Development and validation of a commitment to organizational career scale: At the crossroads of individuals’ career aspirations and organizations’ needs

Abstract

This paper introduces the construct of commitment to organizational career (COC). Conceptualized as a specific form of goal commitment, COC reflects an individual's commitment to the goal of pursuing a long and successful career in an organization. We developed a 5‐item measure of COC and examined its validity and reliability in four studies involving employees from diverse organizations and occupations (Ns = 312, 187, 199, 309). We explore COC's distinctiveness from related constructs, including organizational commitment components (i.e., affective, normative, and continuance subdimensions) and career commitment, as well as its ability to predict turnover intention and voluntary turnover. Finally, we examine COC's antecedents and specify boundary conditions to its relationship to turnover. Overall, results support the reliability and validity of the COC measure. We discuss how COC contributes to generate promising research avenues for the career and commitment literatures. Practitioner points We introduce the commitment to organizational career (COC) construct. Four studies provide reliability and validity evidence for a COC measure that can be used in future research. COC adds to the career and commitment literatures and directs attention to organizational career goals as a common ground linking individuals’ and organizations’ interests. This common ground may provide a basis for both parties to build mutually beneficial relationships.

A Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents of Career Commitment

“…Indeed, the discriminant validity of career commitment from measurements of organizational commitment and job involvement has been captured by a good deal of empirical studies (e.g. Gebbels et al, 2020;Lapointe et al, 2019). According to Colarelli and Bishop (1990), in contrast to career commitment, organizational commitment should be viewed as loyalty or emotional attachment to the current working organization rather than to the vocation.…”

The Impact of CSR Perceptions on Employees’ Turnover Intention during the COVID-19 Crisis in China

“…Following Lapointe et al [ 70 ], we adopted three items to measure employees’ turnover intention: “I often think about leaving my organization”, “I am actively searching for a job at another organization”, and “If I could choose again, I would choose to work for another organization” (Cronbach’s α = 0.87).…”

Psychological entitlement and organizational citizenship behaviors: the roles of employee involvement climate and affective organizational commitment

“…Fifth, our study focused on affective commitment as it has been found to have a stronger relationship with OCBs than other dimensions of commitment (Cetin et al, 2015). Future research could also study other conceptualizations of organizational commitment, such as normative and continuance commitment (Allen & Meyer, 1990) and commitment to organizational career (Lapointe et al, 2019), in conjunction with affective commitment to develop a more comprehensive perspective of the role of organizational commitment.…”