Mgb 200 - Meyer and Allen’s Model of Organisational Commitment

Queensland University of Technology

Meyer and Allen’s Model of Organisational Commitment  

MGB200:  Assessment item 2 case study

Word count:  1991

  Literature Review

The case study analysis will present a critical diagnosis of the Allen and Meyers model of organisational commitment. The Literature review will provide definitions of the theory and insight into the organisational commitment structure towards the negative aspect of the theory but also the importance of using the theory in the organisation. The case study will incorporate critical thinking skills to emphasis on the what happened to my work life balance case study, and provide insight into why the organisation behaviour occurred. And finally, the case study will attempt to reach a conclusion about how to enhance organisation commitment in the future.

 Allen and Meyers model of organisational commitment emphasise on three core elements. The three stages are affective, continuance and normative forms of commitment (Jaros, 1997). There is Extensive research evaluating that there is a substantial connection between organisational inflation and significant effective employee commitment, and the employee’s emotions have caused affective commitment which refers to the connection with the organisation (Mercurio, 2015). The success between the organisation and the employees reflects on well-founded positive connection, which results in performance enhancements from the workers. The positivity of the employees emphasises on strong levels of affective commitment which uplifts the emotions to stay within the company, affective commitments imply on acceptance and treatment of valued within the organisation, which includes a rational correspondent to the organisational loyalty commitment (Allen, 1990).

Continuance commitment indicates a more logical approach, where it can be described as the acknowledgement of the cost of leaving an organisation.  Continuance commitment present the motives of an employee to remain within the company even though they do not enjoy the work or are miserable due to the working environment and by the way they are treated (Meyer, 1991). However, the employee will stay with the company if the overall cost is more important and outweighs the benefits and spiritual happiness, these factors are affected heavily on poor viable alternatives and the possible financial loss (McShane, Olekalns, & Travaglione, 2016). An important part is the occurrence of employee’s inability to transfer to another occupation, due to circumstances of the induvial difficulties to transfer skills to another organisation (Ağar & Beduk, 2013). Derailing continuance commitment at a lower level emphasise the importance between the three components on continuance commitment should always be low, due to it being a negative approach of form of the three components of the model, which can harm any organisation if not changed (Meyer, Paunonen & Gellaty, 1989).

Normative commitment has been identified as the perceived obligation employee’s behaviour towards the organisation, normative commitment implies the pressure within the company to adjust to the company ideal objectives and goals (Willy, 2009). The type of person to express high normative commitment comes from their experience within the business, the years of experience spent working with the same company, loyalty is also part of normative commitment, if a company can persist on loyalty by ensuring appropriate tactics and identifying correct job culture will lead to substantial levels of cooperate loyalty and high levels of affective commitment (Irving, 1997). Normative and affective are the most important form of commitment as they are the two most crucial forms of commitment of the theory, companies should rely and seek to acquire the two commitments model and must be critically evaluated due to its persistent conceptual changes (Jaros, 1997).    

The negative aspect of Meyer and Allen theory. The ideology of normative commitment can potentially affect the alteration towards knowledge of the individual and the ability to reflect on the employees own creative ideas for the organisation, stemming from an employee’s moral obligation to remain committed to the organisation and the need to work for the company (Wolowska, 2014). There are some critical consequences as the result of incorporating high commitment to the organisation, were high loyalty can cause organisation to stagnate, an employee who portrays high commitment tends to elevate conformism resulting in creativity to decline, this stagnate the organisation to evolve in this modern time, and the individuals are resistant to change and bring new ideas to the organisation, restraining the gradual development to succeed (Jaros, 2009). If these factors are not changed it effectively declines competitive disadvantage within their respective fields, and the success of innovation would remain minimal leaving competitors to advance (Pittinsky & Shih, 2005).

There has been severe criticism of the model due to what the model is trying to achieve, and the model is believed to be confusing and logically incorrect. Extensive research has found that the Meyer and Allen model is not consistent towards the poor empirical findings, and the three components combine three different areas of attitude of emotional behaviours which establishes the predictions of employee’s turnover (Solinge, Olffen & Roe, 2008). The theory model describes why individuals should stay with the organisation and appears to connect an attitude toward a specific target, that being the organisation, the attitude reflects a behaviour towards leaving or staying, the theory model describes more a specific subdivision towards the general sense of organisational commitment (Janonienė & Endriulaitienė, 2013). Affective commitment correlates to the attitude towards a target, however, continuance and normative commitment represents different components of anticipation behaviours. The attitude behavioural component demonstrates explanations that may seem contradictory, were affective commitment portrays stronger associations with relevant behaviour, compared to normative and continuance commitment (Solinge, Olffen & Roe, 2008. There have been better alternative models which are more general organisational commitment of its approach of organisational commitment specifying on a singular construct, which is more cohesive help in predicting various behaviours beyond the comparison of Meyer and Allen model of turnover (Jaros & Robert, 2014).