Organizational Commitment, Psychological Contract Fulfillment and Job Performance: A Longitudinal Quanti-qualitative Study

The goals of this study are to contribute to the understanding of the development of organizational commitment and to explore the relations among psychological contract fulfillment, organizational commitment, and job performance. This paper reports the findings of a longitudinal quanti-qualitative study conducted with newcomers over three years. We identified four trajectories of commitment development: Learning to Love, High Match, Honeymoon Hangover and Learning to Hate. The last one is originally proposed in this study, and it is represented by individuals who began work highly committed to the organization, but then their commitment levels decreased dramatically over time. We discuss some characteristics associated with these trajectories. Our results corroborate the assumption that psychological contract fulfillment is positively related to commitment. Nevertheless, our findings about the relationship between commitment and job performance were different according to the trajectories. The trajectories Learning to Love and Learning to Hate support the assumption that higher commitment levels would lead to better performance, and vice versa; however, the trajectories High Match and Honeymoon Hangover contradict it. We offer and discuss some possible explanations for these findings.

本研究旨在推动学界对组织承诺（organizational commitment）发展机制的深入理解，并探究心理契约履行（psychological contract fulfillment）、组织承诺与工作绩效（job performance）三者间的内在关联。本文报告了一项针对新入职员工开展的为期三年的纵向混合研究（longitudinal quanti-qualitative study）的成果。本研究共识别出四类组织承诺发展轨迹：分别为「学会热爱（Learning to Love）」「高度匹配（High Match）」「蜜月后遗症（Honeymoon Hangover）」与「学会厌恶（Learning to Hate）」。其中「学会厌恶」轨迹为本研究首次提出，该轨迹的典型表现为：个体入职初期对组织抱有较高的组织承诺，但随时间推移其承诺水平出现大幅下滑。本文还探讨了与这四类轨迹相关的若干特征。研究结果证实了「心理契约履行与组织承诺呈正相关」这一研究假设。不过，针对组织承诺与工作绩效间的关联，本研究结果因轨迹类型不同而存在差异：「学会热爱」与「学会厌恶」两类轨迹支持「更高的组织承诺水平将带来更优工作绩效，反之亦然」的假设；但「高度匹配」与「蜜月后遗症」两类轨迹则与该假设相悖。本文针对上述研究发现提出了若干可能的解释并展开讨论。