR policies increases between t l and t2 while the amount of variance of tenure intentions decreases over the same time period. Further, the amount of variance which HR policies explained for our sample is roughly equal for stayers and leavers except for attitudinal commitment at tl. At tl, the adjusted RZexplains 40 per cent of the variance in commitment for leavers and 28 per cent for stayers; this may be because one notable difference between the groups at this stage appears to be their time horizons: while leavers are focused on their longer term prospects and highly concerned with career prospects, stayers are more preoccupied with the immediate use of their abilities and their salary level.

DISCUSSION In general, the resultsof the study show the importance of various HR policies for attitudinal commitment and tenure intentions over time. The relative stability of the stayers’ attitudinal commitment over time compared with the leavers also supports the argument that commitment is driven by the organisation’s policies and actions rather than individual differences. Before discussing the implications for HR management in general, some comments on specific policies examined in this study will be made.

First, the results raise some interesting questions about selection and retention in relation to commitment. Pre-entry expectations do not account for stayers’ decisions to stay, although respondents who had high expectations of their prospective organisations ex- pressed higher levels of attitudinal commitment in the initial phase of employment than those with low pre-entry expectations. Further, low pre-entry expectations were a significant predictor of weak tenure intentions and subsequent quitting.

High levels of pre-entry expectations have often been regarded in the literature as indicating a lack of realism (Louis, 1980; Mabey, 1986) which results in disillusionment when employees gain first-hand experiences of the job/organisation. Because disillusionment has been assumed to lead to low levels of commitment and turnover (Dunnette et al., 19731, lower pre-entry expectations have been thought to be more realistic and lead to higher levels of commitment than high pre-entry expectations. Our findings contradict this line of argument to the extent that, if low commitment is associated with quitting, the problem of early turnover of graduates is not so much due to inflated expectations being disappointed



as entrants having low expectations before they start. Employers may therefore be able to influence early commitment even before employees join their organisations through their recruitment procedures and, in particular, the expectations they engender through the information they provide to potential recruits.

We looked at the importance of providing challenge and interesting work principally through the analysis of responses to questions about the extent to which jobs used individuals’ abilities, and the evidence suggested this was a significant predictor of attitudinal commitment. Over time, this issue also has developmental implications which, for our sample of engineering graduates in the five years after starting work, are likely to include technical skill and managerial responsibility. Our results therefore confirmed other work which has stressed the importance of responsible jobs for satisfaction and commitment. Salancik has argued that jobs which appear to make a contribution to the organisation and increase ’felt responsibility‘ will increase commitment while Nicholson and Arnold (1989) suggested that a source of dissatisfaction for graduates was the lack of ’real’ work, particularly if they were involved in long graduate training programmes. ‘Real jobs’ helped graduates acquire a favourable image of themselves as competent professionals. One policy implication is that unless training and development is strongly rooted in actual tasks it will be regarded as irrelevant (Mumford, 1987)) and of minimal importance to commitment.

Relative pay influenced stayers’ commitment just after they had started work but, this apart, was not a significant predictor: monetary rewards appear to have no great impact on attitudinal commitment or tenure intentions and do not appear to aid understanding of why some of the sample stayed and others chose to leave. On the other hand, perceptions of career prospects are of growing importance to commitment over the first five years of employment although they are not so important to tenure intentions. Generally, the sample seems to focus increasingly on future rewards (which will, of course, bring monetary gain as well) and on intrinsic factors as determinants of their commitment, though not necessarily whether they chose to stay with their employers.

More broadly, the issue of equity in the way the company is perceived to treat its employees was of continuing importance to leavers but not to stayers, suggesting percep- tionsof unfair company policies were linked to decisions to quit. Fairness may well therefore have an impact on the tenure decisions of some employees, as Ogilvie (1986) and Curry et al. (1986) have also suggested, although why it did not influence those who stayed is intriguing. We cannot say whether there were objective differences in policies between stayers’ and leavers‘ employers but this seems an unlikely explanation of the inter-group difference, not least because the concern for fairness among leavers persists after they have changed jobs. Possibly it is related to the stayers’ lower expectations of their employers’ policies before they even started work. Whatever the explanation, the results suggest that because perceptions of equity are critical, communication of intent and consequences as well as content of policies are of importance for employers.

One other result of note concerns the impact of job security. What is of interest is the non- significance of this factor, except very weakly for stayers when they had just started work. Security appears to have little influence on tenure intentions at any point nor become more influential over time, although this might have been expected given that the respondents were more likely to have family and/or financial commitments by the time they had five



years work experience. Nor does security of employment, which implies a longer term commitment by the employer, appear to be reciprocated in a strengthening of the attitudinal commitment of employees. However, this result may have been influenced by relatively good labour market conditions during the fieldwork and, were the research repeated in the current recessionary conditions, security might well be more salient.

GENERAL IMPLICATIONS

The findings suggest that HR policies do appear to influence attitudinal commitment and tenure intentions and that certain types of reward and organisational policies have the greatest impact on commitment levels. However, the influence of HR policies is relatively short term. Those policies which were significant at theonset wereeither not significant five years on or the strength of their influence had changed. Conversely, certain policies only became significant latterly. For managers seeking to generate or maintain high commitment, this implies flexibility in the use of policies over time and recognition that, particularly for younger employees, the stages of induction, socialisation and development affect the antecedents of commitment. It also means that HR management has to be defined quite broadly, to include general organisational policies, if commitment is to be influenced.

We found that, at least for the stayers, the policies influencing attitudinal commitment were more stable over time than tenure intentions which we adopted as a measure of behavioural commitment. For the leavers, neither attitudinal commitment nor tenure intentions showed stability over time. Generally, our results seem to confirm the arguments that there are few factors which have clear causal relationships with commitment, but that intrinsic factors in jobs are of importance. For those wishing to manage commitment, this requires a focus on the design of jobs to achieve challenge and development plus clarity in roles and responsibilities.

The reward of career opportunities was revealed to be more important than has been recognised in the literature. This is perhaps not so surprising given that the sample comprised young, white collar employees who have expectations of upward mobility. Such mobility meets several goals, providing not only more responsibility but status and money rewards which we suspect are more closely linked to commitment than was revealed by our data or has been acknowledged elsewhere in the literature. Organisational policies have also been recognised as antecedents of commitment and this was confirmed by our research, but in a complex way: for the leavers these significantly affected their commitment and tenure intentions at the start of their employment and were still doing so five years later while for stayers company policies were of minor importance. We speculated that this difference may have been related to perceptions about the fairness of employers which were formed prior to entry.

In both attitudinal and behavioural commitment a degree of instrumentality is involved. This seems to be at odds with the picture of highly committed employees demonstrating unqualified organisational dedication and hard work painted by the more normative management literature, particularly from theUSA. In reality, commitment seems to begiven more provisionally: employees may well display high levels of commitment but only as long as they receive those benefits they value at that particular point in time. This suggests that,



conceptually, attitudinal commitment has roots in exchange theory which is built on the notion that individuals attach themselves to an organisation in return for certain rewards. The exchange transaction involves some sense of perceived ‘fairness’ over the contribution expected from an employee and the inducements provided by the employer. These inducements may be monetary and psychological and are present and future focused. A bond develops between employer and employee while a satisfactory balance between contributions and inducement persists, leading to goal congruence and organisational identification over time.

But the exchange model which focuses on rewards is less helpful in explaining tenure intentions, particularly after five years of employment. One explanation for this may be the limited measure of tenure intentions discussed previously. However, another possible explanation is that tenure intentions may be influenced by employees’ perceived job alternatives. Analysis of additional research data on the current sample (Lydka and Moms, 1992; Mabey et al., 1992) showed that by t2 stayers perceived their jobs as significantly less revocable and themselves as significantly more constrained by the labour market than leavers. In effect, stayers start to feel behaviourally ’bound’ to the organisation for a variety of reasons including the balance of costs involved in leaving. This finding is in line with Becker‘s notion of side-bets and also supports the findings of other researchers such as Rusbult and Farrell(1983). As work experience is accrued, tenure intentions may be better explained by a combination of exchange theory, sunk costs and a perceived lack of alternatives (Whitener and Walz, 1991). Further research into this area is needed to support these propositions.

Dividing the sample into stayers and leavers was designed to provide extra data on turnover behaviour and its relationship to commitment as well as tenure intentions. This is of interestbecauseaconsequenceof highcommitment notedin theliteratureislow turnover. Different results were found for the two groups for both attitudinal commitment and tenure intentions at times tl and t2 and over time, suggesting the sub-samples were very different from each other. Quite why this was so is not entirely clear, although we know that leavers had lower preentry expectations about the HR policies of their employers and by tl, only six months into employment, already had significantly weaker tenure intentions. Control- ling for the actual point between tl and t2 when employment change occurred showed there were no significant differences in the perceptions of the leavers. In effect, they appeared not to have had a long-term employmznt relationship in mind when they started work and expected less from their employers by way of fair policies or careers. Their weaker tenure intentions wereconfirmed by the subsequent quit decisions. But at this very early stage there was no significant difference between leavers and stayers in their levels of attitudinal commitment, probably because it was only six months after starting work and commitment had yet to be built up.

Five years later, the leavers’ tenure intentions and attitudinal commitment were very similar to the stayers’. Overall, the two groups had become more alike principally because of changes in the leavers’ commitment and tenure intentions, as the paired t-tests demonstrate. Thus expectations appear to influence early tenure intentions, but low expectations and a change of employer do not worsen the longer term capacity to become attitudinally committed to an organisation.



A number of practical implications stem from our findings. First, our analysis at different time periods allows us to question some of the assumptions surrounding commitment. For example, low levels of turnover are usually equated with high levels of commitment while high levels of turnover are equated with low levels of commitment. Our research qualifies this assumption: high behavioural commitment is not necessarily associated with high levels of attitudinal commitment; employees who change jobs may be less behaviourally committed but more attitudinally committed to their employer than stayers.

For those concerned to manage commitment, this raises questions about the type of commitment they wish to engender. Some may favour a form of behavioural commitment which implies no more than intended continuity of employment among employees. Others may prefer to employ someone who is loyal and supportive of the organisation even though the employee may not stay with them in the longer term. In the former case employers may simply select employees who have ties in the area and favour a secure and stable working environment. In the latter case, our results suggest employers need to address their reward and organisational policies to be flexible in their use of policies but consistent in attending to concerns for fairness. In both cases employers need to consider how to manage the expectations of newcomers.

Second, our research suggests that both extrinsic and intrinsic variables have an important influence on commitment. The literature has often documented the importance of intrinsic work experiences among highly educated workers and Mottaz (1988) concluded that intrinsic work experiences have a stronger relationship with commitment than extrinsic factors. However, the current study found that HR policies related to extrinsic work experiences, especially career opportunities, were particularly important in influencing levels of commitment. We concur with Angle and Perry (1983142-3) that ’the prevalent belief that commitment is basically related to intrinsic need fulfilment is not upheld’, but believe it worth stressing that while their conclusions were based on research into manual workers, our findings are based on a sample of highly educated workers, most of whom had joined the ranks of management by the last stage of our survey. Our results confirm the conclusion reached by Cohen in his recent meta-analysis of organisational commitment across occupational groups when he said that ’... as much as general intrinsic aspects are important to the organizational commitment of employees in higher status occupations, extrinsic calculative considerations are also important‘ (1992553).

A third implication is that blanket human resource policies may not have the desired influence on commitment levels. Attention needs to be given to individual needs and values in considering which policies may influence employees’ commitment. The results suggest the differential impact of policies at different points in time and stress the importance of contemporary circumstances for commitment levels. It should also be remembered that the data in this research were based upon respondents’ subjective impressions of HR policies. Broad ‘cultural’ issues such as fair company policies appear to influence commitment for some but not others, and differences in the ways in which individuals perceive both job- specific and human resource policy issues are also important. For example, what one employee regards as good career prospects may be regarded as mediocre by another and, while some employees may be committed to the organisation because of the job security it offers, others may be committed because of the nature of the work. This suggests that the



successful management of commitment will be complex and require careful consideration of individual needs.

Finally, it is worth questioning theextent to whichhighcommitment is appropriate. While it has become a central goal of human resource management, there is no conclusive evidence that it isan unalloyedbenefit or that it is positively related tobetter performance. High levels of commitment may engender a dislike of change and a lack of creativity among employees, precisely because they are committed to existing arrangements or joined the organisation with a set of assumptions concerning the nature of employment exchange, such as a lower level of reward in return for high job security. If one party then seeks to change the terms of exchange, they are likely to encounter resistance from the other.

CONCLUSIONS This study has examined influences over time on organisational commitment from the point of view of the recipients of human resource policies. While commitment levels may be influenced by such policies, this is a complex process and we highlighted the need to be aware of the differential impact of human resource issues on commitment. The need to consider what typeof commitment isdesired hasalsobeen noted. Theanalysisof stayersand leavers illustrates the need to separate tenure intentions (behavioural commitment) and attitudinal commitment in terms of antecedents and suggested that low initial expectations plus perceptions of fairness were significantly linked to turnover. Our research has demonstrated the importance of timebased analyses of commitment and has refined our understanding of how attitudinal and behavioural commitment may vary over time.

Finally, the limits of the research should be noted. These relate, first, to the characteristics of the sample (primarily highly educated UK males in the first five years of employment). Second, there was a relatively long time gap between the surveys (tl and t2) during which the respondents probably experienced further socialisation into the company, acquired new responsibilities, and defined their own career anchors and ambitions. Third, the data derive from a questionnnaire to individuals and the problem of common method variance must be acknowledged, resulting in the possibility that high levels of commitment could be explained by general satisfaction with work rather than human resource policies. However, this seems unlikely given the structural differences which were found in relationships between commitment and the human resource policies over time and between stayers and leavers. Nonetheless, further work would benefit from independent measures of human resource policies in the organisations under study. The research took place during the end of one recession and a period of relative prosperity, although manufacturing industry employment prospects were never strong. Finally, the shortcomings of the commitment measures, particularly the single-item assessment of tenure intentions discussed above, should be borne in mind. Longitudinal research which can take account of some of these limitationsinexamining further therelationshipbetween human resource management and organisational commitment should prove valuable theoretically and practically. Attention should also be directed to the development and refinement of measures of commitment (see Allen and Meyer, 1990; Caldwell et al., 1990) and to the consequences of commitment for the organisation and individual.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Thanks are due to John Hunt, Christopher Mabey, Arthur Money, Nigel Nicholson and an anonymous referee for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

NOTES 1. The data at to and tl were collected and analysed by Christopher Mabey (Mabey,

1983,1984 and 1986). Additional data were collected at t2 by the second author and further analysis of the data collected at to and t l was conducted for current research.

2. Cook and Wall (1980) have also introduced a new measure of organisational commitment but it was designed particularly for blue collar workers.

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