Organizational Commitment Part 2
Organizational commitment is defined as a view of an organization’s member’s psychology towards his/her attachment to the organization that he/she is working for. Organizational commitment plays a pivotal role in determining whether an employee will stay with the organization for a longer period of time and work passionately towards achieving the organization’s goal.
As per our last blog we will look deeply into the distinguished theory in organizational commitment known as the Three-Component Model (TCM). According to this theory, there are three distinct components to organizational commitment:
Affective Commitment: This is the emotional attachment an employee has towards the organization. This part of TCM says that an employee has a high level of active commitment, then the chances of an employee staying with the organization for long are high. Active commitment also means, an employee is not only happy but also engaged in the organizational activities like, participation in discussions and meeting, giving valuable inputs or suggestions that will help the organization, proactive work ethics. It is easy to spot happy employees in the hospitality industry, for example in a restaurant set up. He or she always arrives in time, happy to jump into his chores right away, wears an un ending smile and always giving a helping hand to others.
Continuance Commitment: To easily relate to this type picture one of the oldest employees in your organization who has seen it all and withstood the test of time. Then we can say it is the level of commitment where an employee would think that leaving an organization would be costly. When an employee has a continuance in commitment level, they want to stay in the organization for a longer period of time because they feel they must stay because they have already invested enough energy and feel attached to the organization – attachment that is both mental and emotional. For example, a person over a period of time tends to develop an attachment to his/her workplace and this may be one of the reasons why an employee wouldn’t want to quit because they are emotionally invested.
Normative Commitment: This is the level of commitment where an employee feels obligated to stay in the organization, where they feel, staying in the organization is the right thing to do. What are the factors that lead up to this type of commitment? Is it a moral obligation where they want to stay because someone else believes in them? Or is it that they feel that they have been treated fairly here and that they do not wish to take the chance of leaving the organization and finding themselves in between the devil and the deep sea? This is a situation where they believe they ought to stay. This is driven by good leadership that one boss who is nice and treats people fair and equal, also the pay might be competitive making it difficult to look at other opportunities.
It is important to understand that the level of commitments depends on multiple factors and can vary from one individual to another. Once one has understood the above they can creatively and continue to improve the organizational commitment.