ORGANISATIONAL COMMITMENT

“Heaven on Earth” is what it feels like; you literally think about her during day and in your sleep, waking up to a call or text message from her gives you reason to live calmly through this ruthless world. This is all because of the undying affection you have towards her.

Similarly, most workers love their jobs undyingly because of the affection that they feel towards them. Meyer & Allen (1994) refer to affective commitment as the perception of workers emotional attachment towards their jobs. Just like in most romantic relationships, affective commitment at work is highest during the first months of work. Various couples have confessed that they were more probable of taking a bullet for each other in their first months together which ironically is less probable now. Workers will do anything to be identified with their job with some scaling to extents of sleep talking about it.

Unfortunately for most, the affective is normally short lived with them rushing over to the “continuance commitment”. This characterizes the worker being bound to a job only by boundary factors such as pension plans and even salary. It has a negative implication on job performance since the individual is not in any way attached emotionally to their work. “Continuance” also referred to as “calculative” is a workers perception of the costs associated with staying or leaving the organization. Similarly many people stay in relationships today because they have children with their partners and view the probable loss of custody as a serious cost associated with moving away from the marriage. We see these kinds of people persevering in marriages all the time even without affection towards their partners often leading to infidelity which can closely be related to moonlighting as well as failure to perform marital responsibilities which can closely be related to poor performance at work.

Furthermore, commitment can be “Normative”. This can be defined as that perception workers have towards the obligations they have to their employers .In a recent survey several workers confessed that they are very loyal to their employers because they funded and contributed towards attainment of the former’s higher levels of education like master’s degrees or even doctorates. In many relationships today, partners stick through each other’s drama because they are obligated to them for a number of favors that they have enjoyed. Hellen recently confessed that she cannot move out of her marriage despite her husband’s violence because he has educated all her relatives and she feels indebted to him.

What disturbs many managers today is whether these levels and types of commitment happen completely chronologically. Well they don’t! Different types of commitment are inspired and brought about by different circumstances and can easily be controlled and maintained by managers and workers themselves. Similarly in romantic relationships, one can control and have power over the way their partners feel towards them.

At what level of commitment are you?