Measuring Organisational Commitment

Organisational Commitment

The Organisational Commitment Questionnaire was first proposed for measuring organisational commitment by Mowday et al., (1979). The citation for their questionnaire is:

Mowday, R. T., Steers, R. M., & Porter, L. W. (1979). Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) [Database record]. APA PsycTests. https://doi.org/10.1037/t08840-000.

The questionnaire measures commitment as exhibited in three attitudes:

  1. A willingness to exert effort for the organisation.
  2. A desire to remain at the organisation.
  3. A complete acceptance of the organisation’s values and goals.
Item No.Item
1I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected in order to help this organization be successful.
2I talk up this organization to my friends as a great organization to work for.
3 (R)I feel very little loyalty to this organization.
4I would accept almost any type of job assignment in order to keep working for this organization.
5I find that my values and the organization’s values are very similar.
6I am proud to tell others that I am part of this organization. 
7 (R)I could just as well be working for a different organization as long as the type of work were similar.
8This organization really inspires the very best in me in the way of job performance.
9 (R)It would take very little change in my present circumstances to cause me to leave this organization.
10I am extremely glad that I chose this organization to work for, over others I was considering at the time I joined.
11 (R)There’s not too much to be gained by sticking with this organization indefinitely.
12(R)Often, I find it difficult to agree with this organization’s policies on important matters relating to its employees.
13I really care about the fate of this organization.
14For me this is the best of all possible organizations for which to work.
15 (R)Deciding to work for this organization was a definite mistake on my part.
(R) denotes reversed item

The original studies on which the questionnaire was tested were conducted in nine different employment sectors in the United States with a total of 2563 respondents. The citation for these studies is:

Mowday, R. T., Steers, R. M., & Porter, L. W. (1979) The measurement of organizational commitment Journal of Vocational Behavior 14(2), 224-247.

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Since the original studies, the OCQ has been used for measuring organisational commitment in various other studies to investigate the relationship between organisational commitment and other variables, such as job satisfaction, turnover, and absenteeism. It has also been used to compare levels of organizational commitment across different groups, such as employees in different industries or countries. Examples of these studies are listed below.

Bishop J. W., Scott K. D. (2000). An examination of organizational and team commitment in a self-directed team environment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(3), 439–450. CrossrefPubMedISI.

Grabowski D, Chudzicka-Czupała A, Chrupała-Pniak M, Mello AL, Paruzel-Czachura M. Work ethic and organizational commitment as conditions of unethical pro-organizational behavior: Do engaged workers break the ethical rules? Int J Select Assess. 2019; 27: 193–202.

Paul, H., Bamel, U. K., & Garg, P. (2016). Employee resilience and OCB: Mediating effects of organizational commitment. Vikalpa41(4), 308-324.

Thompson, G., Buch, R., & Kuvaas, B. (2017). Political skill, participation in decision-making and organizational commitment. Personnel Review46(4), 740-749.


Recommended reading

Brewerton, P. M., & Millward, L. J. (2001). Organizational research methods: A guide for students and researchers. Sage. (Click to view on Amazon #Ad)

Review

This text provides a timely and comprehensive introduction to major research methods in the Organizational sciences. It will be a boon to all students conducting their projects in this area, and may well become a standard reference for staff teaching research methods to undergraduate and postgraduate students of business studies or organizational behaviour′ – Professor Neil Anderson, Goldsmiths College, University of London


Posted by Glenn Stevens

Glenn is an academic writing and research specialist with 15 years experience as a writing coach and PhD supervisor. Also a qualified English teacher, he previously had an extensive career in publishing. He is currently the editor of this website. Glenn lives in the UK.
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