A high level of employee commitment holds particular value for organizations owing to its impact on organizational effectiveness and employee well-being. This Handbook provides an up-to-date review of theory and research pertaining to employee commitment in the workplace, outlining its value for both employers and employees and identifying key factors in its development, maintenance or decline. Including chapters from leading theorists and researchers from around the world, this Handbook presents cumulated and cutting-edge research exploring what commitment is, the different forms it can take, and how it is distinct from related concepts such as employee engagement, work motivation, embeddedness, the psychological contract, and organizational identification.

What is a committed employee? Are employees who are committed better or worse off than employees who are uncommitted? What are the organizational advantages and disadvantages of having a committed workforce? Commitment in the Workplace provides an overview of academic and popular perspectives on what committed employees look like and how they become committed. The multiple faces of commitment are examined as are the links that have been established between the various forms of commitment and organizational behavior. In addition, questions concerning individual differences, organizational characteristics, and work experiences associated with commitment are explored. The book concludes with a discussion of what organizations can do to manage commitment effectively, including commitment under more difficult circumstances, such as merger/acquisition, downsizing, and relocation. One of the great strengths of the book is that it summarizes the key organizational commitment research in such a way that the research findings can be evaluated for both their scientific merit and their practical value. The primary audience for Commitment in the Workplace includes students in MBA and executive MBA programs, researchers, and students and practitioners in the fields of organizational behavior and industrial psychology.

The growing interest in multiple commitments among researchers and practitioners is evinced by the greater attention in the literature to the broader concept of work commitment. This includes specific objects of commitment, such as organization, work group, occupation, the union, and one's job. In the last several years a sizable body of research has accumulated on the multidimensional approach to commitment. This knowledge needs to be marshaled, its strengths highlighted, and its importance, as well as some of its weaknesses made known, with the aim of guiding future research on commitment based on a multidimensional approach. This book's purpose is to summarize this knowledge, as well as to suggest ideas and directions for future research. Most of the book addresses what seems to be the important aspects of commitment by a multidimensional approach: the differences among these forms, the definition and boundaries of commitment foci as part of a multidimensional approach, their interrelationships, and their effect on outcomes, mainly work outcomes. Two chapters concern aspects rarely examined--the relationship of commitment foci to aspects of nonwork domains and cross-cultural aspects of commitment foci--that should be important topics for future research. Addressing innovative focuses of multiple commitments at work, this book: *suggests a provocative and innovative approach on how to conceptualize and understand multiple commitments in the workplace; *provides a thorough and updated review of the existing research on multiple commitments; *analyzes the relationships among commitment forms and how they might affect behavior at work; and *covers topics rarely covered in multiple commitment research and includes all common scales of commitment forms that can assist researchers and practitioners in measuring commitment forms.

Commitment in the Workplace examines the multiple facets of commitment and the links between the various forms of commitment and organizational behaviour.

Through extensive research, the author gets to the bottom of what has sustained Southwest Airlines' positive employee relations and high performance through good and bad times.