Which factors make the difference for explaining growth in newcomer organizational commitment? A latent growth modeling approach

• Published date: 01 May 2016
• Author: Antônio Virgílio Bittencourt Bastos,Omar Nathanaël Solinger,Leticia Gomes Maia
• Date: 01 May 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2096

Which factors make the difference for explaining

growth in newcomer organizational commitment?

A latent growth modeling approach

LETICIA GOMES MAIA

1

*, ANTÔNIO VIRGÍLIO BITTENCOURT BASTOS

2

AND

OMAR NATHANAËL SOLINGER

3

1

Federal University of Bahia and Central Bank of Brazil, Brazil

2

Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil

3

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Summary Previous studies on newcomer socialization have evidenced quite consistently that newcomers’affective

commitment tends to decline in the first years of employment. In this paper, we attempt to explain why a

minority of Brazilian newcomers in a governmental organization (N= 194) display growth in commitment

(33 per cent) in the first 3 years of employment, despite the fact that the odds are clearly in favor of decline

(62 per cent). We reasoned that the minority displaying growing commitment may have had qualitatively dif-

ferent work experiences or would have different personal characteristics. We used latent growth modeling and

post hoc tests to analyze the hypotheses. Concerning individual differences, newcomers with growing com-

mitment were on average older but did not have higher work centrality. Concerning work experiences, new-

comers whose training matched the job (high person–job fit) and whose tasks were challenging were more

prevalent in the growing commitment group. The newcomers who showed declining commitment were more

likely to feel overwhelmed by the amount of work in the new role (high role overload) and were typically not

promoted to higher ranks. Change in commitment also predicted self-reported performance (productivity and

initiative) 3 years after organizational entry. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: organizational commitment; latent growth modeling; change; longitudinal; job performance

Organizational commitment has traditionally been conceptualized as a relatively stable phenomenon that explains

consistency in employee behavior, such as staying employed by the organization (Becker, Ullrich and Van Dick,

2013; see also Meyer & Allen, 1991; Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982). Recent theory and empirical evidence, how-

ever, prove that commitment is a dynamic phenomenon that grows and declines in reaction to positive and negative

experiences on the job, especially among newcomers (Kammeyer-Mueller, Wanberg, Glomb, & Ahlburg, 2005;

Klein, Molloy, & Brinsfield, 2012; Solinger, Hofmans, & Van Olffen, 2015). Given that recent theory discusses

commitment as a dynamic phenomenon, it should be studied with longitudinal designs where change in commitment

is focus of prediction. In fact, prior reviews have shown that many unanswered questions remain with regard to

predicting change in commitment (e.g., Bergman, Benzer, Kabins, Bhupatkar, & Panina, 2013; Morrow, 2011).

Newcomer socialization is an especially interesting setting for predicting change in affective organizational commit-

ment (AOC). Most of the prior research (reviewed later) shows that commitment tends to decline over time during

the first years on the job. However, more recent evidence shows that there are also small minorities of newcomers

who show growing and stable trajectories of commitment over time (e.g., Solinger, Van Olffen, Roe, & Hofmans,

2013). A major question we ask ourselves in this study is therefore, “What explains growth in newcomer affective

commitment while the odds are clearly in favor of decline?”

*Correspondence to: Leticia Gomes Maia, Federal University of Bahia, Central Bank of Brazil, SBS Qd. 3, Bl. B, 16°, Asa Sul, Brasília, Distrito

Federal, 70.074-900, Brazil. E-mail: leticiamaia@leticiamaia.com.br

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 29 January 2015

Revised 16 January 2016, Accepted 25 January 2016

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 537–557 (2016)

Published online 24 February 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2096

Special Issue Article

We attempt to answer this question in several ways. We argue that those who grow in affective commitment may

do so because they encountered qualitatively different kinds of work experiences or because they are different types

of people. With “qualitatively different”work experiences, we mean the possibility that some motivating work

experiences (such as being the right person for the job, having challenging tasks, or being promoted) explain growth,

while straining work experiences, such as role overload, may be more explanatory for decline in affective commit-

ment. Concerning personal factors, we expected that older age and work centrality would enhance newcomers’

propensity for growing commitment.

To probe into these hypotheses, we tracked the AOC of Brazilian newcomers in a large governmental organiza-

tion across their first 3years of employment. We also assessed how change in AOC impacted on newcomers’self-

reported performance (concerning productivity and initiative) 3 years after entering the organization. After all, com-

mitment is not only an outcome to be explained but also an important factor in explaining organizational effective-

ness (Harrison, Newman, & Roth, 2006; Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002; Harter, Schmidt, Asplund, Killham, &

Agrawal, 2010). There is some preliminary evidence that change in commitment does impact on change in perfor-

mance. For instance, Ng, Feldman, and Lam (2010) found that declining innovation-related employee behavior was

related to decline in organizational commitment, although this test was not conducted in a newcomer socialization

context.

Theoretical Framework

Our definition of commitment

Organizational commitment is often defined as a linkage, bond, or attachment of the individual to the organiza-

tion (Buchanan, 1974; Klein, Molloy, & Cooper, 2009; O’Reilly & Chatman, 1986). In the three-component

model of organizational commitment, there are different mindsets with which employees remain attached to

the organization. The first is a mindset of desire, where the employee wants to remain with the employer out

of a sense of affective attachment. This mindset refers to AOC, which highlights the emotional nature of the

bond between the person and the organization. It was defined by Meyer and Allen (1991, p. 67) as “the em-

ployee’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization.”The second mindset

is one of obligation, where employees feel morally compelled to stay, referring to normative organizational com-

mitment. The third mindset is one of cost awareness where the employees perceive their organization-specific

investments and lack alternatives to move elsewhere, referring to continuance organizational commitment (Meyer

& Herscovitch, 2001; Meyer & Allen, 1991). We are especially interested in affective commitment because this

type of bond has the strongest correlations with desirable behaviors at work (Harrison et al., 2006; Meyer, Stan-

ley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002) and is the least sensitive to cultural differences given our focus on the

Brazilian work context (Meyer et al., 2012). Moreover, affective commitment is conceptually the least controver-

sial of bonds, according to recent critiques of the three-component model (Klein, Molloy, & Brinsfield, 2012;

Solinger, Van Olffen, & Roe, 2008); it also is the most consistent with other measures of commitment, such

as attitudinal measures of commitment (Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ), Mowday, Steers, &

Porter, 1979; 3CAS, Solinger et al., 2015) and recent the unidimensional measure (see Klein, Cooper, Molloy,

& Swanson, 2014, for empirical evidence).

The dynamics of newcomer commitment

Being a newcomer in an organization is an inherently temporal experience because one is explicitly being pre-

pared for the future (Ashforth, 2012). During the process of socialization, one transits from being an “outsi der”

538 L. G. MAIA ET AL.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 537–557 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job