“Organizational commitment” generally refers to the relative strength of a person’s involvement in a particular organization—for our purposes, an employee’s involvement in the organization where he or she works. Among the dimensions of this involvement are a strong psychological attachment to and acceptance of the organization’s goals and values, a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization, and a strong desire to remain in the organization.
For the GOT study, we measured these dimensions using the organizational commitment scale adapted from Mowday et al. (1979)4 by the National Opinion Research Center for its General Social Survey of trends in the United States. We asked employees to rate their agreement with nine statements reflecting their commitment to their employers, on a scale ranging from one (strongly disagree) to six (strongly agree). Averaging the scores yields a measure of organizational commitment, with one representing little commitment and six representing maximum commitment.
Controlling for demographic factors, job characteristics, and age-related factors, we find that organizational commitment is higher among employees in the young-developing countries (4.6) than it is among employees of the old-developed countries (4.22).