Qualitative Clarification of The Nature of Normative Commitment Mindsets Associated with Commitment Profiles

Since 1990, when Allen and Meyer proposed that an employee can experience three components of organizational commitment simultaneously, there has been only limited research investigating the nature of commitment profiles and their implications for employee work-related behaviors. The various combinations of the three components are proposed to generate qualitatively different mindsets that have important implication for employee work-related behaviors. One area where the commitment profiles approach has the potential to provide new insights is in the nature of normative commitment within commitment profiles. More specifically, this paper investigates the proposition that commitment profiles provide a context that determines how the commitment components are experienced. the context effect argument is most strongly made for explaining the dual nature of normative commitment. Normative commitment may either manifest as a moral imperative or as an indebted obligation, depending on the relative levels of affective and continuance commitment. On the basis of this theoretical argument, this paper presents the findings of a mixed-method study involving South Korean nurses that investigated the impact of a context effect on the nature of employees’ normative commitment by attempting to clarify qualitatively the mindset associated with commitment profiles in terms of employees’ perceptions of obligation to their hospital. To investigate if there were qualitative differences in the mindsets associated with profiles, five profiles were generated by cluster analysis of data from survey responses. Participants representative of each profile were then selected for semi-structured interviews that focused on understanding, in subjects’ own words, the experience and consequences of the mindset associated with their commitment profile. Results suggest that employees’ perceptions of their obligations were strongly influenced not only by social obligation and cultural values but also by commitment to their profession. Implications and direction for future research are discussed.