Job involvement, organizational commitment, professional commitment, and team commitment : A study of generational diversity

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship among job involvement, organizational commitment, team commitment and professional commitment and to explore generational differences for these variables. Design/methodology/approach – It used structured questionnaire survey approach for which data were collected from 477 full-time employees of 13 organizations from diverse sectors in India. Respondents were categorized into four generational cohorts following the classification reported in Robbins et al. (2011). Findings – The findings of the study indicated that professional commitment is negatively related with job involvement, affective organizational commitment, normative organizational commitment, and team commitment. Job involvement, affective and normative organizational commitment, and team commitment were positively correlated. Differences were observed among Generation Y, Generation X, Liberals, and Socialist for job involvement, affective organizational commitment, normative organizational commitment, professional commitment, and team commitment. Generation Y, for example, was found high in professional commitment, while Socialist were found higher on affective organizational commitment compared to other generations. Practical implications – Findings suggests that there is a decrease in job involvement, affective organizational commitment, normative organizational commitment, and increase in professional commitment in young generations. Organizations need to take consideration this while designing the HR policies for employees’ engagement. Originality/value – The contribution of the study lies in examining the employees’ attitude to different dimensions of work life and differences among Indian generations.