So what does it mean to be a “committed” employee? As shown in Figure 3-5 , it means
a lot of different things. It means that the employee has a strong desire to remain a member
of the organization, maybe because he or she wants to stay, needs to stay, or feels he or she
ought to stay. Regardless of the reasons for their attachment though, retaining employees
means stopping the progression of withdrawal that begins with psychological forms and
escalates to behavioral forms. Note that the negative sign ( ) in Figure 3-5 illustrates that
high levels of overall organizational commitment reduce the frequency of psychological
and physical withdrawal. Note also that psychological withdrawal goes on to affect physical
withdrawal, which represents the progressive nature of such behaviors.
As you move forward in this book, you’ll notice that every chapter includes a description
of how that chapter’s topic relates to organizational commitment. For example, Chapter
4 on Job Satisfaction describes how employees’ feelings about their jobs influence
their organizational commitment. You’ll find that some chapter topics are more strongly
correlated with affective commitment, whereas other topics correlate more strongly with
continuance or normative commitment. Such differences will help you see exactly how and
why a given topic, whether it be satisfaction, stress, motivation, or something else, affects
organizational commitment. By the end of the book, you will have developed a good sense
of the most powerful drivers of commitment.