Organizational commitment is an important construct in micro-organizational behavior research. It has been extensively studied since the seventies, but many conceptual and methodological problems have not received sufficient attention. This paper analyses some of these problems and discusses methodological perspectives related to this research area. Five theoretical approaches to commitment are described and different strategies for the operationalization of the construct are presented. The paper then provides a summary of the principal results empirically constructed within this research tradiction. Finally, methodological alternatives to improve the research about organizational commitment are outlined.
Organizational commitment; employee-organization linkages; job attitudes; conceptual problems in organizational research