John P Meyer

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• PhD
• Professor at Western University

Employee commitment has long been recognized as a key to retaining employees within organizations and occupations. In some occupations, like teaching, commitment to both the organization and occupation are important. However, employees can develop several other work-related commitments that will also have implications for their career decisions and...

This volume brings together recent insights about the psychology of organizational change. The authors are leading scholars in the study of organizational change, taking on a micro-perspective for understanding the process through which responses to change emerge and impact work-related outcomes. Each chapter approaches the topic from a different p...

Researchers often assume a strong, linear relationship between regular- and reverse-keyed items, with responses on regular-keyed items (e.g., agree) perfectly mirroring those on reverse-keyed items (e.g., disagree). The current research challenges this received view and propounds a possible nonlinear relationship, partly due to the logical tendency...

Within self-determination theory, motivation has been treated as a unidimensional (autonomy continuum) and multidimensional (types of motivation) construct. We propose that this dual nature can be reconciled by distinguishing reasons for exerting effort from the psychological state, or ‘mindset’, experienced while engaging in task-relevant activiti...

The implications of HRM practices for employee commitment continue to be of interest to researchers and practitioners around the globe. Although much of the research focuses on affective commitment (AC), attention has also been paid to normative (NC) and continuance (CC) commitment in accord with the three-component model (TCM; Meyer & Allen, 1991)...

We investigate the development and consequences of commitment profiles among Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) recruits who completed surveys at the end of basic training (N = 3998) and three (N = 636) and nine (N = 612) months later. The surveys included measures of affective, normative, and continuance commitment as well as measures developed by the CA...

Murphy (2021) argues that the field of Industrial-Organizational (I/O) Psychology needs to pay more attention to descriptive statistics (“Table 1”; e.g., M, SD, reliability, correlations) when reporting and interpreting results. We agree that authors need to present a clear and transparent description of their data and that descriptive statistics a...

The current research challenges the received view that misresponses to reversed items are the result of participants’ irrational behavior. On the contrary, for participants at a midpoint level of a trait, it is perfectly logical to agree and disagree with seemingly equivalent statements (e.g., I’m not tall, but neither am I short). For this reason,...

Employees can develop multiple commitments at work. These commitments can combine in different ways, with implications for organizations and employees themselves. In this study we conducted latent profile analyses (LPA) to identify different configurations of commitment to the organization, supervisor, work group, and citizens among a sample of emp...

Consistent with the trend toward viewing psychological well-being as more than the absence of illness, we developed an instrument—the personal growth and development scale (PGDS)—that can be used to assess positive change in well-being attributable to context-specific experiences. As part of the validation process, we examined relations between the...

Previous attempts to identify personality profiles in the five-factor and HEXACO models of personality have produced inconsistent results. Here, using data from four independent samples, each with approximately 90,000 international respondents to the 100-item HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised (HEXACO-PI-R), we demonstrated that a five-profile so...

This chapter provides an evidence-based guide to the design and application of employee engagement surveys. It begins with a discussion of the meaning of engagement and the importance of distinguishing it from related concepts such as job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment. Next, it addresses the question of “engagement with what?...

The authors adopt a person-centered approach to the investigation of the dimensionality of the union commitment construct by capitalizing on a 10-year longitudinal study (from 1992 to 2002) of 637 union members in their first year of employment measured again 1 and 10 years later. Results reveal four distinct profiles of union commitment, presentin...

We expand the notion of autonomy-supportive management from self-determination theory (SDT) by treating it as a multidimensional construct, with the dimensions reflecting behaviours expected to satisfy the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness that underlie autonomous motivation. Using SDT as a guide, we constructed a set of Need-Supporti...

This study extends previous commitment research by applying person-centered analytic techniques to identify and compare profiles of affective, normative, and continuance commitment to the organization and occupation. Latent profile analyses applied to data from 336 Canadian teachers revealed five profiles with unique combinations of the three commi...

This research investigates the much-debated factor structure of the 54-item version of Ryff’s (1989) Scales of Psychological Well-being (SPWB). Using two samples (n1 = 573; n2 = 449) of undergraduate university students, we apply confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) along with recently developed exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) techniq...

Researchers have recently begun to take a person-centered (profile) approach to investigate how the affective, normative and continuance commitment mindsets combine within the three-component model of organizational commitment. The meaningfulness of the profiles identified in this research depends, in part, on evidence that similar profiles emerge...

Our study applies a person-centered approach to the HEXACO model of personality using latent profile analysis (LPA). While the traditional variable-centered approach assumes that the relations among variables within a particular population are homogenous, the person-centered approach identifies subgroups within samples that have similar scores on s...

The positive psychology movement espouses a shift in the conceptualization of well-being from the absence of illness to the experience of optimal health and functioning. The Personal Growth and Development Scale (PGDS) was recently developed to measure a person’s experience of growth and development, a crucial component to reaching the upper limi...

There has been a recent increase in the application of person-centered research strategies in the investigation of workplace commitments. To date, research has focused primarily on the identification, within a population, of subgroups presenting different cross-sectional or longitudinal configurations of commitment mindsets (affective, normative, a...

Despite the increased popularity of person-centered analyses, no comprehensive approach exists to guide the systematic investigation of the similarity (or generalizability) of latent profiles, their predictors, and their outcomes across subgroups of participants or time points. We propose a six-step process to assess configural (number of profiles)...

Organizational changes are costly ventures that too often fail to deliver the expected outcomes. Psychological empowerment and affective commitment to change are proposed as especially important in turbulent contexts characterized by multiple and ongoing changes requiring employees’ continuing contributions. In such a context, employees’ beliefs th...

Work-relevant commitments have important implications for employee behavior and well-being, but the connections are complicated by the fact that commitments can be characterized by different mindsets and be directed at different targets. Recent developments in person-centered analytic strategies (e.g., latent profile analysis) have helped to addres...

Factor analysis and nomological network analysis are commonly used as complementary procedures in the investigation of the dimensionality of constructs (e.g., self-esteem, job satisfaction). Although it has been demonstrated that factor analyses are often biased toward a two-dimensional solution for measures including regular- and reverse-keyed ite...

We investigated the effects that careless responding and acquiescence response bias have on analyses conducted to assess construct dimensionality. Using job satisfaction/dissatisfaction as the focal construct, we measured and controlled for careless responding and acquiescence bias in data obtained from an online survey of employees (N = 666) from...

Stimulated initially by concerns over retention, organizational commitment research has evolved to address the different ways that commitment can be experienced (i.e., multiple mindsets) and the different targets to which it is directed (multiple foci). Consideration is also given to a wider range of organization-relevant outcomes and to employee w...

A growing academic literature dedicated to organizational commitment has adopted a person-centered approach in order to identify homogenous groups of employees with similar mindset profiles (i.e., relative levels of affective [AC], normative [NC], and continuance [CC] commitment; Meyer et al., 2013). Although multiple studies have identified a rela...

La science de la psychologie industrielle et organisationnelle a généré un vaste volume de connaissances au cours du siècle dernier, et pourtant, nous continuons de nous plaindre du fait que ce que nous avons déterminé n’est pas toujours mis en application. Les praticiens affirment que les connaissances scientifiques ne sont pas accessibles, que la...

Recent efforts have been made to identify and compare employees with profiles reflecting different combinations of affective (AC), normative (NC), and continuance (CC) organizational commitment. To date, the optimal profiles in terms of employee behavior and well-being have been found to be those in which AC, NC, and CC are all strong, or those whe...

According to the 3-component model of commitment, the individual components of commitment—affective (AC), normative (NC), and continuance (CC)—combine to form profiles, and these profiles have different implications for behavior and well-being. We tested these propositions in a military context and also examined conditions (perceived organizational...

Theories of workplace commitment have become increasingly complex with propositions regarding its multiple-component structure (e.g., affective, normative, continuance) and multiple foci (e.g., organization, supervisor, team). To date, most research has taken a variable-centered approach (e.g., regression, SEM) to address the additive and interacti...

Illustrates the use and demonstrates the value of the construct approach within organizational psychology by focusing particular attention on the conceptualization and measurement of organizational commitment. The authors begin with a brief history of research on organizational commitment. This is followed by an overview of research in this area fr...

With increasing globalization of business and diversity within the workplace, there has been growing interest in cultural differences in employee commitment. We used meta-analysis to compute mean levels of affective (AC; K=966, N=433,129), continuance (CC; K=428, N=199,831), and normative (NC; K=336, N=133,277) organizational commitment for as many...

The Meaning of Commitment and Well-beingCommitment and Well-being: A Theoretical FrameworkWell-being as an Outcome of CommitmentUnderlying MechanismsWork Conditions as AntecedentsSummaryDirections for Future ResearchImplications for PracticeConclusion NoteReferences

The two purposes of this article were to examine the meta-analytic relationships between several well-studied forms of leadership and employee commitment and to test if some of these relationships vary due to societal culture. Transformational/ charismatic leadership was shown to be positively related to affective (AC; ρ =.451, k = 116) and normati...

The classic, well-cited study by Marshall et al. (1992) demonstrated that optimism correlates stronger with extraversion than does pessimism and pessimism correlates stronger with neuroticism than does optimism, and these results lent support to their claim that optimism and pessimism are two separate constructs. However, we argued that their resul...

In this article, Ontario's stroke rehabilitation system is used to exemplify the challenges faced by rehabilitation and healthcare systems across Canada who are attempting to provide quality care to patients in the face of increasing demands. Currently, Ontario's rehabilitation system struggles in its efforts to provide accessible and comprehensive...

This study examined the nature of the relations between affective and continuance components of organizational commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991, Human Resource Management Review, 1: 61–89) and deviant workplace behaviors (DWB; Bennett & Robinson, 2003) in a sample of 120 Korean employees and their supervisors. As expected, we found that affective co...

Although a great deal is known about the implications of employee commitment for organizations, less attention has been paid to its ramifications for employees themselves. Previous research has been unsystematic and the findings have sometimes been inconsistent. The most consistent findings pertain to the positive links between affective commitment...

This longitudinal study examines how person–organization fit, operationalized as congruence between perceived and preferred organizational culture, relates to employees’ affective commitment and intention to stay with an organization during the early stages of a strategic organizational change. Employees in a large energy company completed surveys...

Two studies were conducted to examine the link between employee perceptions of the psychological contract and their affective and normative commitments to the organization. The authors adapt a new approach to the study of psychological contracts by developing a generalizable measure of contract features (e.g., scope; time frame). In Study 1 (N=301)...

What are the constructs that underlie affective experiences? Some authors have suggested Valence and Activation, whereas others have suggested Positive Activation and Negative Activation-both approaches are represented by different axis orientations in traditional two-mode (People x Adjectives) factor analysis. The authors provide new evidence for...

Among the components of the Meyer and Allen's [Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1991). A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 1, 64-89] three-component model of organizational commitment, normative commitment (NC) has received the least attention. It is sometimes dismissed as a redundant con...

In this chapter, we address the paradox of commitment and change in organizations today (Meyer, 2009). On the one hand, it has been argued that the ubiquity and magnitude of change taking place in organizations undermines their ability and desire to establish committed relationships with employees (e.g., Baruch, 1998; Cappelli, 1999). On the other...

As editors of this book, we had a core set of objectives that we presented to the authors as questions to be answered in their chapters: What do we know now? How useful is what we know? Are current commitment theories adequate, and if not, what theoretical developments are needed? What can we learn from relevant theory and research outside of commi...

Although commitment is commonly identified as an essential element for the effective implementation of organizational change, little empirical evidence exists to support this claim. We conducted two studies to replicate and extend findings pertaining to Herscovitch and Meyer's three-component model of commitment to an organizational change. In the...

The purpose of this study was to test theoretical propositions advanced by Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) concerning the interactive effects of affective, normative, and continuance commitment on focal (staying intentions) and discretionary (citizenship) behavior. Study measures were gathered from a sample of 545 hospital employees. Several a priori...

The authors present an introduction to the research papers published in this issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior. The call for papers for this special issue on commitment and identification in organizations attracted 39 submissions from scholars around the world. Seven papers were selected that represent research from different countrie...

Although social identities and work-related commitment are important aspects of employee attachment, distinctions between and relations among the two have not been clearly articulated. In this conceptual piece, we propose that identity and commitment are distinguishable in terms of their essential meaning, foci of attachment, mindsets, volitionalit...

We offer a reconceptualization of employee cynicism and present the results of two studies to test the hypotheses that (a) cynicism about an organizational change is distinguishable from skepticism about the change, more general forms of cynicism (disposition and management), and trust in management, (b) change-specific cynicism and skepticism rela...

Theorists and researchers interested in employee commitment and motivation have not made optimal use of each other's work. Commitment researchers seldom address the motivational processes through which commitment affects behavior, and motivation researchers have not recognized important distinctions in the forms, foci, and bases of commitment. To e...

We tested Becker's (1960) side-bet conceptualization of commitment within the context of Meyer and Allen's (1991) three-component model of organizational commitment. Employees (N=202) from various organizations completed a survey including measures of (a) seven categories of side bets (b) affective, normative, and continuance commitment, and (c) tu...

The authors conducted meta-analyses to assess (a) relations among affective, continuance, and normative commitment to the organization and (b) relations between the three forms of commitment and variables identified as their antecedents, correlates, and consequences in Meyer and Allen's (1991) Three-Component Model. They found that the three forms...

Three studies were conducted to test the application of a three-component model of workplace commitment (J. P. Meyer & N. J. Allen, 1991: J. P. Meyer & L. Herscovitch, 2001) in the context of employee commitment to organizational change. Study 1, conducted with 224 university students, provided preliminary evidence for the validity of newly develop...

This study investigated the relationship between personality and leadership development in a sample of Canadian Forces officer candidates. At Time 1, personality assessments were obtained from candidates, interviewers, and references at various Canadian Forces Recruiting Centres. Six to nine months later at Time 2, 174 military officer candidates w...

We conducted two studies to determine whether the three-component model of organisational commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991) is generalisable to a non-Western culture using data from South Korea. In Study 1, we found that when the 6-item versions of the scales (Meyer, Allen, & Smith, 1993) were translated into Korean, the psychometric properties of t...

It is now well recognized that employees can develop multiple work-relevant commitments, and that commitment itself is a multidimensional construct. Unfortunately, there remains considerable disagreement, both within and across work commitment literatures (e.g., organizational, occupational, union), about what commitment is, its dimensionality, how...

This study was conducted to examine the mechanisms involved in observed relations between human resource management (HRM) practices and employee commitment. Employees (N = 281) from several organizations completed a survey that included measures of (a) the quality of HRM practices pertaining to performance appraisal, benefits, training, and career...

Despite meta-analytic support for the met expectations hypothesis, Irving and Meyer (1994, 1995) suggested that methodological problems such as the use of difference scores and retrospective measures of met expectations have resulted in an overstatement of this support. In a recent article, Hom, Griffeth, Palich, and Bracker (1998) simultaneously t...

Past research demonstrating the fairness-enhancing effects of managerial accounts of controversial organizational decisions typically has confounded two dimensions, whether the manager offers a justification legitimizing the decision. We manipulated these two dimensions, within the context of third-party conflict resolution, to determine their inde...

The Canadian workplace is undergoing extensive changes that have the potential to alter dramatically the psychological commitments that employees experience with regard to their work. The purpose of this article is to examine the interplay between these changes and employee commitment. The authors begin by outlining a well-established three-compone...

We tested the hypothesis that the influence of early work experiences on organization commitment would be moderated by the value employees place on these experiences. We measured work values in two samples of recent university graduates prior to organizational entry, and obtained measures of commensurate work experiences and three forms of commitme...

This study was conducted to identify dimensions of outcome criteria commonly used in the evaluation of managerial intervention in conflicts among subordinates. Undergraduate students in organizational psychology rated the likelihood that each of 24 outcomes would result from the use of six intervention strategies. A principal components analysis re...

Multidimensional scaling analysis was used to investigate the underlying dimensional structure of 21 3rd-party conflict management strategies derived from the literature. 18–51 yr olds evaluated a series of conflict intervention strategies that a manager might use when dealing with a conflict among his or her subordinates. Whereas A. R. Elangovan's...

Within the past few years, several studies have used the Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment Scales (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Meyer & Allen, 1984, 1991) to assess organizational commitment. The purpose of this paper is to review and evaluate the body of evidence relevant to the construct validity of these measures. Although some empirical...

We compared the criterion validity of a new relative performance appraisal format (percentile-based ranking) to that of an absolute format (BOS) in a sample of 88 unit managers. Overall, our results suggest that the relative format has higher criterion-related validity than does the absolute format. These findings contradict conventional wisdom tha...

We used multiple regression analysis to examine the joint and separate effects of pre-entry expectations and post-entry experiences on direct measures of met expectations for 259 organizational newcomers during the first year of employment. Results suggested that concerns about the use of direct measures of met expectations are warranted. Post-entr...

On the basis of their recent meta-analysis, J. P. Wanous, T. D. Poland, S. L. Premack, and K. S. Davis (1992) concluded that confirmation of newcomers' preentry expectations has a substantial impact on their work attitudes and behaviors. However, methodological problems inherent in many of the individual tests of the met-expectations hypothesis giv...

The escalation of commitment to a failing course of action is often attributed to self-justification motives that presumably are evoked by personal responsibility for initiating the original action (e.g., B. M. Staw, 1976). Nevertheless, personal responsibility--operationalized as choice--has been confounded with public justification, which might e...

The escalation of commitment to a failing course of action is often attributed to self-justification motives that presumably are evoked by personal responsibility for initiating the original action (e.g., B. M. Staw, 1976). Nevertheless, personal responsibility—operationalized as choice—has been confounded with public justification, which might eng...

The authors tested the generalizability of J. P. Meyer and N. J. Allen's (1991) 3-component model of organizational commitment to the domain of occupational commitment. Measures of affective, continuance, and normative commitment to occupation were developed and used to test hypotheses concerning their differential relations with antecedent and con...

The authors tested the generalizability of J. P. Meyer and N. J Allen's (1991) 3-component model of organizational commitment to the domain of occupational commitment. Measures of affective, continuance, and normative commitment to occupation were developed and used to test hypotheses concerning their differential relations with antecedent and cons...

Cross-study differences in the contributions of work attitudes to the turnover process led us to (a) estimate the six relations among job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention/withdrawal cognitions, and turnover using meta-analysis; (b) assess the effects of several psychometric moderators on those relations; and (c) compare t...