'What is the added value of organizational commitment to organizational performance and work satisfaction in era of new technologies, globalization and dramatic downsizing and decline in the importance of stable work communities? Until a couple of decades ago, employers made efforts to foster organizational commitment among their employees in order to secure stay and continuance of contributions to the organization in face of work alienation, frustration, anger, disappointments and temptations to exit and move to other employers.
However, recently the taken-for-granted assumption that organizational commitment is crucial for the survival and success of work organizations, has been eroded. Downsizing, outsourcing of labor activities and restructure organizations to be lean and agile, left organizational commitment as undesired liability. For example, the well-known finding of a reverse correlation between organizational commitment and absenteeism and turnover has become less worrisome in economic sectors with high risk for loosing jobs.
Even older public organizations, which continue to employ a large core of their own full-time workforce, turned to use what are variously termed atypical, non standard, flexible jobs (by which is generally meant part-time work, temporary employment, including agency employment). All these employment forms contain weaker elements of organizational commitment.
Therefore, it is about time to reassess the concept of organizational commitment and to explore the relevance and importance of this behavior. If you wish to present a paper in the session "Organizational Commitment in the Era of Global Escape From Responsibility", send an abstract of no more than one page to Aviad Bar-Haim: aviad@openu.ac.il.