The current study aims to explore the usefulness of a person-centered perspective to the study of workplace affective commitment (WAC). Five distinct profiles of employees were hypothesized based on their levels of WAC directed toward seven foci (organization, workgroup, supervisor, customers, job, work, and career). This study applied latent profile analyses and factor mixture analyses to a sample of 404 Canadian workers. The construct validity of the extracted latent profiles was verified by their associations with multiple predictors (gender, age, tenure, social relationships at work, workplace satisfaction, and organizational justice perceptions) and outcomes (in-role performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and intent to quit). The analyses confirmed that a model with five latent profiles adequately represented the data: (a) highly committed toward all foci; (b) weakly committed toward all foci; (c) committed to their supervisor and moderately committed to the other foci; and (d) committed to their career and moderately uncommitted to the other foci; (e) committed mostly to their proximal work environment. These latent profiles present theoretically coherent patterns of associations with the predictors and outcomes, which suggests their adequate construct validity.
Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. ( 1977). Attitude-behavior relations: A theoretical analysis and review of empirical research. Psychological Bulletin, 84, 888-918.
2.
Akaike, H. ( 1987). Factor analysis and AIC. Psychometrika , 52, 317-332.
3.
Allport, G.W. ( 1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
4.
Arnetz, B., & Blomkvist, V. ( 2007). Leadership, mental health, and organizational efficacy in health care organizations psychosocial predictors of healthy organizational development based on prospective data from four different organizations. Psychotherapy & Psychosomatics, 76, 242-248.
5.
Aryee, S., Budhwar, P.S., & Chen, Z.X. ( 2002). Trust as a mediator of the relationship between organizational justice and work outcomes: Test of a social exchange model. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23, 267-285.
6.
Asparouhouv, T., & Muthén, B. (2007). Wald test of mean equality for potential latent class predictors in mixture modeling. Retrieved July23, 2009, http://www.statmodel.com/download/MeanTest1.pdf
7.
Bailey, K.D. ( 1994). Typologies and taxonomies: An introduction to classification techniques. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Bauer, D.J., & Curran, P.J. ( 2004). The integration of continuous and discrete latent variable models: Potential problems and promising opportunities. Psychological Methods, 9, 3-29.
13.
Bauer, D.J., & Shanahan, M.J. (2007). Modeling complex interactions: Person-centered and variable-centered approaches. In T. Little, J. Bovaird & N. Card (Eds.), Modeling ecological and contextual effects in longitudinal studies of human development (pp. 255-283). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
14.
Baugh, S.G., & Roberts, R.M. ( 1994). Professional and organizational commitment among engineers: Conflicting or complementing? IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 41, 108-114.
15.
Beck, K., & Wilson, C. ( 2000). Development of affective organizational commitment: A cross-sequential examination of change with tenure. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 56, 114-136.
16.
Becker, T.E. ( 1992). Foci and bases of commitment: Are they distinctions worth making? Academy of Management Journal, 35, 232-244.
17.
Becker, T.E., & Billings, R.S. (1993). Profiles of commitment: An empirical test summary. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 14, 177-190.
18.
Becker, T.E., Billings, R.S., Eveleth, D.M., & Gilbert, N.L. ( 1996). Foci and bases of employee commitment: Implications for job performance. Academy of Management Journal, 39, 464-482.
19.
Bentein, K., Stinglhamber, F., & Vandenberghe, C. (2002). Organization-, supervisor-, and work group-directed commitments and citizenship behaviours: A comparison of models. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology , 11, 341-362.
20.
Bentein, K., Vandenberg, R., Vandenberghe, C., & Stinglhamber, F. (2005). The role of change in the relationship between commitment and turnover: A latent growth modeling approach. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 468-482.
21.
Bergman, L.R. ( 2000). The application of a person-oriented approach: Types and clusters. In L. S. Bergman, R. B. Cairns, L. -G. Nilsson & L. Nystedt (Eds.), Developmental science and the holistic approach (pp. 137-154). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
22.
Bies, R.J., & Moag, J.F. ( 1986). Interactional justice: Communication criteria of fairness . In R. J. Lewicki, B. H. Sheppard & M. H. Bazerman (Eds.), Research on negotiation in organizations (Vol. 1, pp. 43-55). Greenwich, CT: JAI.
23.
Bishop, J.W., & Scott, K.D. ( 2000). An examination of organizational and team commitment in a self-directed team environment. Journal of Applied Psychology , 85, 439-450.
24.
Bolck, A., Croon, M., & Hagenaars, J. ( 2004). Estimating latent structure models with categorical variables: One-step versus three-step estimators. Political Analysis , 12, 3-27.
25.
Bolino, M.C. ( 1999). Citizenship and impression management: Good soldiers or good actors? Academy of Management Review, 24, 82-98.
26.
Boudrias, J.-S. & Savoie, A. ( 2006). Les manifestations comportementales de l’habilitation: développement d’un cadre conceptuel et d’un instrument de mesure. Psychologie du travail et des organisations, 12, 119-138.
27.
Bozdogman, H. ( 1987). Model Selection and Akaike’s information criterion (AIC): The general theory and its analytical extensions. Psychometrika, 52, 345-370.
28.
Carson, K.D., Carson, P.P., Roe, C.W., Birkenmeier, B.J., & Philips, J.S. ( 1999). Four commitment profiles and their relationships to empowerment, service recovery, and work attitudes. Public Personnel Management , 28, 1-13.
29.
Chen, F., Bollen, K.A., Paxton, P., Curran, P.J., & Kirby, J.B. ( 2001). Improper solutions in structural question models: Causes, consequences, and strategies. Sociological Methods & Research , 29, 468-508.
30.
Clark, S.L., & Muthén, B.O. (2009). Relating latent class analysis results to variables not included in the analysis. Manuscript submitted for publication and downloaded. Retrieved 7 July, 2009, from http://www.statmodel.com/download/relatinglca.pdf
31.
Clugston, M. ( 2000). The mediating effects of multidimensional commitment on job satisfaction and intent to leave. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21, 477-486.
32.
Clugston, M., Howell, J.P., & Dorfman, P.W. ( 2000). Does cultural socialization predict multiple bases and foci of commitment? Journal of Management, 26, 5-30.
33.
Cohen, A. ( 1993). Work commitment in relations to withdrawal intentions and union effectiveness. Journal of Business Research, 26, 75-90.
34.
Cohen, A. ( 1999). Relationships among five forms of commitment: An empirical assessment. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 20, 285-308.
35.
Cohen, A. ( 2000). The relationship between commitment forms and work outcomes: A comparison of three models. Human Relations, 53, 387-417.
36.
Cohen, A. ( 2003). Multiple Commitments in the Workplace: An Integrative Approach. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
37.
Cohen-Charash, Y., & Spector, P.E. ( 2001). The role of justice in organization: A meta-analysis . Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 86, 278-321.
38.
Colquitt, J.A., Conlon, D.E., Wesson, M.J., Porter, O.L.H., & Ng, K.Y. ( 2001). Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 425-445.
39.
Combs, J., Liu, Y., Hall, A., & Ketchen, D. ( 2006). How much do high performance work practices matter? A meta-analysis of their effects on organizational performance. Personnel Psychology, 59, 501-528.
40.
Cook, J., & Wall, T. ( 1980). New work attitude measure of trust, organizational commitment and personal need non-fulfilment. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 53, 39-52.
41.
Cropanzano, R., Goldman, B., & Folger, R. ( 2005). What is self-interest? Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26, 985-991.
42.
Cropanzano, R., Prehar, C.A., & Chen, P.Y. ( 2002). Using social exchange theory to distinguish procedural from interactional justice. Group and Organization Management , 27, 324-351.
43.
Cross, S.E., & Madson, L. ( 1997). Models of the self: Self-construals and gender. Psychological Bulletin, 122, 5-37.
44.
Duval, M., Ménard, J., Brunet, L., & Savoie, A. ( 2003). Liens entre la justice organisationnelle et les comportements antisociaux au travail [Relationships between organizational justice and antisocial behaviours at work]. In C. Vandenberghe, N. Delobbe, & G. Karnas (Eds.), Dimensions individuelles et sociales de l’investissement professionnel (pp. 219-229). Louvain, Belgium: Presses universitaires de Louvain.
45.
Eby, L.T., Freeman, D.M., Rush, M.C., & Lance, C.E. ( 1999). Motivational bases of affective organizational commitment: A partial test of an integrative theoretical model. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 72, 463-483.
46.
Feingold, A. ( 1994). Gender differences in personality: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 429-456.
47.
Feldman, D.C., & Weitz, B.A. ( 1991). From the invisible hand to the gladhand: Understanding a careerist orientation to work. Human Resource Management , 30, 237-257.
48.
Fullagar, C., & Barling, J. ( 1991). Predictors and outcomes of different patterns of organizational and union loyalty. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 64, 129-143.
49.
Geiser, C., Lehman, W., & Eid, M. ( 2006). Separating rotators from nonrotators in the Mental Rotation Test: A multigroup latent class analysis. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 41, 261-293.
50.
Gelade, G.A., & Ivery, M. ( 2003). The impact of human resource management and work climate on organizational performance. Personnel Psychology, 56, 383-404.
51.
Gibson, W.A. ( 1959). Three multivariate models: Factor analysis, latent structure analysis, and latent profile analysis. Psychometrika, 24, 229-252.
52.
Gordon, M.E., Philpot, J.W., Burt, R.E., Thompson, C.A., & Spiller, W.E. ( 1980). Commitment to the union: Development of a measure and an examination of its correlates. Journal of Applied Psychology , 65, 479-499.
53.
Gouldner, A.W. ( 1958). Cosmopolitans and locals: Toward an analysis of latent social roles. Administrative Science Quarterly, 2, 281-306.
54.
Helgeson, V.S. ( 1994). Relation of agency and communion to well-being: Evidence and potential explanations. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 412-428.
55.
Henson, J.M., Reise, S.P., & Kim, K.H. ( 2007). Detecting mixtures from structural model differences using latent variable mixture modeling: A comparison of relative model fit statistics. Structural Equation Modeling, 14, 202-226.
56.
Herscovitch, L., & Meyer, J.P. ( 2002). Commitment to organizational change: Extension of a three-component model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 474-487.
57.
Hipp, J.R., & Bauer, D.J. ( 2006). Local solutions in the estimation of growth mixture models . Psychological Methods, 11, 36-53.
58.
Jaros, S.J. ( 1997). An assessment of Meyer and Allen’s (1991) three-component model of organizational commitment and turnover intentions. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 51, 319-337.
59.
Kacmar, K.M., Carlson, D.S., & Brymer, R.A. ( 1999). Antecedents and consequences of organizational commitment: A comparison of two scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 59, 976-994.
60.
Kreuter, F., & Muthén, B. (2008). Longitudinal modeling of population heterogeneity: Methodological challenges to the analysis of empirically derived criminal trajectory profiles. In G. R. Hancock & K. M. Samuelsen, (Eds.), Advances in latent variable mixture models (pp. 53-75). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Lipponen, J., Helkama, K., Olkkonen, M.-H., & Juslin, M. ( 2005). Predicting the different profiles of organizational identification: A case of shipyard subcontractors. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 78, 97-112.
63.
Little, R.J.A., & Rubin, D.B. ( 2002). Statistical Analysis with Missing Data, 2nd edition. New York, NY: Wiley.
64.
Lo, Y., Mendell, N., & Rubin, D. ( 2001). Testing the number of components in a normal mixture . Biometrika, 88, 767-778.
65.
Lubke, G.H., & Muthén, B. (2005). Investigating population heterogeneity with factor mixture models. Psychological Methods , 10, 21-39.
66.
Lubke, G., & Muthén, B. (2007). Performance of factor mixture models as a function of model size, criterion measure effects, and class-specific parameters. Structural Equation Modeling, 14, 26-47.
67.
MacCallum, R.C., Zhang, S., Preacher, K.J., & Rucker, D.D. ( 2002). On the practice of dichotomization of quantitative variables . Psychological Methods, 7, 19-40.
68.
Madore, I. ( 2004). Une conception multidimensionnelle de l’engagement: développement d’un instrument de mesure et relations avec les comportements de citoyennete organisationnelle. Master Thesis, HEC-Montréal.
69.
Magenau, J.M., Martin, J.E., & Peterson, M.M. (1988). Dual and unilateral commitment among stewards and rank-and-file union members. Academy of Management Journal, 31, 359-376.
70.
Magidson, J., & Vermunt, J.K. ( 2001). Latent class factor and cluster models, bi-plots, and related graphical displays. Sociological Methodology, 31, 223-264.
71.
Magidson, J., & Vermunt, J.K. ( 2002). Latent class models for clustering: A comparison with K-Means. Canadian Journal of Marketing Research, 20, 37-44.
72.
Magidson, J., & Vermunt, J.K. ( 2004). Latent class models. In D. Kaplan (Ed.), Handbook of quantitative methodology for the social sciences (pp. 175-198). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
73.
Magnusson, D. ( 1998). The logic and implications of a person-oriented approach . In R. B. Cairns, L. R. Bergman & J. Kagan (Eds.), Methods and models for studying the individual (pp. 33-64). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
74.
Marsh, H.W., Lüdtke, O., Trautwein, U., & Morin, A.J.S. (2009). Latent profile analysis of academic self-concept dimensions: Synergy of person- and variable-centered approaches to the internal/external frame of reference model. Structural Equation Modeling, 16, 1-35.
75.
Maslow, A.H. ( 1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370-396.
76.
McClelland, D.C. ( 1987). Human motivation. MA: Cambridge University press.
McLachlan, G., & Peel, D. ( 2000). Finite mixture models. New York: John Wiley.
79.
Meredith, W. ( 1993). Measurement invariance, factor analysis and factorial invariance. Psychometrika, 58, 525-543.
80.
Meyer, J.P., Allen, N.J., & Smith, C.A. ( 1993). Commitment to organizations and occupations: Extension and test of a three-component conceptualization. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 538-551.
81.
Meyer, J.P., Becker, T.E., & Vandenberghe, C. (2004). Employee commitment and motivation: A conceptual analysis and integrative model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 991-1007.
82.
Meyer, J.P., & Herscovitch, L. (2001). Commitment in the workplace: Toward a general model. Human Resource Management Review, 11, 299-326.
83.
Meyer, J.P., Paunonen, S.V., Gellatly, I.R., Goffin, R.D., & Jackson, D.N. ( 1989). Organizational commitment and job performance: It’s the nature of the commitment that counts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74, 152-156.
84.
Meyer, J.P., Stanley, D.J., Herscovitch, L., & Topolnytsky, L. (2002). Affective, continuance, and normative commitment to the organization: A meta-analysis of antecedents, correlates, and consequences. Journal of Vocational Behavior , 61, 20-52.
Moorman, R.H. ( 1991). Relationships between organizational justice and organizational citizenship behaviours: Do fairness perceptions influence employee citizenship ? Journal of Applied Psychology, 76, 845-855.
87.
Morin, A.J.S., Madore, I., Morizot, J., Boudrias, J.-S., & Tremblay, M. ( 2009). Multiple Targets of workplace affective commitment: Factor structure and measurement invariance of the workplace affective commitment multidimensional questionnaire. Advances in Psychology Research , 59, 45-75.
88.
Morrow, P.C. ( 1993). The theory and measurement of work commitment. Greenwich: JAI.
Muthén, B.O. ( 2003). Statistical and substantive checking in growth mixture modeling: Comment on Bauer and Curran (2003). Psychological Methods, 8, 369-377.
91.
Muthén, B.O. ( 2004). Latent variable analysis: Growth mixture modeling and related techniques for longitudinal data. In D. Kaplan (Ed.), Handbook of quantitative methodology for the social sciences (pp. 345-368). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
Muthén, B.O., & Shedden, K. ( 1999). Finite mixture modeling with mixture outcomes using the EM algorithm. Biometrics, 55, 463-469.
94.
Neubert, M.J., & Cady, S.H. ( 2001). Program commitment: A multi-study longitudinal field investigation of its impact and antecedents. Personnel Psychology , 54, 421-448.
95.
Nylund, K. ( 2007). Latent transition analysis: Modeling extensions and an application to peer victimization, Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.
96.
Nylund, K.L., Asparouhov, T., & Muthén, B. (2007). Deciding on the number of classes in latent class analysis and growth mixture modeling. A Monte Carlo simulation study. Structural Equation Modeling, 14, 535-569.
97.
Organ, D.W. ( 1988). Organizational citizenship behaviours: The good soldier syndrome. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
98.
Penner, L.A., Midili, A.R., & Kegelmeyer, J. (1997). Beyond job attitudes: A personality and social psychology perspective on the causes of organizational citizenship behavior. Human Performance, 10, 111-131.
99.
Petras, H., & Masyn, K. ( 2010). General growth mixture analysis with antecedents and consequences of change. In A. Piquero & D. Weisburd (Eds.), Handbook of Quantitative Criminology (pp. 69-100). New York, NY: Springer.
100.
Polsky, H.W. ( 1978). From claques to factions: Subgroups in organizations . Social Work, 23, 94-98.
101.
Porter, L.W., Steers, R.M., Mowday, R.T., & Boulian, P.V. ( 1974). Organizational commitment, job satisfaction and turnover among psychiatric technicians. Journal of Applied Psychology , 59, 603-609.
Raftery, A. ( 1995). Bayesian model selection in social research. Sociological Methodology, 25, 111-164.
104.
Ramaswamy, V., DeSarbo, W., Reibstein, D., & Robinson, W. ( 1993). An empirical pooling approach for estimating marketing mix elasticities with PIMS data. Marketing Science, 12, 103-124.
105.
Randall, D.M., & Cote, J.A. ( 1991). Interrelationships of work commitment constructs. Work and Occupations, 18, 194-211.
106.
Randall, D.M., Fedor, D.B., & Longenecker, C.O. (1990). The behavioural expression of organizational commitment. Journal of Vocational Behavior , 36, 210-224.
107.
Reichers, A.E. ( 1985). A review and reconceptualization of organizational commitment . Academy of Management Review, 10, 465-476.
108.
Robinson, S.L., & O’Leary-Kelly, A.M. (1998). Monkey see, monkey do: The influence of work groups on the antisocial behavior of employees. Academy of Management Journal, 41, 658-672.
109.
Roethlisberger, F.J., & Dickson, W.J. ( 1939/1967). Management and the worker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
110.
Roy, F. ( 1989). Élaboration et validation d’un questionnaire sur le climat de travail [Construction and validation of a work climate questionnaire]. Unpublished Master Thesis, University of Montréal , Montréal.
111.
Rupp, D.E., & Cropanzano, R. (2002). The mediating effects of social exchange relationships in predicting workplace outcomes from multifoci organizational justice. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 89, 925-946.
112.
Scaborough, D., & Somers, M.J. ( 2006). Neural networks in organizational research: Applying pattern recognition to the analysis of organizational behavior. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association .
113.
Schwartz, G. ( 1978). Estimating the dimension of a model. The Annals of Statistics, 6, 461-464.
114.
Sclove, L. ( 1987). Application of model-selection criteria to some problems in multivariate analysis. Psychometrika, 52, 333-343.
115.
Sinclair, R.R., Tucker, J.S., Cullen, J.C., & Wright, C. ( 2005). Performance differences among four organizational commitment profiles. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 1280-1287.
116.
Snape, E., & Redman, T. ( 2003). An evaluation of a three component model of Occupational commitment: Dimensionality and consequences among United Kingdom human resource management specialists. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 152-159.
117.
Somers, M.J. ( 1995). Organizational commitment, turnover and absenteeism: An examination of direct and interaction effects. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 16, 49-58.
118.
Somers, M.J., & Birnbaum, D. ( 1998). Work-related commitment and job performance: It’s also the nature of the performance that counts. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 19, 621-634.
119.
Somers, M.J., & Birnbaum, D. ( 2000). Exploring the relationship between commitment profiles and work attitudes, employees withdrawal, and job performance. Public Personnel Management, 29, 353-365.
Stinglhamber, F., Bentein, K., & Vandenberghe, C. (2002). Extension of the three-component model of commitment to five foci: Development of measures and substantive test. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 18, 123-138.
122.
Swailes, S. ( 2004). Commitment to change: Profiles of commitment and in-role performance. Personnel Review, 33, 187-204.
123.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. ( 1985). The social identity theory of intergroup behaviour. In S. Worchel & W. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 7-24). Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall.
124.
Tofighi, D., & Enders, C. ( 2008). Identifying the correct number of classes in growth mixture models. In G. R. Hancock & K. M. Samuelsen (Eds.), Advances in latent variable mixture models (pp. 317-341). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
125.
Tolvanen, A. ( 2007). Latent growth mixture modeling: A simulation study. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Mathematics, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland.
126.
Tyler, T.R., & Bies, R.J. ( 1990). Beyond formal procedures: The interpersonal context of procedural justice. In J. S. Carroll (Ed.), Applied social psychology and organization settings (pp. 78-98). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
127.
Uebersax, J.S. ( 1999). Probit latent class analysis with dichotomous or ordered category measures: Conditional independence/dependence models. Applied Psychological Measurement, 23, 283-297.
128.
Vandenberghe, C., Bentein, K., & Stinglhamber, F. (2004). Affective commitment to the organization, supervisor and work group: Antecedents and outcomes. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 64, 47-71.
129.
Vandenberghe, C., Stinglhamber, F., Bentein, K., & Delhaise, T. ( 2001). An examination of the cross-cultural validity of a multidimensional model of commitment in Europe. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology , 32, 322-347.
130.
Vermunt, J.K., & Magidson, J. ( 2002). Latent class cluster analysis. In J. Hagenaars & A. McCutcheon (Eds.), Applied latent class models (pp. 89-106). New York: Cambridge University Press.
131.
Wang, C.-P., Brown, H., & Bandeen-Roche, K. (2005). Residual diagnostics for growth mixture models: Examining the impact of preventive interventions on multiple trajectories of aggressive behavior. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 100, 1054-1076.
132.
Wasti, S.A. ( 2005). Commitment profiles: Combinations of organizational commitment forms and job outcomes. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 67, 290-308.
133.
Yang, C. ( 2006). Evaluating latent class analyses in qualitative phenotype identification. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis , 50, 1090-1104.
134.
Zellars, K.L., & Tepper, B.J. ( 2003). Beyond Social Exchange: New directions for organizational citizenship behavior theory and research. Research in Personnel and Human Resource Management, 22, 395-424.
