Contextual Performance in Military Settings: What Role Does Commitment Play

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Contextual Performance in Military Settings
What Role Does Commitment Play?

• Patrick Gavan OShea
• American Institutes for Research
• James E. Driskell
• Florida Maxima Corporation

• Gerald F. Goodwin
• U.S. Army Research Institute
• Eduardo Salas
• University of Central Florida

Sharon D. Ardison U.S. Army Research Institute
46th Annual Conference of the International
Military Testing Association October, 2004
Brussels, Belgium
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A Relation Between Commitment and
PerformanceReasonable, but what does the
research indicate?

• Early studies did not find evidence for this
  relation (correlations were variable and low in
  magnitude)
• Mowday, Porter, Steers (1982) investigations
  of commitment-performance links have generated
  the least encouraging findings within the
  commitment literature
• Mathieu Zajac (1995) commitment has no
  appreciable direct influence on performance
• Fits a cycle that occurs when new
  attitude-performance links are proposed High
  expectations which are progressively tempered,
  until the proposed linkage with job performance
  is called into question (Somers and Birnbaum,
  1998).

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The Commitment-Performance Relation Where are
we today?

• Considerable progress has been made toward
  understanding this relation, largely as a result
  of
• Clearly specifying the commitment FOCI what is
  commitment directed towards?
• Clearly specifying the commitment BASE what is
  the nature of the committed bond? What is it
  rooted in?
• The nature of the performance criterion also
  matters
• Focus has been on the motivation-related or will
  do aspects of performance, such as contextual
  performance

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Commitment Bases Meyer Allens Model

• 3-Factor Model of Commitment
• Affective Commitment commitment is rooted in an
  emotional bond, identification, and association
• Continuance Commitment commitment is rooted in a
  perceived need, sunk costs, a lack of other job
  options, or a perceived lack of skill transfer
• Normative Commitment commitment is rooted in a
  belief system employees are committed because
  they believe it is the right or morally correct
  attitude to hold

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Commitment Foci What entity is commitment
directed towards?

• Recent work has studied many commitment bases,
  such as the
• Organization
• Division
• Career
• Work Group
• Job
• Most studies investigate a single commitment foci

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The Commitment Performance Relation Where are
we now?

• Commitment relates to performance in a targeted
  rather than a pervasive manner (Somers
  Birnbaum, 1998)
• Affective commitment tends to correlate
  positively with work performance
• Continuance commitment tends to either correlate
  negatively with or be unrelated to work
  performance
• Results less clear for normative commitment
  (though often positive)
• Few studies examine multiple commitment bases and
  foci within the same investigation

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Current Studys Goals

• Examine commitment-performance links among a
  number of commitment bases and foci within the
  context of a single study
• Affective team-focused commitment
• Affective military-focused commitment
• Continuance military-focused commitment
• Normative team-focused commitment
• Normative military-focused commitment
• Focus on detailed, theoretically meaningful
  facets of team-oriented, interpersonally-based
  performance

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Sample

• Sample consisted of 193 soldiers and their direct
  supervisors stationed at an Army post in the
  northeastern United States (March, 2003)
• The soldiers were primarily first- and
  second-tour enlisted personnel
• Gender 89 male
• Age Mean 22, Range 18 to 38
• Education 50 high school, 36 some college
• Ethnicity 68 White, 11 Black, 18 Hispanic
• 52 of the soldiers were Combat Arms, 20 were
  Combat Service, and 25 were Combat Service
  Support

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Predictor Measures

• Commitment Foci and Bases

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Criterion Measures

• Custom-Built BARS Scales
• Responsibility to Others
• Cooperative Work Ethic
• Sociable Tendencies
• Negative World View
• Controlling Entitlement
• Contextual Performance
• Interpersonal Facilitation facet (Van Scotter
  Motowidlo, 1996).

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Results Commitment Interrelations
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Results Performance Criteria Interrelations
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Results Commitment Interrelations
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Regression Results
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Discussion

• In general, team-oriented commitment
  (particularly of the affective variety) predicted
  the criteria more strongly than did
  military-focused commitment
• Closer conceptual match between team-oriented
  commitment and the type of performance we
  measured
• Team-based foci are psychologically more proximal
  to individuals and may have a stronger influence
  on behavior than organization-based foci
• Behaviors indicative of a Negative World View
  were correlated significantly with four of the
  five commitment measures
• Regression analyses indicate a link between
  military-focused affective commitment and the
  Negative World View criterion

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Next Steps

• Testing Interactive Models
• Additive vs. Multiplicative Models
• Testing Interactions centered on different
  commitment Foci and Bases
• Exploring Commitment Patterns
• Investigating relations among team- and
  military-focused commitment and
  organization-level performance criteria