Job Satisfaction and Organizational Continuance Commitment: A Two-Wave Panel Study

Author(s): Duncan Cramer

Source: Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Jul., 1996), pp. 389-400
Published by: Wiley
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2488549
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 JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, VOL. 17, 389-400 (1996)

Research Job satisfaction and organizational

Note continuance commitment:
a two-wave panel study

DUNCAN CRAMER
Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, U.K.

Summary The temporal relationship between job satisfaction and organizational continuance
commitment over 13 months was examined in 295 professional employees of a British
engineering company using LISREL with latent variables analysis. The cross-lagged
path coefficients in the LISREL models were not significantly positive, suggesting that
the relationship between these two variables was spurious and due to error variance.
Test-retest coefficients for both variables were moderately positive, showing that the
relative ranking of individuals on these variables was fairly stable over time.

Introduction

Job satisfaction has usually been defined as the extent to which an employee has a positive
affective orientation or attitude towards their job, either in general or towards particular facets of
it (Smith, Kendall and Hulin, 1969). It has been differentiated from job involvement which has
been seen as the degree to which an individual identifies psychologically with their job (Locke,
1976; Lodahl and Kejner, 1965). Several conceptions of organizational commitment have been
distinguished (Allen and Meyer, 1990; Griffin and Bateman, 1986; Mathieu and Zajac, 1990;
Reichers, 1985). The concept most frequently studied has been attitudinal or affective commit-
ment. This has been defined as the extent to which an employee identifies and is involved with a
particular organization and has been most commonly measured by the Organizational Commit-
ment Questionnaire (Porter, Steers, Mowday and Boulian, 1974). The second most frequently
investigated concept has been variously referred to as behavioural (Salancik, 1977), calculative
(Griffin and Bateman, 1986; Hrebiniak and Alutto, 1972) or continuous (Meyer and Allen, 1984)
commitment. It has usually been conceptualized in terms of the costs of leaving an organization
and has been most often assessed with the scale developed by Hrebiniak and Alutto (1972). This
scale operationalizes commitment as the level of various inducements needed to leave an
organization.
O'Reilly and Chatman (1986) distinguished three kinds of commitment based on the psycho-
logical processes of compliance (or exchange), identification (or affiliation), and internalization
(or value congruence). A later factor analysis on a larger and more representative sample
revealed two rather than three factors, called instrumental (compliance) commitment and

Addressee for correspondence: Duncan Cramer, Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, Lough-
borough, Leicestershire, LEI I 3TU, U.K.

CCC 0894-3796/96/040389-12 Received 11 March 1993

?C 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 30 May 1995

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390 D. CRAMER

normative (identification and internalization) commitment (Caldwell, Chatman and O'Reilly,

1990). Furthermore, some have suggested that the various foci of commitment such as the
particular individuals and groups within the organization need to be specified (Becker, 1992;
Reichers, 1985).
There is evidence that job satisfaction, job involvement and attitudinal organizational
commitment can be discriminated (Brooke, Russell and Price, 1988; Mathieu and Farr, 1991).
Factor analytic studies of Meyer and Allen's (1984) affective and continuance commitment scales
suggest that while affective commitment can be distinguished from continuance commitment, the
continuance scale itself may consist of two dimensions reflecting few alternatives and high
personal sacrifice respectively (Hackett, Bycio and Hausdorf, 1994; McGee and Ford, 1987;
Meyer, Allen and Gellatly, 1990).
Interest in the causal nature of the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational
commitment stems partly from the presumed role these two variables play in conceptual models
for predicting turnover (Farkas and Tetrick, 1989; Williams and Hazer, 1986). Most models of
turnover assume that greater job satisfaction leads to greater organizational commitment
(Bluedorn, 1982; Marsh and Mannari, 1977; Mobley, 1977; Price and Mueller, 1981). The
primary reason for this causal order appears to be that job satisfaction is a more immediate
affective response to one's work which is established more quickly after joining an organization
whereas organizational commitment is slower to develop since it is based not only on the job but
on others aspects of working for the organization such as its goals and values (Porter et al., 1974).
However, Bateman and Strasser (1984), on the grounds of self-perception theory and research,
suggested that greater organizational commitment may produce increased job satisfaction since
commitment may initiate a rationalization process in which attitudes are made consistent with
behaviour. They claimed empirical support for this causal sequence in a five-month longitudinal
study of 129 nursing employees which found that the cross-lagged path coefficient between
earlier organizational commitment and later job satisfaction was significantly positive while that
between prior job satisfaction and subsequent organizational commitment was not significant.
This finding suggests that job satisfaction results from organizational commitment.
Using the LISREL program for linear structural relationship analysis with latent variables,
Williams and Hazer (1986) re-analysed the cross-sectional data of Bluedorn (1982) and Michaels
and Spector (1982) to examine the causal nature of the relationship between organizational
commitment and job satisfaction in four nested models of turnover. They interpreted their
analyses as providing greater support for the causal order of job satisfaction leading to
organizational commitment than the reverse sequence. However, they acknowledged that their
data did not enable them to test for a reciprocal relationship between the two variables as such a
model would have been underidentified and that assessing directionality with cross-sectional
data is a 'nearly impossible task' (p. 229), which needs to be investigated with longitudinal data.
Subsequently, Farkas and Tetrick (1989) tested longitudinal analogues of the models proposed
by Williams and Hazer (1986) on a four-year longitudinal study of 440 naval recruits. Because two
of their variables (job satisfaction and re-enlistment intention) were only measured with two items,
these variables had to be assessed with single rather than multiple indicators. However, in contrast
to Williams and Hazer (1986), they suggested that their analyses indicated a cyclical or possibly a
reciprocal relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Although they
argued that the reciprocal relationship between these two variables could not be tested directly
because of underidentification at each time period, it could have been assessed if they had
restricted their model to the cross-lagged relationship between these two variables (Greenberg,
Kessler and Logan, 1979; Cramer, 1994; Cramer, Henderson and Scott, 1995). Moreover, a re-
analysis of their data in which cross-lagged paths between job satisfaction and organizational

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 SATISFACTION AND COMMITMENT 391

commitment were postulated indicated that these paths became non-significant when error terms
(many of which were significant) were free to correlate (Anderson and Williams, 1992).
Curry, Wakefield, Price and Mueller (1986) analysed with LISREL the temporal relationship
between job satisfaction and organizational commitment over a seven-month period in 508
female nurses. Although multiple indicators were available, these were not used to define the
latent variables. Instead, the loading of the indicator representing each latent variable was set
equal to the square root of the reliability coefficient. They found no relationship between job
satisfaction and organizational commitment over time. Vandenberg and Lance (1992) examined
the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment at the same point in
time on two occasions five-months apart in 100 management information system professionals.
The two exogeneous variables of bonus equity and value congruence were used to identify the
reciprocal pathways from job satisfaction and organizational commitment respectively. Once
again, multiple indicators were not used to define the variables. Their results suggested that
organizational commitment causes job satisfaction. However, as was true for Williams and
Hazer (1986), trying to determine the causal relationship between two variables measured at the
same point in time would appear not to be possible. Furthermore, as Kenny (1979) has noted,
correcting correlations for attenuation means that the resulting parameter estimates cannot be
tested for significance in the usual way.
Because of differences in the way the data from the longitudinal studies were analysed, it is
difficult to compare their results. The most appropriate method for examining the temporal
relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment seems to be latent variable
structural equation modelling in which the statistical fit of models postulating reciprocal,
unidirectional and no cross-lagged relationships between job satisfaction and organizational
commitment are compared. None of the previous studies has done this.
However, Curry et al. (1986) found that the cross-lagged path coefficients between these two
variables were not significant as did Anderson and Williams (1992) when the error terms were
free to covary, implying that there is no temporal relationship between the two variables. In both
analyses, organizational commitment was measured with the nine-item Organizational Commit-
ment Questionnaire (Porter et al., 1974), which is seen as being a measure of organizational
affective commitment. In the study of Curry et al. (1986) job satisfaction was assessed with six of
the 18 items from the Brayfield and Rothe (1951) scale. However, in the study of Anderson and
Williams (1992) it was only measured with two items involving general satisfaction with the
Navy. It is not known to what extent referring to the Navy in this way measured organizational
satisfaction rather than job satisfaction and so it is unclear whether job satisfaction was
confounded with organizational satisfaction.
A further potential problem with the study by Curry et al. (1986) is that the interval between
the two waves may not have been sufficiently long for enough change in the two variables of job
satisfaction and organizational commitment to have occurred. The relatively high test-retest
path coefficients for job satisfaction (0.81) and organizational commitment (0.84) implies that
insufficient change may have taken place. Previous longitudinal research indicates that deter-
mining the minimum interval necessary for studying the temporal relationship between job
satisfaction and organizational commitment may be problematical. Test-retest correlations have
varied for job satisfaction from a low of 0.35 over 6-8 months (Farkas and Tetrick, 1989) to a
high of 0.68 over five months (Bateman and Strasser, 1984) and for organizational commitment
from a low of 0.37 over 6-8 months (Farkas and Tetrick, 1989) to a high of 0.74 over five months
(Vandenberg and Lance, 1992). All these studies used either the nine or 15-item Organizational
Commitment Questionnaire (Porter et al., 1974) which is viewed more as a measure of affective
commitment. Meyer et al. (1990) reported, for their two consecutive five-month intervals,

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392 D. CRAMER

test-retest path coefficients of between 0.75 and 0.86 for affective continuance and between 0.83
and 0.92 for continuance commitment.
The explanation that job satisfaction influences organizational commitment implies that job
satisfaction is less stable than organizational commitment (Porter et al., 1974). One index of
stability is the test-retest correlation of a measure. However, the presumption that organiza-
tional commitment takes more time to develop than job satisfaction means that measures of
organizational commitment taken shortly after employees have joined an organization are likely
to be less well established than those taken later on when a person has had more experience on
which to base their commitment to the organization. Consequently, during the initial period of
belonging to an organization it is not clear whether the test-retest correlation for organizational
commitment would be expected to be more positive than that for job satisfaction as implied by
Curry et al. (1986). However, once a person's organizational commitment has had an oppor-
tunity to develop, then the test-retest correlation for organizational commitment should be more
positive than that for job satisfaction.
The expectation that the test-retest correlation for organizational commitment would be less
positive in the earlier compared to the later stage of belonging to an organization was supported
in the study by Farkas and Tetrick (1989) who measured job satisfaction and organizational
commitment two months, 8-10 months and 20-21 months after enlistment. However, in the
second interval when an individual's organizational commitment would be expected to be better
established than in the first interval, the test-retest correlation for organizational commitment
was no more positive than that for job satisfaction, implying that job satisfaction was no less
stable than organizational commitment. As mentioned previously, since job satisfaction was
measured with only two items which referred to general satisfaction with the Navy, it is not clear
to what extent job satisfaction was confounded with organizational satisfaction.
The main aim of this paper is to explore the temporal nature of the relationship between job
satisfaction and organizational continuance commitment (as opposed to organizational affective
commitment) in a two-wave panel study over a longer period than the study of Curry et al. (1986)
using linear structural equation analysis with latent variables. Unlike previous studies which have
investigated this relationship over time with LISREL (Curry et al., 1986; Farkas and Tetrick,
1989), latent variables based on three indicators each were used to measure these constructs. The
statistical fit of models having reciprocal, unidirectional and no cross-lagged relationships between
job satisfaction and organizational continuance commitment were compared. An interval of 13
months was chosen to increase the likelihood that sufficient change in these two variables would
have occurred to be better able to explore their temporal relationship. Continuance commitment
was chosen because it appears to show higher temporal stability than affective commitment
(Meyer et al., 1990), which itself seems to show similar stability to job satisfaction (Bateman and
Strasser, 1984; Farkas and Tetrick, 1989; Vandenberg and Lance, 1992). Consequently, it was
predicted that if continuance commitment is indeed more stable than job satisfaction when error
variance is controlled, then prior continuance commitment is more likely to affect subsequent job
satisfaction than prior job satisfaction is to affect subsequent continuance commitment.

Method

Participants

Questionnaires were distributed by the company on two occasions to all professional employees
of a British engineering company manufacturing aerospace and industrial power systems. These

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 SATISFACTION AND COMMITMENT 393

were returned by post direct to the author. Because of the need for anonymity and in order to try
to match questionnaires across the two waves, participants were invited to give the first two
letters of their first forename, the first two letters of their mother's first forename and the day in
the month of their mother's birthday. At wave 1, the questionnaire was given to 1522 employees,
of whom 1074 (71 per cent) completed and returned it and of whom 865 (57 per cent) provided
one or more of the questionnaire matching details. At wave 2, the questionnaire was distributed
to 1500 employees, of whom 1068 (71 per cent) filled and returned it and of whom 879 (59 per
cent) gave one or more of the questionnaire matching details. Across the two waves, question-
naires from 295 individuals could be matched. Of these, 239 were male and 55 were female.
Gender was missing for one person. On the first occasion the mean age of these 295 employees
was 25.24 years (S.D. = 1.80) and the mean duration of their employment with the firm was 4.59
years (S.D. = 2.21). The mean interval between the completion dates of the two questionnaires
was 378.36 days (S.D. = 13.04). At the time of the study, about 10 per cent of the workforce were
laid off in a period of general national economic recession (1991-92).

Measures

This study was part of a larger one commissioned by the company to monitor sources of
dissatisfaction thought to lead to turnover. A requirement of the study was that questions
would be specifically developed for this survey in conjunction with personnel staff and that the
use of existing scales was not permitted. The questionnaire used had been previously con-
structed for the company to assess among other factors job satisfaction and organizational
continuance commitment (Cramer, 1993). Items measuring these two variables were answered
on a five-point scale, ranging from 'strongly agree' to 'strongly disagree'. The six items which
correlated most highly and consistently on the two orthogonal factors representing job
satisfaction and organizational continuance commitment on the two occasions were selected to
measure these two variables. Responses on these items were used as raw scores and were simply
summed where appropriate. Cattell's (1966) scree test was used to determine the number of
factors extracted by principal axis factoring. Orthogonal and oblique rotation of these factors
gave essentially similar results. The highest an item from one scale loaded on the other was less
than + 0.30.
For job satisfaction, the items (with their factor loadings on the oblique factors given in
brackets first for wave 1 and second for wave 2) were 'I find my work interesting' (0.72, 0.78),
'My job gives me much pleasure' (0.67, 0.84), 'I do not feel very involved with my job' (-0.63,
-0.75), 'I am generally satisfied with my job' (0.69, 0.76), 'I generally like working here' (0.53,
0.75) and 'Most of the tasks I carry out are lower than I should be doing' (-0.47, -0.53). The
items for organizational continuance commitment were 'Changing companies is important for
my further development' (0.79, 0.76), 'I intend to work for another organization within the next
five years' (0.75, 0.69), 'Working for the same firm makes one too complacent' (0.57, 0.64), 'It is
unrealistic to expect someone to work for a long time in the same organization' (0.57, 0.63),
'I could have a better career outside the company' (0.53, 0.53) and 'I could not satisfy my career
aspirations any better anywhere else' (-0.45, -0.46). The correlation between the oblique
factors representing job satisfaction and organizational continuance commitment was -0.16 at
wave 1 and -0.24 at wave 2. Item responses rather than factor loadings were used to create
scales and indicators. Items were coded so that higher scores represented greater job satisfaction
and organizational continuance commitment. The alpha reliabilities for the two scales on the two
occasions are shown in Table 1. They are high, ranging from a low of 0.79 for organizational

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394 D. CRAMER

continuance commitment at time 1 to a high of 0.87 for job satisfaction at time 2, and indicate
that all four variables were reliably measured.
In their study of the discriminant validity of measures of organizational commitment, job
involvement and job satisfaction, Mathieu and Farr (1991) found that job involvement but not
job satisfaction was significantly positively correlated with age, position tenure and organ-
izational tenure. In the present study, job satisfaction was also not significantly correlated with
these three variables, suggesting that this measure may be more appropriately described as an
index of job satisfaction than of job involvement. Mathieu and Zajac (1990) in their meta-
analysis of correlates of attitudinal and calculative commitment reported that the mean weighted
correlation corrected for attenuation between position tenure and attitudinal commitment
(f, = 0.152) was significantly more positive than that between position tenure and calculative
commitment (ft = 0.025). In the present study, organizational continuance commitment was not
significantly correlated with position tenure, implying that this scale may be more a measure of
calculative or continuance commitment than affective commitment. Furthermore, the synchro-
nous correlation between job satisfaction and organizational continuance commitment at wave 1
(r = 0.35) and wave 2 (r = 0.37) was closer to the corrected mean weighted correlation between
work satisfaction and calculative commitment (f, = 0.332) than between work satisfaction and
attitudinal commitment (f, = 0.629) reported by Mathieu and Zajac (1990).
Although Reichers (1985) has suggested that it may be necessary to distinguish desire to stay
with the organization from organizational commitment, measures of organizational commit-
ment, particularly those assessing continuance commitment, have traditionally included items
referring to staying with or leaving the organization. For example, three of the 15 items of the
Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (Mowday, Steers and Porter, 1979) contain this
reference ('4. I would accept almost any type of job assignment in order to keep working for this
organization'; '9. It would take very little change in my present circumstances to cause me to
leave this organization'; and '11. There's not too much to be gained by sticking with this
organization indefinitely'). All eight items of Meyer and Allen's (1984) Continuance Commit-
ment Scale (McGee and Ford, 1987) include this reference (e.g. '1. Right now, staying with my
organization is a matter of necessity as much as desire' and '5. It would be very hard for me to
leave my organization right now, even if I wanted to') while all four items of Hrebiniak and
Alutto's (1972) Index of Organizational Commitment are answered in terms of a general
question incorporating this content ('Would you leave your present organization under any of
the following conditions?'). The finding that items containing this reference did not emerge as a
separate factor in this study suggests that it may be difficult differentiating desire to leave from
organizational continuance commitment.

Model development and evaluation

Linear structural relationship analysis (LISREL) with latent variables was used to determine the
statistical fit of four competing models (J6reskog and S6rbom, 1989). For each scale the
responses of the six items were summed in pairs to form three observed indicators to represent
that latent variable. The loading of the first pair was fixed as unity. The two items with the
highest intercorrelation formed the first pair, followed by two items with the next highest
intercorrelation. All four models postulated that the variable at time 2 was a function of the same
variable at time 1. The error term of the same indicator at the two waves was free to covary. For
instance, the first indicator of job satisfaction at time 1 was free to correlate with the first
indicator of job satisfaction at time 2. This was done because Anderson and Williams (1992) have

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 SATISFACTION AND COMMITMENT 395

shown that models which specify errors to be uncorrelated result in bias of the parameter
estimates representing reciprocal effects. The first model was the most comprehensive and held
that both cross-lagged paths were functional. In other words, it assumed that the two variables
were reciprocally related in that time 2 job satisfaction was influenced by time 1 organizational
continuance commitment and time 2 organizational continuance commitment was affected by
time 1 job satisfaction.
The remaining three models were subsets of the first. The second and third models held that
only one or other of the cross-lagged paths was operative while the fourth model posited no
cross-lagged paths. The second and third models assumed a unidirectional relationship between
the two variables. The second model held that time 2 job satisfaction was a function of time
1 organizational continuance commitment whereas the third model postulated that time
2 organizational continuance commitment was determined by time 1 job satisfaction.
The statistical fit of a model which is a subset of another one can be compared with that model.
Consequently, the first model can be compared with the others, while the second and third model
can be compared with the fourth. A model with a significantly lower x2 as shown by a x
difference test provides a better fit to the data. Where no significant difference exists between any
two of the models, the model with the fewer significant path coefficients offers the most
parsimonious solution.
Five other indices of fit were also given, the first three of which are calculated by LISREL and
described by Joreskog and Sdrbom (1989). The goodness of fit index represents the proportion of
variance explained. The closer this value is to 1.00, the better the fit. The adjusted goodness of fit
index adjusts the goodness of fit index for the degrees of freedom used to estimate the free
parameters of the model. The root mean squared residual is a measure of the average residuals
between the observed covariance matrix and the estimated matrix. The smaller this index is, the
better the fit. To calculate the other two indices of fit, a structural null model needs to be estimated
(Bentler and Bonett, 1980) although some feel this unduly restrictive model should only be used in
exploratory studies where neither previous theory nor research is available as a guide (Sobel and
Bohrnstedt, 1985). The normed fit index is (X 2- 2 )/Xnull (Bentler and Bonett, 1980) whereas
the parsimonious fit index is the normed fit index multiplied by dfmodelldfnull (James, Mulaik and
Brett, 1982). The four models were estimated with the maximum likelihood method.

Results

All analyses involved the full sample of 295 participants. The means (averaged across items),
standard deviations, alpha reliabilities and intercorrelations for job satisfaction and organ-
izational continuance commitment on the two occasions are presented in Table 1. Two-tailed
related t-tests indicated that both job satisfaction (t = 2.38, p < 0.05) and organizational
continuance commitment (t = 4.40, p < 0.001) were significantly lower at time 2 than at time 1.
All four variables were significantly and positively intercorrelated, ranging from a low of 0.26
between job satisfaction at time 1 and organizational continuance commitment at time 2 to a
high of 0.70 between organizational continuance commitment at time 1 and time 2.
The x2 test of each model and its degrees of freedom are shown in Table 2 together with the
other goodness of fit indices and the standardized beta coefficients. The x2 difference test
revealed no significant differences between any of the nested models, suggesting that no model
was superior to the other three: M4-M1 (X2 = 1.32, n.s.); M4-M2 (X2 = 1.14, n.s.); M4-M3

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396 D. CRAMER

Table 1. Means, standard deviations, alpha reliabilities and intercorrelations of job satisfaction and
organizational continuance commitment on two occasions (n = 295)

Variables M S.D. JS, JS2 OCCI OCC2

JS, 3.58 0.68 (0.85)

JS2 3.49 0.77 0.66* (0.87)
OCCl 2.89 0.65 0.35* 0.36* (0.79)
OCC2 2.75 0.71 0.26* 0.37* 0.70* (0.80)

JSI and JS2 = job satisfaction at times 1 and 2 respectively; OCC, and OCC2 = organizational continuance commitment
at times 1 and 2 respectively; alpha reliabilities are in brackets along the diagonal.
*p < 0.001 (one-tailed).

Table 2. Goodness of fit indices and standardized beta coefficients for the four competing models (n = 295)

Model 1 2 3 4 Null
JS OCC OCC-+Js -4OCC JS-OCC

Goodness of fit indices

df 42 43 43 44 66
X2 125.33* 125.51* 126.40* 126.65* 1817.28*
x2/df 2.984 2.919 2.940 2.878 27.535
GFI 0.939 0.939 0.938 0.938 0.375
AGFI 0.886 0.889 0.887 0.890 0.261
RMSQ 0.063 0.063 0.064 0.065 0.358
NFI 0.931 0.931 0.930 0.930
PEI 0.592 0.607 0.606 0.620

Standardized beta coefficents

JSl-JS2 0.71* 0.73* 0.71* 0.72*
OCCI-OCC2 0.76* 0.76* 0.80* 0.80*
OCCI-JS2 0.07 - 0.07
JSI-OCC2 0.03 0.03
GFI = goodness of fit index; AGFI = adjusted goodness of fit index; RMSQ = root mean square residual;
NFI = normed fit index [(X2ul-X 2odel > /X2.11]; PFI = parsimonious fit index (NFI x dfmodeldfnull); JSI and JS2 = job
satisfaction at times 1 and 2 respectively; OCCI OCC2 = organizational continuance commitment at times I and 2
respectively.
*p < 0.001.

(X2 = 0.25, n.s.); M2-M1 (X2 = 0.18, n.s.); M3-M1 (X2 = 1.07, n.s.). For the other four good-
ness of fit indices, differences between them for the four models are small or nonexistent. Since
neither of the cross-lagged standardized beta coefficients was statistically significant, the most
parsimonious model is the fourth one which simply assumed that the variable at time 2 is solely a
function of the same variable at time 1. The power of obtaining a small path coefficient of the
order of 0.20 is about 0.93 (at the 0.05 two-tailed level) for a sample of 295. The test-retest beta
coefficients for both job satisfaction and organizational continuance commitment were also
positive and statistically significant.

Discussion

The results of this longitudinal study found that the correlation between job satisfaction and
organizational continuance commitment was significantly positive when both variables were

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 SATISFACTION AND COMMITMENT 397

measured at the same point in time and when they were assessed about 13 months apart,
suggesting that the two variables may be causally related. The LISREL analyses, however,
revealed that neither cross-lagged path coefficient was significantly positive, indicating that there
was no temporal relationship between these two variables. Measuring affective rather than con-
tinuance commitment, Curry et al. (1986) and Anderson and Williams (1992) also concluded that
there was no temporal relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
These results appear to differ from those of Farkas and Tetrick (1989), who investigated with
LISREL the relationship between job satisfaction, organizational commitment and several other
variables over three waves. They argued that their analyses implied that the relationship between
job satisfaction and organizational commitment may be cyclical or even reciprocal. A direct
comparison of the analyses of the two studies is not possible because the same generic models
were not examined. However, three differences in particular between the analyses of the two
studies should be noted.
First and foremost, the models tested by Farkas and Tetrick (1989) do not appear to have
allowed the error terms of the latent variables to intercorrelate as pointed out by Anderson and
Williams (1992). As a consequence of this omission, the association between job satisfaction and
organizational commitment reported in their study may have been due to error common to these
two variables. In accord with other investigations (Jdreskog and S6rbom, 1989), permitting
correlations between error terms in the LISREL analyses in the present study produced models
with a substantially better fit to the data. Anderson and Williams (1992) found that when error
terms were allowed to covary over time the cross-lagged path coefficients were not significant.
Second, even though these models appeared to provide a fit as good if not better than other
models considered, Farkas and Tetrick (1989) rejected models in which either earlier job
satisfaction was free to covary with subsequent organizational commitment or earlier organ-
izational commitment was free to covary with job satisfaction because the beta coefficients were
negative whereas the zero-order correlations had been positive. In other words, the reciprocal
relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment was assumed to be
instantaneous. In contrast to their results, it should be noted that both the cross-lagged beta
coefficients in the present study were positive, although neither were significantly so. And third, as
they acknowledged, their models did not enable both of the synchronous paths between these two
variables to be estimated at the same time. Although the models presented in this paper did not
permit the synchronous beta coefficients between job satisfaction and organizational continuance
commitment to covary, it did allow both of the cross-lagged paths from time 1 to time 2 to be
estimated in the same model, thereby enabling them to be compared in the same analysis.
The results of this study also clearly show that the relative ranking of individuals with respect to
job satisfaction and organizational continuance commitment was fairly stable over the 13-month
period examined. The test-retest beta coefficients in this study are similar to those found by Curry
et al. (1986) but are considerably higher than those reported by Farkas and Tetrick (1989) which
varied quite considerably as a function of the model being tested. The test-retest correlations in
the present study are also higher than those reported by Farkas and Tetrick (1989) but similar to
those found by Bateman and Strasser (1984) and Vandenberg and Lance (1992) over the shorter
period of five months. Consequently, it is possible that the interval of 13 months used in the present
study was not long enough for sufficient change in job satisfaction and organizational continuance
commitment to have occurred for the temporal nature of their relationship to be investigated.
One reason for the lower stability found in the Farkas and Tetrick (1989) study may have been
due to the fact that their sample consisted of a cohort of younger individuals who had enlisted at
the same time and who were followed up shortly after enrolling whereas participants in the
present sample had not joined the organization at the same time and were older. As a

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398 D. CRAMER

consequence, individuals in the present study had had more experience of the work and the
organization on which to judge their satisfaction and commitment. A limitation of the present
study is the relatively small number of individuals in the sample who provided the necessary
information for matching their questionnaires from the two waves and who may not have been
representative of the larger sample. Another potential weakness may have been the conceptual-
ization of continuance commitment more in terms of the intention to leave the organization than
the costs of leaving it. The construct validity of this measure needs to be further investigated.
Mean job satisfaction and organizational continuance commitment was significantly lower on
the second than the on the first occasion. Mean life satisfaction over this period, however,
showed a significant increase (Cramer, 1995), implying that the change in job satisfaction and
organizational continuance commitment may have been work-related and may have been
associated with company changes leading to lay-offs in the workforce. Farkas and Tetrick (1989)
also found job satisfaction and organizational commitment declined significantly over the three
waves of their study. Bateman and Strasser (1984), on the other hand, implied that there was no
significant change in these two measures over a five-month period which was confirmed when the
present author checked their figures. Vandenberg and Lance (1992) also reported no significant
change in these measures over a five-month period although the author's own re-analysis of their
values indicated a significant increase in both organizational commitment (t = 13.25, two-tailed
p < 0.001) and job satisfaction (t = 4.74, two tailed p < 0.001). The mean values of these
variables appear similar over the seven-month period of the study by Curry et al. (1986) but this
impression could not be confirmed because the test-retest correlations were not supplied.
Although these studies vary in numerous ways and are too few to make meaningfully compari-
sons, there does not appear to be any relationship between the pattern of change in the two
variables and the nature of the cross-lagged relationships obtained between them.
The explanation that job satisfaction affects organizational commitment implies that job
satisfaction is less stable than organizational commitment (Porter et al., 1974). Stability is typically
measured in terms of the test-retest correlation. In the present study a person's organizational
continuance commitment was likely to have been established since employees had been with the
firm, on average, for over four years. Nonetheless, the test-retest correlation for job satisfaction
was not significantly less positive than that for organizational continuance commitment. In other
words, there is no evidence to suggest that job satisfaction may be less stable than organizational
continuance commitment in the present study. Consequently, this explanation for job satisfaction
leading to organizational continuance commitment may have to be re-evaluated.
The fact that this study together with that of Curry et al. (1986) and Anderson and Williams
(1992) found no temporal relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment
has the important practical implication that simply increasing job satisfaction is unlikely to result
in greater organizational commitment. Furthermore, it indicates that the observed cross-lagged
correlation between job satisfaction and organizational commitment is spurious and is the result
of common factors. What these factors are remains to be determined.

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