A Critical Evaluation of Organizational Commitment and Identification

Organizational, commitment and identification continue to capture the imagination and interest of organizational researchers. There is disagreement, however, regarding how these concepts should be measured in the workplace. Given this controversy, this study examines four popular instruments used by researchers to operationalize commitment and identification. The four measures considered include the commitment measures designed by Mowday, Steers, and Porter (1979), Cook and Wall (1980), and Hrebiniak and Alutto (1972), and Cheney's (1983) organizational identification measure. The primary goals of this article include assessing the reliability and validity of these instruments and their theoretical and practical utility to individuals interested in commitment or identification.