Differences in organizational commitment and its correlates among professional and nonprofessional occupational welfare workers

An Israeli sample of 98 occupational welfare workers was studied, comparing those who had professional social work linking and those did not have such training. Nonprofessionals had higher organizational commitment than the p rofessionally trained welfare workers. The relationships between job commit ment and its antecedents of personal characteristics, job characteristics a nd attitudes were determined, and the relative weight of theses factors in explaining commitment were examined by means of multiple regression analysi s. Findings are discussed in the theoretical framework of Becker's side-bet theory and professionalization.