This article responds to the call for the identification of a core essence of organizational commitment. Since this call 14 years ago, scholars studying organizational commitment have not come to an agreement as to the nature of organizational commitment, and how it develops. The research's fragmentation creates a problem in a time when practitioners are looking toward organizational commitment interventions to attract, retain, and develop talent and enhance employee performance. With organizational commitment research remaining confounding and fragmented, further clarification of what commitment is and how it develops is warranted and important to guide future research and evidencebased practice. Through a review of the competing and overlapping organizational commitment theoretical frameworks and the empirical research on the consequences of affective organizational commitment, this article proposes a conceptual framework in which affective commitment, or the emotional attachment to the organization, is an important core essence of organizational commitment.

This article explores a perspective of Human Resource Development grounded in Pragmatist philosophy and emerging theories of Practice. Pragmatism focuses on the practical outcomes of what we think and do. Thus, a core focus of Pragmatism is on practice. Practice theories frame and explain activities that are continually performed, produced, and reproduced through a dynamic entanglement of action, politics, communities, discourse, materials, tools, and agents. Pragmatism and practice theories are complementary perspectives focused on the consequences of our ideas and the results of our actions. Both perspectives provide us with valuable insights about our world. Pragmatism is a perspective that can bridge current divides between scientific paradigms, the theory-practice gap, and academic-practitioner interests. We review the general tenets of Pragmatism related to the research, theory, and practice of Human Resource Development. Key topics include pragmatic ideas of inquiry and objectivity; epistemology, truth, and fallibilism; and practice and experience.

No abstract

Experiencing meaningful work is strongly linked to occupational health, and organizational leaders can play a role in facilitating meaningful work through various practices. However, studies identifying and classifying specific leadership practices that foster meaningful work are limited. In this article, we distill and clarify major ways leaders might enable meaningful work and contribute a new tool to assess them. In three studies of employees in various work contexts (N = 689; N = 647, N = 351), we administered a set of items measuring numerous practices leaders use to cultivate meaningful work elicited from a qualitative study of organizational leaders and a literature review. Dimensionality reduction techniques distilled these practices into six distinct domains. We then validated a diagnostic instrument to measure the extent to which leaders engage in each practice (the Practices for Meaning Diagnostic) and explored associations with employee experiences of meaningful work, psychological meaningfulness, and related variables, finding strong relationships. The six identified leadership practices are: communicating the work’s bigger impact, recognizing and nurturing potential, fostering personal connections, discussing values and organizational purpose during hiring, enacting integrity through modeling values-based behaviors, and giving employees freedom. Our results provide a way for leaders to assess practices intended to foster meaningful work and a way for researchers to test the practices’ effectiveness. We also describe contributions to research, theory, and practice.

Experiencing meaningful work is strongly linked to occupational health, and organizational leaders can play a role in facilitating meaningful work through various practices. However, studies identifying and classifying specific leadership practices that foster meaningful work are limited. In this article, we distill and clarify major ways leaders might enable meaningful work and contribute a new tool to assess them. In three studies of employees in various work contexts (N = 689; N = 647, N = 351), we administered a set of items measuring numerous practices leaders use to cultivate meaningful work elicited from a qualitative study of organizational leaders and a literature review. Dimensionality reduction techniques distilled these practices into six distinct domains. We then validated a diagnostic instrument to measure the extent to which leaders engage in each practice (the Practices for Meaning Diagnostic) and explored associations with employee experiences of meaningful work, psychological meaningfulness, and related variables, finding strong relationships. The six identified leadership practices are: communicating the work's bigger impact, recognizing and nurturing potential, fostering personal connections, discussing values and organizational purpose during hiring, enacting integrity through modeling values-based behaviors, and giving employees freedom. Our results provide a way for leaders to assess practices intended to foster meaningful work and a way for researchers to test the practices' effectiveness. We also describe contributions to research, theory, and practice.