Organizational Identification - Differences and Similarities Between OI and Affective Organizational Commitment

Differences and Similarities Between OI and Affective Organizational Commitment

Knippenberg and Sleebos (2006) have attempted to separate OI and affective organizational commitment by narrowing the scope of the former. According to them, identification is a cognitive/perceptual construct reflecting self-reference, whereas commitment reflects an attitude toward the organization and its members. In addition, identification is self-definitional and implies psychological oneness with the organization, whereas commitment implies a relationship in which both individual and organization are separate entities (Knippenberg & Sleebos, 2006). Unfortunately as a whole, attempts to distinguish between OI and affective organizational commitment have not been particularly successful because the majority of both OI and affective organizational commitment research has been concerned with the broadening rather than the narrowing of their respective areas of research.

Meyer and Allen (1991), for example, proposed currently well accepted three component—affective, continuance, and normative— model of organizational commitment. In this model, affective commitment is defined as an “emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization” (Allen & Meyer, 1990, p. 1). Other researchers have also considered OI and affective organizational commitment as closely related or even interchangeable constructs. In his meta-analysis, Riketta (2005) examined the extent of the overlap between OI and affective organizational commitment across 96 independent samples. He found a significant and very strong positive correlation between OI and affective organizational commitment (r = .78). This suggests that the average OI study had significant construct overlaps with affective organizational commitment. Nonetheless, Riketta (2005) argued that OI and affective organizational commitment could be distinguished because they differentially relate to several organizational outcomes. Such differences were most pronounced in studies where OI was measured by the Mael and Ashforth’s (1992) scale, which leaves out an emotional attachment component while focusing on employee perception of oneness with and belongingness to the organization. In such studies, OI compared to affective organizational commitment, measured by the affective commitment scale, correlated less strongly with job satisfaction (r = .47 vs. r =.65) and intent to leave (r = -.35 vs. r = -.56), but more strongly with job involvement (r = .60 vs. r = .53) and extra-role performance (r = .39 vs. r = .23).

Conversely, when OI was measured by the organizational identification questionnaire (OIQ), the correlation between OI and intent to leave was stronger than the correlation between affective organizational commitment and intent to leave (r = -.64 vs. r = -.56). In addition, OI had a much stronger association with age (r = .60 vs. r = .15), but there were no differences in how both OI and affective organizational commitment correlated with job satisfaction (r = .68).