Employee Commitment and Motivation: A Conceptual Analysis and Integrative Model.

Abstract

Theorists and researchers interested in employee commitment and motivation have not made optimal use of each other's work. Commitment researchers seldom address the motivational processes through which commitment affects behavior, and motivation researchers have not recognized important distinctions in the forms, foci, and bases of commitment. To encourage greater cross-fertilization, the authors present an integrative framework in which commitment is presented as one of several energizing forces for motivated behavior. E. A. Locke's (1997) model of the work motivation process and J. P. Meyer and L. Herscovitch's (2001) model of workplace commitments serve as the foundation for the development of this new framework. To facilitate the merger, a new concept, goal regulation, is derived from self- determination theory (E. L. Deci & R. M. Ryan, 1985) and regulatory focus theory (E. I. Higgins, 1997). By including goal regulation, it is acknowledged that motivated behavior can be accompanied by different mindsets that have particularly important implications for the explanation and prediction of discretionary work behavior. Organizational scientists and practitioners have long been inter- ested in employee motivation and commitment. This interest de- rives from the belief and evidence that there are benefits to having a motivated and committed workforce (Locke & Latham, 1990; Meyer & Allen, 1997; Pinder, 1998). Surprisingly, however, the commitment and motivation literatures in organizational psychol- ogy have evolved somewhat independently. Although commit- ment is discussed by motivation researchers and motivation by commitment researchers, neither concept is dealt with at the level of complexity that it is within its own domain. Moreover, there have been few attempts to integrate the two literatures; to demon- strate how the concepts are similar, different, and related; or to examine how commitment and motivation combine to influence behavior. These are our objectives. One explanation for the relative independence of the two bodies of work might be the differences in origin and objectives. Theories of work motivation evolved out of more general theories of mo- tivation (see Steers, Porter, & Bigley, 1996) and have largely been applied to explain task performance. This emphasis is perhaps most evident in goal-setting theory (Locke & Latham, 1990), which is arguably the dominant theory in the work motivation