ABSTRACT
Commitment has been a frequently studied construct in Management and Industrial/Organizational Psychology literature for over seven decades because it has been demonstrated to impact outcomes important to workers and organizations alike. Despite substantial changes in the nature of organizations, work, and employment relationship since the origins of commitment scholarship, organizations still need committed workers. The term workplace commitments is used to refer to the full array of commitments that people have at work and the term target to refer to the specific things to which they can be committed. This chapter briefly summarizes the history of workplace commitment research and discusses the various ways the construct has been conceptualized, concluding that commitment is best defined as a volitional psychological bond reflecting dedication to and responsibility for a given target. This chapter also overviews the different workplace commitment targets that have been studied, reviews the different approaches to the measurement of commitment, summarizes what is known about the antecedents and outcomes of workplace commitments, contrasts commitment to related constructs, and outlines future research needs. The practical implications of what is known about workplace commitments are also noted.
