Organizational commitment (OC) is a psychological state that binds an employee to an
organization, and the Three-Component Model of organizational commitment (Meyer &
Allen, 1991) posits that employees bind with their organizations as a result of desire
(affective commitment), need (continuance commitment) and obligation (normative
commitment). Similarly, relationship commitment between two people also has been
conceived as a psychological state (Rusbult & Buunk, 1993), and Arriaga and Agnew
(2001) outlined affective, cognitive and conative components of the state. This
exploratory study examined the similarities between these conceptually parallel
commitment models by determining how the dimensions of the two types of commitment
correlate with one another, attachment style (Bowlby 1969/1982) and locus of control
(Rotter, 1966). Data collected from 171 working adults yield several noteworthy
associations and suggest future directions of inquiry.