Commitment in organizational contexts: Introduction to the special issue

• Author: Howard J. Klein
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2103
• Published date: 01 May 2016
• Date: 01 May 2016

Commitment in organizational contexts:

Introduction to the special issue

HOWARD J. KLEIN

Department of Management and Human Resources, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, Columbus,

Ohio, U.S.A.

Keywords: commitment; best papers; research needs

The six articles that make up this special issue were developed from the third Conference on Commitment held in

November 2014 in Columbus, Ohio at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business. In this introduction,

I briefly summarize and highlight the themes from the conference and the articles that make up the special issue, and

outline what I view as the most pressing future research needs for advancing our understanding of commitment in

organizational contexts. Commitment has long been a central construct in the study of organizational behavior and

it has been argued that commitment is more relevant today than ever (e.g. Klein, Molloy, & Brinsfield, 2012; Meyer,

2009). Despite the changing nature of work, organizations, and the employment relationship, companies still need a

committed workforce and most individuals want to commit to something. However, because of these changes,

commitment to values, career, teams, projects, or goals may be more important in many situations to the organization

and/or the employee than commitment to the organization.

Commitment, across the full array of workplace targets, remains an important determinant of outcomes of interest

to scholars and managers. At the organizational level, having a committed workforce has, for example, been

associated with organizational performance, profit margins, and customer satisfaction (e.g. Cameron, Bright, & Caza,

2004; Harter, Schmidt, Asplund, Killham, & Agrawal, 2010; Heavey, Holwerda, & Hausknecht, 2013). At the

individual level, commitment has been found to predict absenteeism, turnover, motivation, performance, pro-social

behaviors, well-being, and career success (Becker, Klein, & Meyer 2009; Mathieu & Zajac 1990; Meyer, Stanley,

Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002).

Conference Overview

The goals of the Conference on Commitment are to “advance the literature by promoting leading-edge thinking on all

aspects and forms of commitment in organizational contexts”by bringing together “a community of scholars

interested in the phenomenon of commitment to share and discuss ideas and findings”, and promoting “opportunities

for informal interaction and dialogue among attendees to facilitate networking, collaboration, the sharing of ideas”

(Conference on Commitment, 2014). The 2014 meeting was third commitment conference and, despite conflicting

with the Southern Management Association meetings, both submissions and attendance were up from the prior

conference. Several very good papers had to be left off the program and registration was at capacity, with 75 attendees

from 14 different countries (based on institutional affiliation).

*Correspondence to: Howard J. Klein, Department of Management and HumanResources, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University,

Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A. E-mail: klein.12@fisher.osu.edu

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 489–493 (2016)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2103

Editorial