Two distinct views of organizational commitment have developed, one that regards it as attitudinal and the other as behavioral. Meyer and Allen (1984) acknowledged the importance of both approaches (labeling them affective and continuance commitment) and developed scales for measuring each. The present study reexamined some psychometric properties of these scales. The affective commitment scale appeared to be unidimensional and had good internal consistency reliability. For the continuance commitment scale, however, two distinct dimensions were identified. The first reflected commitment based on few existing employment alternatives, and the second reflected commitment based on personal sacrifice associated with leaving the organization. Affective commitment was correlated significantly and negatively with the first dimension (low alternatives) and significantly and positively with the second dimension (high personal sacrifice). Recommendations for future use of these scales are discussed.

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Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to the conflict and ambiguity scales developed by Rizzo, House, and Lirtzman (1970). Alternative models were contrasted to evaluate the possibilities that (a) the 14 items comprising the scales do measure the two purported constructs, (b) the 14 items measure only one construct, or (c) the 14 items load complexly on a second-order factor model. The second-order factor model was superior across three independent subject samples (total n = 913), indicating that these measures do not establish role conflict and role ambiguity as two factorially independent constructs. The authors conclude that alternative scales are needed; suggestions for scale development are discussed.

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