Organizational Commitment Scale (OC)

Abstract

The Organizational Commitment scale (OC), developed by Jaros, Jermier, Koehler, and Sincich (1993), is a specialized psychological instrument designed to measure affective organizational commitment. This measure is unique because it employs 14 bipolar adjective items anchored on a 7-point scale, contrasting with the more common Likert-type formats utilized by other scales measuring this construct.

The scale aims to capture the degree of pure emotional responses and feelings respondents typically experience when reflecting upon their employing organization. By using a bipolar adjective approach, the developers posited that the OC scale enables the measurement of a more purely affective domain of experience, distinguishing genuine feelings from potentially confounding cognitive beliefs about emotional attachments.

Keywords

Organizational Commitment scale, OC, affective organizational commitment, bipolar adjective scale, Jaros, Jermier, employee attitudes, withdrawal process, organizational psychology.

Authors

Jaros, S. J., Jermier, J. M., Koehler, J. W., Sincich, T.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the OC scale is to provide a direct and highly focused assessment of the emotional bond or attachment an individual holds toward their employer. It was created specifically to isolate and quantify the affective component of commitment, which reflects the employee’s desire to remain with the organization due to genuine emotional connection.

The instrument’s design, utilizing bipolar adjectives, serves the methodological purpose of minimizing the influence of cognitive evaluations. By asking respondents to rate their feelings between emotional extremes (e.g., Cold-Warm, Hate-Love), the scale attempts to elicit a spontaneous, affective appraisal rather than a reflective, cognitive judgment of their attachment.

Construct

The scale measures Affective Organizational Commitment. This construct represents the emotional response of an employee to their organization—their feelings of identification, involvement, and emotional attachment. High affective commitment implies that an employee stays with the organization because they want to, driven by positive feelings and alignment with organizational values.

Jaros and colleagues emphasized the importance of measuring this construct purely, arguing that emotional attachment, while related to cognitive beliefs, requires a dedicated methodology to capture its true nature. The resulting score reflects the overall strength and positivity of the employee’s emotional connection to the employing organization.

Validity

The validity of the OC scale was supported through three comprehensive validation studies. The measure demonstrated strong concurrent and predictive validity, consistent with theoretical expectations for an affective commitment measure.

Specifically, the OC scale correlated positively with Meyer and Allen’s (1997) established measure of affective commitment, providing evidence of convergent validity. It also correlated positively with an independent measure of moral commitment. Furthermore, the affective commitment score derived from the bipolar adjective items correlated negatively with key indicators of psychological strain and withdrawal behaviors, including measures of role conflict, role ambiguity, intentions to search for new employment, general thoughts of quitting, and final intent to quit the organization (Jaros et al., 1993).

Reliability

The Organizational Commitment scale exhibits excellent internal consistency reliability, indicating that its 14 items reliably measure the same underlying construct.

The initial validation study reported a high Coefficient alpha (Cronbach’s alpha) of 0.94 (Jaros et al., 1993). This figure suggests a very strong coherence among the bipolar adjective pairs, affirming that the instrument consistently captures the affective domain of organizational commitment.

Factor Analysis

Although the original source focused on structural equation modeling to evaluate the construct’s role in the withdrawal process, the OC scale is designed and typically treated as a unidimensional measure of affective commitment. The development of the scale focused on gathering a comprehensive set of emotional descriptors to capture this single, holistic construct.

The strength of the internal consistency reliability (alpha = 0.94) further supports the interpretation that the 14 bipolar adjective items converge strongly to represent a single underlying factor—the employee’s emotional bond to the organization.

Instrument

Test Type: Psychological scale, Organizational attitude measure

Format: 14 bipolar adjective items on a 7-point scale

Language Available: English (original publication)

Population Group: Employed individuals, Organizational members

Age Group: Adults (working population)

Population Details: Used in organizational research settings primarily involving general employee samples studying workplace attitudes and withdrawal processes.

Test Methodology: Self-report survey using a semantic differential format where respondents mark a point on a 7-point continuum between two opposing emotional anchors.

Keywords

Affective commitment, organizational commitment, employee engagement, Coefficient alpha, psychometrics, role ambiguity, job withdrawal.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source.

Correspondence Address: Not provided in source.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 1993

Permissions: The original publication containing the items is Jaros et al. (1993) in the Academy of Management Journal. Items were reproduced with permission of the Academy of Management via the Copyright Clearance Center. Users seeking to utilize the scale must secure appropriate permissions from the copyright holder, the Academy of Management.

Fee: Usage may require licensing or permissions fees depending on the scope of the research or application, as dictated by the Academy of Management.

Reference’s

Jaros, S. J., Jermier, J. M., Koehler, J. W., & Sincich, T. (1993). Effects of continuance, affective, and moral commitment on the withdrawal process: An evaluation of eight structural equation models. Academy of Management Journal, 36(5), 951-996.

Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1997). Commitment in the workplace: Theory, research, and application. Sage Publications.

Items of the Organizational Commitment scale (OC)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Instructions and items:

Most people have specific feelings about their employing organization. When you think of your employing organization, what feelings do you experience? Please choose the number which best represents your feelings and enter it to the right of each question.

The 14 bipolar adjective items are presented in the following format:

Cold 2 3 4 5 6 7 Warm

The other anchor pairs are:

• Hate-love
• Affection-contempt (R)
• Detachment-belonging
• Loyalty-disloyalty (R)
• Boredom-excitement
• Sadness-happiness
• Disgust-fondness
• Comfort-discomfort (R)
• Lifelessness-spiritedness
• Anger-peace
• Ecstasy-agony (R)
• Pleasure-pain (R)
• Despair-hope

Items denoted with (R) are reverse scored.