Construct · 5 fields · 9 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
● jingle · one name, five constructs Nearest construct by meaningescalation of commitmentcompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to commitment is escalation of commitment.
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A person is committed to a line of activity when they have staked things extraneous to it on continuing it, so that stopping would forfeit them, Becker's side-bet, fixed in 1960 in a paper complaining that sociologists used the word without explaining the mechanism. Pension rights, a reputation for reliability, the cost of learning a new trade, and the arrangements a life accumulates all bet on the current course and are lost if it changes. Commitment here is structural: it lies in the person's situation, not in their feelings toward the activity, and a person can be committed to a job they dislike. Every later meaning that speaks of costs of leaving descends from this one.[1]
A psychological state that binds an employee to an organisation and lowers the chance of leaving it. Mowday, Steers, and Porter fixed the attitudinal version in 1979 as identification with the organisation's goals, willingness to exert effort for it, and desire to remain, measured by the fifteen-item Organizational Commitment Questionnaire. Meyer and Allen argued in 1991 that the literature held three constructs under one name and separated them: affective commitment, an emotional attachment such that one stays because one wants to; continuance commitment, an awareness of the costs of leaving such that one stays because one needs to, which is Becker's side-bet; and normative commitment, a felt obligation such that one stays because one ought to. The three have different antecedents, and only the first reliably predicts performance.[2][3]
An exchange partner's belief that an ongoing relationship with another is so important as to warrant maximum effort to maintain it, Moorman, Zaltman, and Deshpandé's 1992 definition, borrowed from the organisational literature and applied to users and providers of market research. Morgan and Hunt made it one of the two key mediating variables of relationship marketing in 1994: shared values, relationship benefits, and low termination costs produce commitment, commitment and trust together produce cooperation and reduce the propensity to leave. The unit is a relationship between firms or between a firm and a customer rather than an employee's tie, the items ask about intention to maintain the relationship, and the construct is measured as a single dimension where Meyer and Allen had found three.[4][5]
The tendency to commit further resources to a course of action after negative feedback, in order to justify the original decision. Staw showed it in 1976 with business students allocating research funds: those who had made the first, failing allocation put more money into the same division than those who inherited the decision, and more still when they felt personally responsible. His 1981 review set out the mechanisms (self-justification, the norms that reward consistency, and the objective probability of eventual payoff) and made escalation a standing topic in decision research. Commitment here is a bias, measured as the marginal resource sent after bad news, and its practical meaning is the opposite of the organisational meaning: something to be cut, not built.[6][7]
A move that binds one's own future choices so that a threat or promise becomes credible: burning the bridge, staking a reputation, tying oneself to the mast. Schelling built the idea in 1960 as the paradox that reducing one's own options can improve one's bargaining position, because the other side then knows what one will do. Bryan, Karlan, and Nelson turned the same logic inward in 2010, defining a commitment device as an arrangement a person enters to restrict their own future choices in order to reach a goal, and reviewing the evidence from savings, smoking, and exercise. Commitment here is a strategic act of self-binding, valued precisely because it removes freedom; no attachment or feeling is involved, and it can be undertaken toward an adversary.[8][9]
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