Organizational commitment is a force that binds individuals to their company through their desire, obligation, and need to stay. Employees who are committed to the organization are more likely to demonstrate higher engagement, greater satisfaction, and fewer intentions to leave their company. Research has also demonstrated that investigating how each of the three forms of commitment – affective, normative, and continuance – interact allows for better prediction of employee outcomes. Using person-centred approaches, previous research has shown that there are typically five to seven profiles of commitment, and that membership in these profiles has implications for employee behaviours. However, little research has examined how these profiles emerge and develop over time in samples of newcomers.
The current research used archival data collected by the Canadian Armed Forces to investigate the development of commitment over the first year of employment with the military. Two samples were analyzed – one cross-sectional sample of employees at the end of their Basic Training experience (N = 3998) and one longitudinal sample of participants undergoing Occupational Training (N = 636). A person-centred approach to data analysis was adopted.
Latent profile analyses demonstrated a four-profile solution in the Basic Training sample and a six-profile solution in the Occupational Training sample. Further, a latent transition analysis in the longitudinal data showed that membership in commitment profiles was relatively stable over the six-month time lag. These profiles were examined in relation to a number of antecedents and outcomes, with results indicating that value fit and social support were significant predictors of profile membership, and that turnover intentions and levels of well-being differed across profiles.
These results have implications for person-centred commitment research. First, the differences in the profiles extracted in the Basic Training and Occupational Training samples suggest that time may be an important factor in the development of commitment. Further, results for the longitudinal sample suggested that, once profiles form, they become stable. This research validated previous findings on commitment profiles in military samples. Practical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed
