Journal of Applied Psychology 1994, Vol. 79, No. 3, 370-380 Copyright 1994 by the American Psychological Association. Inc. 002I-90IO/94/S3.00 Organizational Commitment: The Utility of an Integrative Definition Randall B. Dunham, Jean A. Grube, and Maria B. Castaneda The authors report a series of 9 studies (N = 2,734) in which they evaluated the construct definition, measurement, and validation of organizational commitment (OC). An integrated examination of a wide range of antecedents of the various dimensions of OC was conducted. Results support the existence of 3 major OC dimensions (affective, continuance, and normative), with 2 subdimensions (personal sacrifice and lack of alternatives) for the continuance dimension. Results suggest that the widely used Organizational Commitment Questionnaire assesses primarily the affective dimension. Results provide various levels of support for the set of proposed antecedents. Implications for con- struct definition, measurement, and future research are discussed. Over several decades of study, organizational commitment (OC) has been approached from a variety of conceptual and operational perspectives. Most commitment studies can be cat- egorized as assuming either an attitudinal or behavioral per- spective (for a recent and comprehensive review of the OC liter- ature, see Mathieu & Zajac, 1990). In 1984, Meyer and Allen conceptualized a multidimensional OC measure that drew on the early works of such investigators as Porter, Steers, Mowday, and Boulian (1974); Becker (1960); and Weiner and Vardi (1980). Allen and Meyer (1990) denned their three-dimensional construct as follows: The affective component of organizational commitment. . . refers to the employee's emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in, the organization. The continuance component refers to commitment based on the costs that the employee associ- ates with leaving the organization. Finally, the normative compo- nent refers to the employee's feelings of obligation to remain with the organization, (p. 1) The conceptual arguments for Allen and Meyer's (1990) con- struct and operational definitions are compelling, but there have been too few investigations of all three dimensions in one study. In one such investigation (Randall, Fedor, & Longenecker, 1990), affective commitment (AC) and normative commitment (NC) were found to be significantly related to commitment be- havior; continuance commitment (CC) showed little or no rela- tionship to commitment behavior. Yet, most research has ex- Randall B. Dunham and Jean A. Grube, Graduate School of Busi- ness, University of Wisconsin—Madison; Maria B. Castaneda, Depart- ment of Management, University at Albany, State University of New York. We thank Joe Balles of the Madison Police Department and Mary Ann Wycoff of the Police Foundation in Washington, DC, for their as- sistance in the design of the survey and data collection for Samples 1-4. We are also grateful to Alison Barber of Michigan State University for her comments on an earlier version of this article. Finally, we thank Randi K. Huntsman for her extensive assistance in editing the manu- script. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ran- dall B. Dunham, Graduate School of Business, University of Wisconsin, 975 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1323 amined only the CC and AC dimensions (e.g., Meyer, Bobocel, & Allen, 1991; Meyer, Paunonen, Gellatly, Goffin & Jackson, 1989). Normative commitment has received comparatively lit- tle attention. Contributing to the incomplete understanding of the multi- dimensionality of the OC construct is the relative lack of re- search on subdimensions of the commitment dimensions. McGee and Ford (1987) and Meyer, Allen, and Gellatly (1990) offered evidence for the presence of two subdimensions of the CC dimension (personal sacrifice and lack of alternatives) and conceptually argued that these subdimensions should be differ- entially related to a number of constructs. Meyer et al. (1989) examined two subdimensions and found negative correlations between each of them and ratings of performance and promot- ability (correlations with the lack of alternatives subdimension were stronger), but they did not pursue these relationships in depth. However, very few studies have addressed subdimensions even when such an approach seems relevant. For example, al- though Shore and Tetrick (1991) demonstrated that "perceived organization support" (an organization's commitment to its employees) was related to AC but not to CC, they did not con- sider subdimensions of commitment. Pursuing these findings further may be important, particularly if perceived support from an organization is regarded as a personal sacrifice when an employee leaves the organization. An Expanded Perspective The present study was designed to contribute to the OC liter- ature by addressing the limitations of previous studies and ex- tending the research on Allen and Meyer's (1990) instrument to determine whether it provides a workable operationalization of the multidimensional OC construct. Because our primary focus was on the instrument, we did not attempt to build a complete theoretical model. Instead, when selecting antecedents, we re- lied on previous research and calls for work such as that made by Mathieu and Zajac (1990). For example, many of the rela- tionships that Mathieu and Zajac examined in their meta-anal- ysis were based on small-sample studies that often focused only on a relatively small set of antecedent variables within single samples. In the present research, we examined the roles of a 370 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.