EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE Medupin C. Femi Department of Sociology Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, fmedupin@gmail.com +2348134302194 SJSS_068-2018 ABSTRACT Employee commitment is a concept that has generated heated debates among scholars and human resources managers. This paper identified the main conceptual issues in each of the approaches that were dominant within the periods that were revived in this study. It also criticized the various approaches in order to identify the gaps as well as the strengths and weaknesses of their argument which necessitated the emergence of the next era. The research concluded that there were conceptual and methodological challenges with the two dominant approaches in the fourth era, hence there is need to reexamine the approaches and apply them to a real life situation. Hence, this research recommended that there is a need to develop the fifth era based on the weaknesses of the approaches in the fourth era which will begin form 2014 till date. Keywords: Employee Commitment, Employee Turnover, Early Era, Mid-Era. Introduction Employee commitment is a concept that has been widely used irrespective of the size, structure and line of business of the organization involved. The concept has evolved over the years to mean several things to several scholars. The scholars approached the concept from year to year based on the trending issues that underline commitment in those eras. According to Kashefi, Adel, Abad, Aliklayeh, Moghaddam and Nadimi (2013) employee commitment is the employee's inner attitude towards their organization, job or group which affects their judgments, performance and loyalty to the organization. Therefore, it is crucial for the management of organizations to put in place adequate machinery to improve their employee’s inner attitude towards their job and the organization as a whole which is the trending issue at this period. In addition to improving this ensuring that they work towards improving this