Research Article
Analysis of Career-Related Variables and Organizational Commitment
Published: January 1997 · Vol. 26, No. 2 · pp. 271-286
Full Text
Abstract
Despite the abundance of research on organizational commitment, studies examining its relationship with individual career-related variables are very rare. This is likely because, until now, individuals have not played a substantial role in proactively shaping their own careers. However, in the forthcoming knowledge-based society, the scope for individuals to envision and choose their own careers will increase, and accordingly, organizations will be unable to overlook career-related variables for effective employee management. Based on this perspective, this study investigated the relationship between organizational commitment—one of the most widely studied variables in the field of organizational behavior and management—and career variables. Career stage and career path aspects were measured as career-related variables, while affective, transactional, and normative dimensions of commitment were measured for organizational commitment. Through survey analysis targeting Korean managers, several findings regarding the relationship between career and commitment were discovered. First, the career stage variables of age, total tenure, and current position tenure, as well as the career path variables of experiential promotion rate, number of job changes, and long-term intention to stay, were each found to have significant relationships with organizational commitment. Furthermore, analysis of covariance was conducted to analyze the more specific relationships among the variables from multiple perspectives. The significance of this study lies in its multifaceted investigation of the relationships between individual career-related variables and organizational commitment, and it points toward future research directions in this area.
