Organizational Commitment Questionnaire

Abstract

The Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) is a seminal 15-item psychological measure developed by Mowday, Steers, and Porter in 1979. Its primary objective is to assess an individual’s global organizational commitment, focusing largely on affective attachment to the employing organization. This widely utilized instrument captures the psychological attachment and identification an employee has with their workplace.

Due to its broad applicability, the OCQ has been successfully modified to measure related constructs, such as professional commitment (by replacing “organization” with “profession”) and job commitment (by replacing “organization” with “job”). Cross-cultural adaptations, including a Hebrew-language version developed by Sagie (1998), further attest to its enduring relevance in industrial and organizational psychology. The scale continues to be a standard measure for assessing employee loyalty and retention potential.

Keywords

Organizational commitment, Affective commitment, OCQ, Job satisfaction, Employee turnover, Work attitudes, Mowday, Steers, Porter, Job involvement.

Authors

Richard T. Mowday, Richard M. Steers, Lyman W. Porter.

Purpose

The fundamental purpose of the OCQ is to provide a reliable and validated instrument for assessing the degree to which employees identify with and are attached to their employing organization. This measure is crucial for predicting various organizational outcomes, including job performance, retention rates, and general workplace behavior.

It was designed to capture a global sense of commitment, encompassing loyalty, willingness to exert effort on behalf of the organization, and the psychological attachment necessary for long-term retention. Modifications of the scale allow researchers to isolate commitment toward specific targets, such as a particular profession or a specific job role, depending on the adaptation applied (Gunz & Gunz, 1994; Millward & Hopkins, 1998).

Construct

The OCQ measures organizational commitment, generally defined as the psychological state that characterizes an employee’s relationship with the organization and has implications for the decision to continue membership in the organization. While originally intended as a global measure of attachment, subsequent empirical analysis, including confirmatory factor analysis (Dunham, Grube, and Castaneda, 1994), strongly suggests that the OCQ primarily captures the dimension of affective commitment.

Organizational commitment in this context reflects an employee’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization. The items focus on emotional responses, pride, loyalty, and the perceived similarity between personal and organizational values. The scale has proven instrumental in distinguishing commitment from related but distinct constructs like job involvement or job satisfaction.

Validity

The construct validity of the OCQ is extensively supported through its consistent correlational patterns with numerous organizational variables. Positive correlations were observed with involvement in the organization for both calculative and moral reasons, job satisfaction, Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), perception of organizational justice, job involvement, and the perceived utility of organizational and task feedback (Brett et al., 1995; Mathieu, 1991).

Conversely, organizational commitment demonstrated expected negative correlations with detrimental workplace attitudes and behaviors, including intention to turnover, role strain, perceptions of organizational politics, job tension, and voluntary turnover (Hochwarter et al., 1999). Furthermore, it correlated negatively with structural factors such as the extent of hierarchy, job specialization, and employee education level. Structural equation analysis conducted by Riggs and Knight (1994) confirmed the discriminant validity of organizational commitment, showing it to be empirically distinct from job satisfaction and personal efficacy. The Hebrew adaptation also demonstrated validity, correlating positively with job satisfaction and negatively with intention to quit (Sagie, 1998).

Reliability

The OCQ consistently demonstrates strong internal consistency across diverse samples and organizational settings. Multiple studies have reported Coefficient alpha values ranging impressively from .81 to .93 for the English-language 15-item scale (e.g., Becker, 1992; Hackett et al., 1994; Zeffane, 1994). This wide range of findings across two decades of research confirms the scale’s high reliability and capacity to measure the latent construct accurately.

However, cross-cultural adaptations may exhibit lower reliability. For instance, the Hebrew-language version reported a Coefficient alpha of .62 (Sagie, 1998). While this figure is acceptable in some social science contexts, it highlights the necessity for researchers to verify psychometric properties when applying the OCQ in different linguistic or cultural settings.

Factor Analysis

Analyses of the factorial structure of the OCQ have revealed complexities in its dimensionality. Zeffane (1994) performed a factor analysis that identified two principal factors: a six-item factor measuring corporate loyalty/citizenship, and a nine-item factor measuring attachment to the organization. Similarly, Mathieu (1991) found two factors, one containing nine positively worded items and the other six negatively worded items, though the latter factor was possibly an artifact of item wording.

A meta-analysis by Cohen and Hudecek (1993) suggested that six specific items measuring an employee’s desire to remain with the organization might overlap significantly with turnover intentions, showing a stronger relationship with actual employee turnover than the remaining nine items. Nonetheless, other researchers advocate for a unidimensional structure. Kacmar et al. (1999) used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to compare one- and two-factor models (value commitment and commitment to stay) and found that the one-factor model provided a superior fit to the data. Furthermore, Dunham, Grube, and Castaneda (1994) concluded through multisample CFA that the OCQ’s 15 items loaded onto a single factor alongside the items of the Meyer and Allen affective commitment scale, strongly supporting the view that the OCQ primarily measures affective commitment.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report psychometric scale.

Format: 15 items administered using a 7-point Likert-type scale.

Language Available: English, Hebrew, and Arabic (OCQ-R version). The Arabic version (OCQ-R) psychometric properties were investigated by Abd-Alazim, Looti, & Mubdir (2024).

Population Group: Employees and workers across various industries and organizational settings.

Age Group: Adult working population.

Population Details: Applicable to individuals currently employed by an organization.

Test Methodology: Respondents indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with each statement. Scoring uses a 7-point scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree. Items denoted with (R) are reverse scored.

Keywords

Organizational behavior, Industrial-organizational psychology, Job commitment, Organizational commitment, Employee loyalty, Human Resources, Psychometric assessment.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source content.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source content.

Correspondence Address: Not provided in source content.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The original items were published in 1979 by Mowday, Steers, and Porter in the Journal of Vocational Behavior (Volume 14, pp. 224-247). The items were reproduced in the source material with permission from Academic Press. Researchers intending to use the scale should consult the original source publication for current permission requirements and any associated fees.

Test Year: 1979.

Reference’s

Mowday, R. T., Steers, R. M., & Porter, L. W. (1979). The measurement of organizational commitment. Journal of Vocational Behavior; 14, 224-247.

Abd-Alazim, M., Looti, M., & Mubdir, M. Q. (2024). Psychometric Properties of the Arabic version of Organizational Commitment Questionnaire-Revised (OCQ-R) in Educational Settings. Academic International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2(2), 01-10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.59675/S221.

Becker, T. E. (1992). Foci and bases of commitment: Are they distinctions worth making? Academy of Management Journal, 35, 232-244.

Brett, J. M., Cron, W. L., & Slocum, J. W., Jr. (1995). Economic dependency on work: A measure of commitment and job involvement. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 16, 499-507.

Cohen, A., & Hudecek, F. (1993). Organizational commitment: The moderating effect of organizational culture. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 43, 55-68.

Dunham, R. B., Grube, J. A., & Castaneda, M. B. (1994). Organizational commitment: The utility of an integrative definition. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 370-380.

Gunz, H. P., & Gunz, S. P. (1994). Professional commitment and job commitment: The effects of perceived organizational support and job characteristics. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 15, 451-469.

Hackett, R. D., Bycio, P., & Hausdorf, P. A. (1994). Further assessments of the dimensionality of organizational commitment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 15-23.

Hochwarter, W. A., Perrewe, P. L., Ferris, G. R., & Gercio, R. (1999). The impact of political skill on the job satisfaction and turnover intentions of employees. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29, 2378-2396.

Johnston, M. W., & Snizek, W. E. (1991). The relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction among marketing managers. Journal of Social Psychology, 131, 451-452.

Kacmar, K. M., Carlson, D. S., & Brymer, R. A. (1999). The measurement of organizational commitment: A comparison of two scales. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29, 1500-1510.

Lee, R., & Johnson, D. E. (1991). Organizational commitment and its relationship to job satisfaction and turnover intention. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 12, 241-248.

Mathieu, J. E. (1991). A cross-level nonrecursive model of the antecedents of organizational commitment and satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76, 607-616.

Riggs, M. L., & Knight, P. A. (1994). The measurement of organizational commitment: A comparison of two scales. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 370-380.

Sagie, A. (1998). The measurement of organizational commitment: A Hebrew-language version of the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ). Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 102-108.

Zeffane, R. (1994). Correlates of organizational commitment: A comparative study of public and private sector employees. International Journal of Management, 11, 521-532.

Items of the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire

Responses are obtained using a 7-point Likert-type scale where 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = moderately disagree, 3 = slightly disagree, 4 = neither disagree nor agree, 5 = slightly agree, 6 = moderately agree, and 7 = strongly agree.

The OCQ instructions and items:

Listed below is a series of statements that represent possible feelings that individuals might have about the company or organization for which they work. With respect to your own feelings about the particular organization for which you are now working [company name], please indicate the degree of your agreement or disagreement with each statement by checking one of the seven alternatives below each statement.

1. I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected in order to help this organization be successful
2. I talk up this organization to my friends as a great organization to work for
3. I feel very little loyalty to this organization (R)
4. I would accept almost any types of job assignment in order to keep working for this organization
5. I find that my values and the organization’s values are very similar
6. I am proud to tell others that I am part of this organization
7. I could just as well be working for a different organization as long as the type of work was similar (R)
8. This organization really inspires the very best in me in the way of job performance
9. It would take very little change in my present circumstance to cause me to leave this organization (R)
10. I am extremely glad that I chose this organization to work for over others I was considering at the time I joined
11. There’s not too much to be gained by sticking with this organization indefinitely (R)
12. Often, I find it difficult to agree with this organization’s policies on important matters relating to its employees (R)
13. I really care about the fate of this organization
14. For me, this is the best of all possible organizations for which to work
15. Deciding to work for this organization was a definite mistake on my part (R)

Items denoted with (R) are reverse scored.