Highly Effective Behavior of Financial Consultants

The topic of commitment has a long tradition in the organizational behavior literature. For some 40 years now, the concept has been studied and quantitative empirical research has shown that commitment can be differentiated into several forms such as affective, normative, or continuance commitment. That is, some employees are committed to their organization because they want to be (affective), because they need to be because of low alternatives (continuance) or because they feel they ought to be (normative). Evidence clearly supports the assumption that affective comm- ment is positively related to a range of organizationally relevant variables such as performance, satisfaction, well-being etc. Normative commitment is also associated with these variables, i. e. is “good” for both organization and employee, but to a lesser extent. Continuance commitment, however, has been found to be largely unrelated to these variables; the only reliable association holds for turnover intentions. Other important research in the last decade or so has looked into the differentiation of foci or targets of commitment. The most prominent foci that have been identified are the organization as a whole, and teams, departments or work groups as smaller entities. (Other foci include work commitment, career commitment, commitment to the supervisor, etc. ). Research here has shown that commitment is usually stronger towards smaller categories compared to large inclusive ones (such as the organization as a whole) but that the strengths of relationships to other variables depends on the fit or match between the concepts.

Dr. Elfi Ettinger ist Assistenz-Professorin am Lehrstuhl für Information Systems & Change Management der Universität Twente, Niederlande.