Employer policies and organizational commitment in Britain 1992-97

An important current of thinking in the last decade has emphasized the need for a shift from control to commitment as the central objective of managem ent employment policies. This paper is concerned to assess whether there wa s a significant increase in British employees' commitment to their organiza tions in the 1990s, using comparative data from two large-scale and nationa lly representative surveys carried out in 1992 and 1997. It finds that ther e was no evidence of an increase in commitment over the period. As in the e arly part of the decade, employees had only a weak level of attachment to t heir organizations. The analysis examines a number of factors that have bee n seen as important determinants of such commitment: changes in the level o f skill, task discretion, controls over work performance, and forms of empl oyee involvement. While there were changes in some of these factors that en couraged higher commitment, these were largely cancelled out by a notable d ecline in the discretion that employees were allowed to exercise over their work.