Salancik outlines the relatively simple strategies for getti?

ig anyone
committed to anything. The problem is to get the individual committed to
behaviors that are right for him and right for the orga?iization—and that
isn't easy. He provides guidelifies for gaiiiing commitiiie7it—and techniques
for unraveling an univanted covimitment.

Commitment Js Zoo Easy!

Gerald R. Salancik

very age seeks its solutions in phrases that
substitute for the common sense that some-
how eludes it. Ours is no exception, having
devoted the past 30 years to proclamations
of confusion, self-doubt, and serious debate
on whether the end will come with an enor-
mous bang, a painful gasification, or merely
a whimper occasioned by the exhaustion of
irrecoverable resources. The catchwords
earlier in this century were efficiency and
organization. It was a time of hope, chastened
by war and depression; its problems were
solvable. And today? The new catchwords
are more diffuse: fulfillment, involvement,
equality, participation, and, most important
of all, commitment.
What is commitment anyway?
How do people become committed? What
are the probable effects of commitment on
behavior in organizations? How do you man-
age—the more precise word is manipulate—
commitment in organizations?
First things first. Commitment is a
state of being in which an individual becomes
bound by his actions and through these ac-
tions to beliefs that sustain the activities and
his own involvement. Commitment is ubiqui-
tous, so common that we are often unaware
of its constraining effects and its subtle con-
trol over our behavior. Commitment is what
makes us like what we do and continue do-
ing it, even when the payoffs are not obvious.

Organizational Dynamics, Stamner 1911. © 1911, AMACOM. a division of

62 A?}terican MaJiagevtent Associations. All rights reserved.
 In organizations, commitment takes
many forms, some of them beneficial, some
harmful. Its benefits depend on what the in-
dividual is committed to, not on whether he
is committed. For organizations adapting to
changing realities, commitments can at times
be devastating. National Cash Register al-
most went out of business because its image
of itself was more appropriate to its turn-of-
the-century glory. It bad become inbred, in-
grown, pompous.
The United States has been accused
of the unnecessary sacrifice of tens of thou-
sands of its own soldiers because of its com-
mitment to a policy in Vietnam that was
known to be unworkable almost from the
beginning of the war. The phenomenon of
escalation is the tragic side of overcommit-
ment. George Bali warned Lyndon John-
son as early as 1965; "Since we suffered large
casualties, our involvement will become so
great that we cannot without national hu-
miliation stop short of achieving our com-
plete objective." Tom Stoppard captured
the essence of overcommitment in his play
Rosencrantz and Quildensterii Are Dead:
"They had simply traveled too far, and . . .
momentum has taken over." The British and
French reenacted this drama in their alliance
over the Concorde.
What commitment does is sustain
action in the face of difficulties. And that
can have its good side. Without commitment
individuals would be less likely to pursue
goals for which the outcomes are uncertain.
Commitment is what contributes to produc-
ing dedicated scholars., artists, missionaries,
file clerks, XA\\ drivers, even presidents. Dur-
ing the pandemic plagues of the fourteenth
century, commitment is what kept priests
ministering to the needs of the dying, thus
killing off a substantial portion of the clergy.
Commitment can lead individuals to love
their jobs so much that the rest of us find
them a bore. Studs Terkel tells of a dentist
who made a backstage visit to the actress
Geraldine Page to say, "I was sitting in the
front row and looking up. Most of the time
I was studying the fillings in your mouth.
I'm curious to know who's been doing your
dental work."
Given the fact that the effects of
commitment can be negative or positive, the
important task is not to seek it blindly but to
ask how it comes about and how it can best
be managed to the advantage of the indi-
vidual and the organization. That's what this
article is all about.
To understand commitment, we
must first understand that behavior is what is
being committed, because behavior is a visi-
ble indicator of what we are and what we
intend doing. Our behavior leads to expecta-
tions about what we will do in the future.
These expectations surround our behavior
and constrain us to act within them. Com-
mitments thus mold our attitudes and main-
tain our behavior even in the absence of pos-
itive reinforcements and tangible rewards.
Commitment implies that an em-
ployee will complete a project on time when
he tells his supervisor that he will. The pub-
lic statement "I will finish that by next
Thursday" shapes and constrains subsequent
behavior to conform much more than would
be the case if a person said nothing. A person
will like a product more after purchasing it
and paying for it than before the purchase.
Similarly, campaign workers will become
avid fans of a political candidate after they
have spent day after day canvassing for his
election.
It is the behavior that determines
the attitude in such cases rather than the re-
verse, a point that in 1736 Benjamin Frank-
lin appreciated to his advantage. Disturbed
by the political opposition and personal ani-
mosity of one of his colleagues in Penn- 63
 sylvania legislature, he sought to convert
him into a friend. Franklin heard that the
senator had a rare book in his library and
asked to borrow it in a note "expressing my
desire of perusing" it. The book came im-
mediately and Franklin returned it in a week
with another note "expressing strongly my
sense of the favor." The result? "When next
we met in the House, he spoke to me (which
he had never done before), and with great
civility.... We became great friends and . . .
continued to his death."
Franklin manipulated a commit-
ment. A good lay psychologist, Franklin got
the senator to behave in a friendly manner
toward him. This little ploy worked. The
action taken by Franklin constrained the
senator's subsequent behavior. One implica-
tion of lending a rare and precious book is
that the lender judges the borrower to be
discriminating enough to appreciate such a
fine object. It would appear a bit foolish for
Franklin's former foe, after having lent him
the book, to then go before the legislature
and call Franklin a rogue and a scoundrel.
Franklin's second move communicated the
sense that both the borrower and the lender
must be gentlemen of taste and distinction.
INDUCING COMMITMENTS
Commitment comes about when an individ-
ual is bound to his acts. Though the word
bound is somewhat clumsy, what we mean
by it is that the individual has identified
64
himself with a particular behavior. Three
characteristics bind an individual to his acts
and hence commit him. They are the visibil-
ity, the irrevocability, and the z'olitiojiality
of the behavior. By manipulating these three
characteristics, an individual can be made
to be more or less committed to his acts and
to their implications. Let us consider each in
turn.
The visibility of behavior
The first committing aspect of behavior con-
cerns how visible and observable it is. Acts
that are secret or unobserved lack the force
to commit because an act that has not been
seen cannot be linked clearly to an individ-
ual. The person can deny or forget it.
Public commitment is particularly
important for getting individuals to fulfill
goals to which they agree. Michael S. Pallak
of the University of Iowa for instance,
showed that homeowners who agreed to
conserve energy were in fact more likely to
do so when their participation in the pro-
gram was published in the town's news-
papers. Sales incentive plans that include the
annual goals of the sales agents have the
same effect. When the expectations an indi-
vidual sets for himself are publicized, they
become the expectations that otliers hold for
him too. They serve as constant guides to
future actions.
One of the simplest and perhaps
easiest means of committing individuals to
an organization is to make their identifica-
tion with the organization widely known
and highly visible. The association implies
support. Organizations can use this simple
fact to their advantage. When a new em-
ployee joins the organization, an announce-
ment to the local or national jircss, along
with a photograph, informs the world about
the choice. Western Electric has recently
done this with rank-and-file employees in
television spot advertisements that depict in-
dividuals at their work stations. Owens-Illi-
nois, a major producer of packaging prod-
ucts, uses its annual reports to achieve the
same effect. In 1974, for instance, it featured
31 employees in either text or photography.
The text explains why:
Considerable thought is devoted to ways to help
Owens-Illinois people become more effective in
their jobs. . . . We work hard at such things as
job enrichment, open recognition for good per-
formance, and providing a work climate that
fosters thinking. As a result, we have highly mo-
tivated, thoughtful employees committed to a
better way of doing things.
The employees cited in the report are likely
to he more committed because of it.
That hehavior can be made more
or less visible makes it relatively easy to in-
duce commitment. The claims frequently
made that modern organizations are anony-
mous is more a reflection of practices in cer-
tain organizations than anything inherent in
the nature of organizations. It is quite feas-
ible to increase the visibility of most be-
havior within organizations.
It is easy enough to let an individ-
ual know that you know what he has done
and is doing for the organization. It is just as
easy for an inspector to write his name after
an approval as it is to write his company
number. It is just as easy to post a name
placard above a work station as it is to leave
the space blank. And it is easy to let every-
one connected with the work of a particu-
lar individual know about his contribution.
It is also easy enough to speak for
an individual to groups outside the organiza-
tion. For instance, one organization writes a
letter of reference in behalf of its employees
for credit applications. Still another writes a
biannual commentary on the employee to
his family, a sort of work report card. A
little hokey perhaps; but it does take the
edge off anonymity. And it helps to make
people feel a little more responsible, because
they realize that others know what they are
doing.
Organizations are already well
aware of the committing effects of visibility.
Sometimes they minimize an employee's ex-
posure. Involvement in illegal, immoral, or
simply distasteful activities are underplayed.
Prison guards and combat soldiers arc all
shielded from being identified too closely
with their necessary but unpleasant tasks.
Minimizing a person's identification can
actually facilitate certain pursuits. Motiva-
ting an individual to take on an assignment
that has low personal payoff but is nonethe-
less necessary is made difficult when others
in the organization know it may he a loser.
In such cases, the less visibility the better.
The irreversibility of behavior
Behavior would not be committing were it
merely visible. In addition, the behavior
must be relatively irrevocable. Visibility
means the individual cannot deny that an act
occurred; irrevocability means the behavior
that occurred cannot be changed. This aspect
of hehavior, of course, adds to its constrain-
ing effects. One of the circumstances that
locked Great Britain into producing the
Concorde \\ as a clause that the then-minister
of Aviation Julian Amery wrote into the
1961 agreement with France. The clause
provided that if either of the two venture
 partners withdrew, the entire costs of de-
velopment to that point would be borne by
the resigning party. It w as a clause that made
the agreement to proceed virtually irrevers-
ible, and the more irreversible the more
fruitless the project became.
The irreversibility or irrevocability
of behavior is committing because in taking
a step that cannot be retrieved one is left to
accept the salient implications that support
it. Because of this, in the future a person
faces either regret over past acts or an asser-
tion of their wisdom. A person who aims a
loaded gun at someone, then fires, ends up
either hating himself or hating his victim.
It is the fact that we cannot go back
and undo what has been done that narrows
our alternatives so effectively. Several ex-
perimental studies illustrate this effect. These
experiments of course do not have people
shoot other people; instead they require in-
dividuals to administer an electric shock to
others. The experiment is set up under the
guise of a learning study, and the individuals
are given a choice of whether to administer
the shock. Those who do the shocking later
believe the unfortunate victims have de-
served their fate. But this occurs only if the
harm cannot somehow be undone. When a
victim is e.xpected to have an opportunity to
pay back the harm-doer, the victim is seen as
a pretty nice fellow after all. The opportu-
nity for retribution is used as a way of "un-
doing" the prior shock administrations.
Few actions are so obviously irre-
versible as shooting someone or so costly to
reverse as the Concorde agreement. Still, the
more irreversible an action is, the more com-
mitting it becomes. Organizations have
evolved several schemes for making a per-
son's attachment to his work more or less
easily severed. One is to give employees
benefit packages that are not transferable
66 from one organization to another. Financial
arrangements with annuities that accumulate
with tenure are such a mechanism.
Other aspects of a person's situation
that increasingly attach the person to an or-
ganization by making leaving more difficult
are the life-cycle stage and the lack of geo-
graphically convenient alternatives. Children
in school; memberships in community orga-
nizations; participation in community af-
fairs; differential accelerations in the cost of
housing from one area to another; spouses
with jobs and involvements of their own;
or just too little time to go out and job-
hunt—these are examples of the ways our
lives entrap us in our present situation. The
loss of pension benefits or gains from com-
pany stock options may well be less impor-
tant in determining our behavior than the
misery of a seven-year-old wondering what
will happen to the rest of his life if the fam-
ily moves from the best little league team in
the country. The network of relationships
we build for ourselves can ensnare us until
we see no available alternatives.
Of course, it is also true that a per-
son's tangle of relationships can separate him
from an organization rather than keep him
with it. A recent phenomenon in the United
States is the tw^o-income family, with its at-
tendant problem of one employee quitting
because of the superior opportunity that
opens up somewhere else for the spouse.
Sometimes an organization handles the sit-
uation by making both members of the fam-
ily employees, thus putting the organization
in the position of handling both careers with
some degree of parity.
When an individual's own relation-
ships do not bind him, attempts are frequent-
ly made to create a tangle of relationships
that keep him in the organization. Team
building and the one-big-happy-family ap-
proach to employees is one form of this,
though to some extent an unnatural one that

Gerald R. Salaiicik /'fgun his studies in
joumalis7tt, co?mimJiicatiof3S, and advertising
at Northwestern University. He later
rettirned to experimental social psychology,
in which be took a doctorate at Yale
University in 1970. He has consulted on
long-range plaiuiivg and forecasting,
spending a year at the Institute for the
Future where he first studied purposeful
adjustment of organizations to enviromnental
change. Winning covmiitment to
organizational change becafne of interest
to him at this time. He currently pttrmes
this i?iterest as associate professor of
organization behavior with the department
of business administration at the University
of Illinois in Urbana/Cha?npaign. He has
•written over 30 papers itt the areas of
cojtmiitment., organizational power, attitude
change, and technological forecasting, and
co-authored The Interview (1966), and two
hooks in press^^cw Directions for
Organizational Behavior and The External
Control of Organizations. He consttlts on
strategic planning problems for organizations
and on issues of co?itrol and change.
weakens it. A person's stability in social re-
lationsiiips comes from having money entan-
glements with partially overlapping sets of
individuals. An individual whose relation-
ships (friendships, workships, interest clubs)
are all invested in the same set of individuals
faces more strain to keep them balanced,
but he or she will attempt to do this by keep-
ing all relationships on a more shallow level.
Movements of executives and other person-
nel from division to division is another form.
This simultaneously prevents individuals
from establishing long-term relationships
with outsiders and forces them to depend on
personal relationships within the organiza-
tion.
The Rothschilds practiced one of
the more impressive examples of this strat-
egy with the children of the five sons who
founded their international banking con-
cern in Frankfurt, Germany. Each of the
five sons was assigned to a different country
and the sons' children were becoming in-
creasingly attached to the countries of their
birtii and therefore reluctant to move to an-
other country. The Rothschilds solution was
intermarriage among the children. The tics
of marriage, like the ties of blood of the
founding generation, bonded their organiza-
tion despite the wars and intrigues that
racked the host nations.
The attempt in all these cases is to
enmesh the individual with the organization
to make reversing his position with the or-
ganization more costly and more painful. In
manv cases, however, such attention to a
person's relationships is not necessary. A
good deal of an individual's irreversible posi-
tion in an organization develops quite natur-
ally from his growth within the firm. As a
person works for an organization, much of
his skill and knowledge becomes increasing-
ly parochial. More and more, what he under-
stands about a business is what he under-
stands about a very particular kind of busi-
ness, and even at that only a particular way
of doing business. Many of these skills may
not be transferable to other organizations.
As a consequence, he may of necessity be-
come more and more committed to the or-
ganization in which these skills were devel-
oped. We even suspect that organizations
work contrary to their own interests when
they encourage employees to enroll in job
training programs that make them more em-
ployable elsewhere. 67
 We have emphasized the impor-
tance of irreversibility, because it does affect
a person's psychological or emotional at-
tachments to organizations. Barry Staw, the
author of another article in this issue of Or-
ganizatiof}al Dynamics, recently illustrated
the effects of an individual's placing himself
in a relatively irreversible relationship with
an organization. He observed cadets from
the Reserve Officers Training Corps, some
of whom were required to sign a two-year
contract; others joined without a contract.
This was during the Vietnam War, at the
time of the first U.S. draft lottery for that
war.
By chance, some of the cadets had
drawn numbers that indicated a low proba-
bility of their being drafted, while others re-
ceived numbers indicating a high probability
that they would be called up for service.
Many of the cadets had joined the ROTC to
avoid the draft; now those who knew that
they had little chance of being called up had
little reason for continuing in the program.
We would expect their attitudes toward the
program to deteriorate. And indeed this
proved true, but only for those who had not
signed a two-year contract. This noncon-
tract group began disparaging the ROTC
programs; some even took part in the pro-
^^ Volition is essential to all commitment It is the
cement that binds the action to the person and
that motivates him to accept the implications
68 of his acts. ^^
test demonstrations against the war. But
those with contracts actually became more
attached to the programs. The brass buttons
and steady drill created a new appeal.
The inescapable is appealing in a
way that transient .situations rarely are. Once
we have committed ourselves to a situation
that ceases to have utilitarian value, we are
forced to endow it with more emotional and
rationalizing sources of appeal. This is what
happened with the ROTC cadets; it also
happens when dating couples take the final
plunge and agree to marry. They begin to
see themselves as more suitable for each
other and more ideally matched than they
had previously imagined.
Behavior and persojial volition
Readers may have wondered whether the ir-
reversibility of behavior would, all by itself,
lead a person to become more attached to an
organization. They may have recognized a
sort of repulsive entrapment in some of the
strategies; these hardly invite attraction.
Well, the truth is that were the irreversible
aspects of a situation only an entrapment,
they would not enhance a person's commit-
ment. Indeed, they might decrease it. For en-
trapment suggests that our actions are not
taken of our own volition. Volition is es-
sential to all commitment. It is the cement
that binds the action to the person and that
motivates him to accept the implications of
his acts.
The public nature of any hehavior
and its irrevocability join action into an in-
delible physical and social reality; each ac-
tion affects the extent to which we assert
that the action has taken place. Volition—
and its operational equivalent, the accep-
tance of personal responsibility—links be-
havior to the person who is acting.
Without volition, a behavior is not
necessarily committing, for the person can
always assert that he really did not cause the
behavior himself. He thus would not have to
accept the con.sequcnces of the behavior or
care very much what he has done. It is per-
haps the easiest way of getting free from be-
haviors, particularly those having disagree-
able consequences. When the unpleasant as-
pects of a joh become obvious, for instance,
we can always say, "I'm doing it for the
mone\', but I don't like it. Not one bit." This
is a subtle form of disassociation. A more
common one is what we witness when peo-
ple make mistakes with possibly unpleasant
consequences and attempt to weasel out of
the situation with "It isn't my fault; the ma-
chine just broke."
Volition, or personal responsibility,
is the most ambiguous aspect of committing
behavior. Unlike the other two, it is not ob-
servable and literally cannot be documented.
It is always argued and always attributed. It
can be attributed either by an individual
himself or by others.
Consider again the situation de-
scribed by Staw: It is more than the fact
that an individual signed a public document
to remain in the ROTC program that affect-
ed his attitude. It is the fact that he did so
voluntarily. How was it voluntary when
the contract was a requirement of the pro-
gram? What makes the contract voluntary
was that the cadet chose freely to enter into
it. Everyone in his situation did not take the
same action. Those who joined the ROTC
to avoid the draft by and large avoided sign-
ing any contract. And if one person did sign
when others did not, it must be because he
chose to. And if he chose to, it must be be-
cause he liked it, particularly when there
was no other reason for continuing in the
program since he was not to be drafted any-
way. And that is the conclusion he draws
from the situation. He comes to like it be-
cause he chose ir and his choice binds him to
it.
Another element that contributes
to the ambiguity of volition is that all hu-
man actions are hoth forced and constrained,
undertaken both under the volition of the
actor and in response to external pressures.
Even writers such as Dostoevski and George
Bernard Shaw saw their acts of creation as
the joint consequence of internal compul-
sions and external forces.
The crafty old Benjamin Franklin
got his opponent to like him in the same
way. By persuading the senator to lend him
a rare book voluntarily, he assured his
friendship. It matters little that the legislator
may have acted out of a general sense of
social graciousness. The fact is that, of his
own volition, the senator loaned him the
book. Franklin, cleverly, further inhilMted
any attribution to social grace when he
wrote to make a point of just what a favor
the loan was. He thus underscored the fact
that the behavior was a free and voluntary
act, because favors are by definition done
voluntarily. The new friendship followed
easily from this action, although it may have
been a chain of events that the senator had 69
no intention of setting in motion. He had
trapped himself in the dynamics of commit-
ment.
It is the volitional nature of activity
that gives many motivation strategies their
punch. Recall the situation, studied by Dr.
Pallak, of Iowa residents and their commit-
ment to conserve energy. Those who had
voluntarily agreed to do so and had their
agreements published did indeed use less
energy.
We can also see the importance of
volition in a follow-up study conducted
among Illinois homeowners. In early 1974,
residents were asked to describe what they
had done by way of conservation during the
1973 energy crisis. After they had finished
they were given lists and asked to identify
the reasons for their actions. Some received a
list of personal reasons such as "felt it was
my responsibility" or "I have always tried
to conserve." Others received a list that re-
minded them of the situational or personal
constraints of conservation, such as "the
costs of energy were too great" or "the 55
mph speed law had to be obeyed." Thus
some of the individuals were made to feel
personal responsibility for what they had
done to conserve energy; others were led
to attribute their behavior to circumstan-
tial pressures.
The effect was dramatic. Those
who were made to feel personally involved
later planned to use less energy even after
the "crisis" had passed. A foUow-up study is
currently being run in Princeton to measure
exactly how much energy such individuals
will save.
Heightening an employee's sense of
personal responsibility is of course one
means for channeling his energies in desired
directions. American organizations tradi-
tionally underplay this. But some do not.
Companies in the United States owned and
managed by Japanese often are run on the
general principles used in Japan. Although
the Japanese style of management has been
interpreted as a familar paternalism, it is real-
ly a vigilant effort to get workers to partici-
pate voluntarily and take personal responsi-
bility for the activities that happen. They
accomplish this through public face-to-face
meetings during which each person's role
is painstakingly outlined. The Southwestern
Ohio Bell Telephone Company recently at-
tempted a systematic approach to making
the individual's role in the company's af-
fairs more salient. Employees in small groups
witness a simulated news broadcast of the
company's troubles, up to the ultimate point
at which things get so bad that the company
goes out of business. Tbe employees walk
away from the telecast asking what they can
do to keep the end from coming. The com-
pany claims to have saved millions of dollars
by running the program.
COMMITMENTS AND MYTHS THAT
SUSTAIN ACTION
The power of commitment in shaping atti-
tudes stems from the fact that individuals
adjust their attitudes to fit the situations to
which they are committed. It is what makes
behavior self-sustaining. You act. You be-
lieve your action was valuable, worthwhile,
desirable. You act again, renewing the be-
lief. In time, without realizing it, you have
made a myth; your sense of veracity and
value has been merged into the pattern of
action. The myths sustains the action, and
the action sustains the myth.
Myths are a blessing—although, we
hasten to add, a mixed blessing. Organiza-
tions could hardly get any work done if it
were not for myths. They develop to justi-
fy, certify, and legitimate most of our activi-
ties. The psychiatric personnel of large-scale
mental hospitals, for instance, generally hold
to an ideology—or myth, if you will—that
mental illness is attributable to physical
causes. The ideology is hoth disputable and
di.sputed, but it is a necessary one for those
managing very large patient loads, with only
enough time and resources to administer
drugs as therapeutic treatment. More leisure-
ly psychoanalysts in private practice, by
contrast, adhere to an ideology about the
psychological and social basis of mental
problems, thus sustaining their involvement
and that of their patients in intensive, long-
term personal analysis.
One significance of myths lies in
justifying actions that otherwise might ap-
pear senseless and meaningless. Consider the
difficult business of selecting a candidate for
a position in the organization or of promot-
ing one over another. The persons are as a
rule either so similar to one another or so
completely different from one another that
any attempt at comparing them is a logical
absurdity.
This is particularly true for the
more undefinable higher positions of an or-
ganization, such as the president or chief ex-
ecutive officer. Most candidates are obvious-
ly qualified. We could probably make as
good a decision hy a random toss of a coin.
But one does not approach such decisions
flippantly. Instead we assert that the choice
made is the best choice that could have been
made; that the prospects for the company
are better under the new CEO than ever
before.
The fact that these same statements
were made in the past, that they could
be made with equal legitimacy about the
rejected candidates, is never considered.
Why not? Because it would not make sense
to say it does not matter who is chosen. It is
supposed to matter; the myth is that it does
matter. Without this myth we would not in-
vest much authority into those who are
chosen. And that would make a difference
for an organization.
Myths develop most frequently to
make sense of the sacrifices we make when
we act with little obvious benefit. As Ken-
neth Boulding has perceptively noted:
We resist threats to our own identity. Conse-
quently, it is easy to get locked into an identity
that may demand too much sacrifice. Sacrifice
creates sacredness. . . . Good money is often
thrown after had, hut does not necessarily re-
deem it. One gets a depressing feeling sometimes
that people who are most admired hy mankind
and who are regarded as its heroes are precisely
those who have created the maximum amount of
human misery. Those who have demanded sac-
rifice, the prophets and conquerors, revolution-
aries and visionaries are those who created the
great phyla of human history. Those who have
made things a little Iwtter for little people—the
traders, the producers, the inventors, even the
bankers-have no monuments and receive no
eulogies.
Most organizations require some
sacrifices, actions without apparent benefit.
And most of these actions require similar
71
 justification. For without justification they
lose their credibility, and without credibility
only a fool would continue them. Social psy-
chologist Lloyd Strickland once conducted
an insightful experiment about the justifica-
tion for human actions. He had a supervisor
check on the work performance of two
subordinates and manipulated conditions so
that the supervisor had to spend more of his
time watching one than the other.
The actual performances of the sub-
ordinates were controlled and virtually iden-
tical. But when the supervisor was asked to
evaluate the two employees, he reported that
the one he watched was untrustworthy and
needed to be supervised closely to get any
work out of him. This is clearly a myth
and a useful one. The time spent watching
the subordinate could only make sense to the
supervisor if he thought it was instrumental
to the subordinate's performance. In this
case, because the experimenter randomly as-
signed the supervisor to one or another of
the employees, such a belief is particularly
striking.
It must be much easier to develop
such beliefs in organizations in which the
allocation of a supervisor's time is itself based
on a presumption of a need for his time.
Jacob Weisberg, sales manager for the
Germicide Division of West Chemical Prod-
ucts, realized the self-deceptions involved in
being a manager and asked himself why sales
managers spent almost 100 percent of their
time with the 80 percent of the sales force
that brought in only 20 percent of the sales
72
volume. Why don't they spend the time
with those who bring in the bucks?
Mr. Weisberg's answer: Because
uppermost in the minds of those managers
was the desire to turn the men around. The
typical manager in this situation hired sales-
men with a world of expectations. And
when the expectations are not realized, his
own skills as a manager were being chal-
lenged. He had to do something about their
performance. If he couldn't, what kind of
manager was he?
The myths that sustain organiza-
tional activities are not usually considered to
be myths. They are seen as evidential mat-
ters. Managers pride themselves on their at-
tention to the bottom line, a phrase that has
taken on such an aura in our culture that its
invocation sounds like an audit itself. How-
ever, if we actually inquire whether a firm
evaluates the effects of its programs and
procedures, nine times out of ten the answer
is no, accompanied with a quizzical ex-
pression that asks why we should raise the
question.
Fred Luthans, a management pro-
fessor at the University of Nebraska, once
surveyed the top 1,000 corporations of the
United States as to how they use job enrich-
ment programs. When he asked about the
impact of these programs, he heard about
gains in production, satisfaction, and profit-
ability. But when he asked whether any for-
mal or informal assessments had been made
of the programs, he was told that only a
handful had been made. The designers and
implementers of the programs, perhaps not
unintentionally, were content to rely on a
scattering of anecdotal evidence.
In many ways, evidence that some-
thing is working is probably less important
than the belief that it is working. For it is the
belief that sustains the activity, not the evi-
dence. Evidence may serve to strengthen the
conviction that something is working; still,
it is the belief that sustains the pursuit. In-
deed, we suspect that it is for this reason that
organizations and organizers rarely under-
take reality testing. The costs of doing so
are too great. And this does not mean the
dollar costs. It means the costs of finding out
that a good deal of the time it matters little
what one does for the outcomes one gets.
The important thing is to do something and
to liave everyone affected believe that what
is being done is the right thing to do. As Max
Weber suggested in his analysis of bureauc-
racy, the appearance that something is right
and proper to do legitimates doing it and
sustains the efforts.
That actions need to be sustained in
the absence of evidence that they contribute
something is well known to firms engaged in
commercial research and development. The
drug manufacturer Merck and Company
made its fortune from two drugs that were
discovered almost by accident more than
ten years ago—methyldopa for hyperten-
sion and indomethacin for arthritis. For the
next ten years, Merck invested some $800
million in new drug research, and year after
year it showed no results. Nothing. But
after each year of disappointment, it still
came up with a budget for new drug re-
search.
The firm was not happy about this;
it replaced the chairman in 1976. But it did
not stop trying, despite the lack of evidence
to suggest it was getting them anywhere.
And hope lives forever at Merck. When the
new chairman, John Horan, took over, he
said he expected the company to break out
of its doldrums in a big way. Thus, with no
evidence that investments of $800 million
had any payoff, Merck's managers roll up
their sleeves and get right back to it.Why?
Because they know one thing without any
evidence at all: If they do not look, they
certainly will not find a new drug that will
support their search for the next ten years.
SUPPORT AND SATISFACTION
Because the actions that people take volun-
tarily lead them to develop beliefs that justi-
fy and sustain their involvement and then
commit them to these beliefs, one of the most
fruitful uses of commitment is to obtain sup-
port for organizational ends and interests.
The most common approach is to have em-
ployees or other interest groups participate
in the management and formation of organi-
zational policies. It is a common managerial
style with many forms.
Participation may involve only
conversations between supervisors and sub-
ordinates or it may take more elaborate
forms of solicited advice; employee feed-
back, suggestion systems, assignment of per-
sons to task groups or advisory committees
and boards, or selection of individuals for
the board of directors. Whatever the spe-
cific form, the critical ingredients are that a
person be clearly identified as participating
in the program or activity and be publicly
committed to doing so. For this reason, the
office suggestion box does not contribute
much to commitment since it is too anony-
mous to be taken seriously by anyone, in-
cluding those who deposit their gems of
wisdom.
Participation in an activity or a
73
 group is coopting. It coopts an individual's
support and satisfaction. It constrains the
individual's attitudes and expressed beliefs
regarding the activity or the group. And it
does this because the most salient implication
of participating in something is that the per-
son wanted to support the activity, did so,
and accepted it as valuable. Otherwise, why
participate?
Consider Senator Russell Long's
recent endorsement of Louis Kelso's ESOP
(Employee Stock Ownership Plan) in a
speech to a group of tax experts: "It is better
than Geritol... it will increase productivity
. . . improve labor relations . . . make our
concept of freedom prevail over those who
don't agree with us." Senator Long's solu-
tion for tired organizational blood is one of
many recommendations posed in recent
years to enhance employee commitment and
involvement with their employing organiza-
tions.
Sometimes the recommendations
work. One firm that installed an ESOP in
1972, a former LTV subsidiary, distributed
173,000 shares to its (5,500 employees, thus
involving them in its management and capi-
tal structure. While the firm showed less
^^Participation undercuts opposition and objection.
When this is true^ goals are more likely to he
accomplished. Involving persons or groups in the
design of a project or policy ensures their support.
Their hand leaves its imprint not only on the design
74 hut on them, ^^
turnover and absenteeism, the most impor-
tant indicator of the effect this action had
was the substantial increase in the sale of T-
shirts with the E-System logo to employees
and their families. Can we imagine walking
around the barbecue pit breasted with the
firm name saying nasty things ahout it?
Participation undercuts opposition
and objection. When this is true, goals are
more likely to be accomplished. Involving
persons or groups in the design of a project
or policy ensures tiieir support. Their hand
leaves its imprint not only on the design but
on them. They see it as a good plan—work-
able; after all, they recommended it. Were
this not true, they would have to confront
the question of why they had settled on a
course of action that was unrealistic and
couldn't be accomplished. But having par-
ticipated, they do their hcst to make it work.
One of the common uses of partici-
pation is to undercut opposition by interest
groups. Objections to a current policy can
be effectively nullified by inviting the oppo-
sition group to participate in formulating its
replacement. Whether a new policy can or
will be developed is not as important as hav-
ing one that is supported as the best possible
policy under the circumstances. Opposition
left on its own Is evidence that the policy is
not the best. It is thus frequently necessary
to involve those who otherwise might con-
test the plan.
Pitney-Bowes, one of the few
American companies that has institutional-
ized employee participation in manage-
ment, faced this situation in its 1972 job-
hokiers meeting with top management.
Magdalin Conning., a financial-training co-
ordinator at Pitney-Bowes's Stamford head-
quarters, spoke out and criticized the com-
pany for its poor use of women employ-
ees. Eighty percent of the customer account
jobs were going to women and only 1} per-
cent of the management positions. Rather
than getting flustered at the outrage, the
company's president immediately relieved
Ms. Conning of her normal duties and ap-
pointed her to head a special task force to
examine the role of women at the firm. By
this move, a potential source of dissatisfac-
tion was converted into a formally assigned
support for the organization. This is not to
question the company's sincerity about af-
firmative action; indeed, Pitncy-Rowes later
published the task force's recommendations
in its employee newspaper. Further, the im-
portance of such participation has little to
do with whether the solicited suggestions are
used. The important aspect is rather in the
effect of participation on those who partici-
pate. Their role as designer of policy, advice-
giver, member of a board places them in a
position that identifies them with the orga-
nization's interests and that is incompatible
with not supporting the organization.
Jeffrey Pfeffer, a social scientist at
the University of California at Berkeley, has
described how many organizations have co-
opted a critical employee by appointing him
or her the organization's affirmative action
officer. By formally designating a position
as being responsible for affirmative action,
and by filling it with the most respected and
vocal representative of the "opposition," the
firm removes critical voices from the "out-
side"—where they can get into newspapers—
to the "inside"—where they become "pro-
prietary information" of the organization.
Once on the inside, the position holder eas-
ily becomes wrapped up with justifying
and maintaining his position: He or she ends
up supporting the organization rather than
opposing it. Substantial changes, when seen
within the context of and from the point of
view of the organization, become "difficult
under the circumstances," a conviction less
easily arrived at by "outsiders."
Most participation programs work
in the same way. They are devices for in-
forming the individuals from whom support
is needed of the constraints facing the orga-
nization and for obtaining their commitment
to operate within those constraints. It is im-
portant that this be done. Opposition is us-
ually opposition only because it ignores or is
unaware of the constraints the insider-man-
agers perceive as being critical. Inviting
someone into the situation also invites them
CO accept the premises of the situation—and
thus to plan within the same constraints that
they may have previously opposed.
Consider one of the best known
participation programs—the Scanlon Plan.
Most of the programs that go under that
name do not recognize the genius of the man
who created the first one for an obscure steel
company in Ohio in the 1930s. The com-
pany was about to go banknipt because of
high costs and growing losses. Joseph N.
Scanlon, one-time boxer, cost accountant,
and millworker, was then president of the
local union, and he did not want to see his
meml)ers thrown into the breadlines with
the rest of depressed America. As an ac-
countant, he realized how costs affect profits 7 5
 and how well-conducted day-to-day activi-
ties can produce profits. As an open hearth
steelmaker, he also realized there were alter-
native strategies for reducing costs. And he
knew that if workers' ideas about how to do
the work were applied, with management's
permission, they might just stop the problem
of draining costs.
Scanlon discussed his ideas with the
company's president. They arranged to have
committees of labor and management con-
vened at the level of the lowest operating
units of the organization to solicit employ-
ees' suggestions about how efficiency could
be increased, production costs reduced, and
waste eliminated. The committees met on a
regular basis, discussing plans and then im-
plementing them.
Scanlon's scheme worked. Costs
dropped. Profits rose. And employees got
bonuses. And with all of this, a new social
invention was borne—to entrance and in-
timidate generations of managers. But what
many overlooked was that the plan worked
in this case because everyone participating
in it accepted the premise of the situation—
that efficiency and cost cutting were the ap-
propriate goals. The iinportant effect of the
participation scheme was that it created a
commitment to these premises.
Avoiding the bandwagon
The fact that Scanlon's scheme for employee
participation worked lias in some ways be-
come its most regrettable outcome. It has
led to a generalization that "participation
works!" And in so doing, it has led people
away from considering why it works.
The situations facing organizations
are specific situations, not general ones. In
Scanlon's steel company, the situation was a
cost problem in an economic environment
76 that could not tolerate costs. Costs are re-
lated to profits in such circumstances, and
because the individuals were committed to
solving problems about costs, the profits in-
evitably followed. To generalize, as many
have, by saying, "participative management
is profitable," is a severe form of stupidity.
Behaviors profit individuals and or-
ganization through their detailed effects, not
as abstractions. And the benefits or disad-
vantages of commitments are no less through
the detailed effects of their existence. For
this reason, one must always be careful in
selecting the behavior to which an individual
is being committed. Sometimes we commit
an individual to behavior that has implica-
tions we later find undesirable. The fault in
these cases, however, lies not with commit-
ment per se but with our own lack of under-
standing about the situation.
Consider how a supervisor might
handle a person who absents himself rather
frequently from work. You might think
from what we have said about commitment
that the supervisor should make the person
feel responsible for his behavior or should
disclose the absenteeism to his peers. And
you might think that by increasing his com-
mitment, you would he solving the problem
of his absenteeism. If you think that, how-
ever, you have not understood what we have
said about commitment and its effects.
While it would be quite easy to
point out a person's responsibility for not
coming to work, doing so may have the un-
intended effect of increasing his future ab-
sence. The employee's absenteeism implies
that the organization has characteristics: A
person is absent because there is something
about the organization that needs to be
avoided. If you make a person feel responsi-
ble for being absent, then you also place him
in the position of having to justify why he
was absent. He must create a myth to make
sense of his own behavior. And because the
absences are obviously unacceptable to the
employer, the employee finds himself justi-
fying the behavior by finding something
wrong with the organization or with his job.
He may find himself saying, "I hate that job
and that is why I did not go in today." And
soon enough, he will hate it. His absences
will become easier; the behavior sustains the
myth, and the myth sustains the behavior.
To avoid the bandwagon effect
and the trite grandiloquent banners of
"Commitment works!" one must give pains-
taking attention to the details of the situa-
tions that are involved in any commitment.
Coniniitment always \\'orks. The real ques-
tion is does it work for you or against you.
And making that determination is your re-
sponsibility, not that of the behavioral scien-
tists who developed the knowledge about
how commitment works.
ADVICE FOR MANAGERS
Although situational details are important in
de^ eloping any employee-commitment pro-
gram, we can offer advice on some situations
most managers confront at one time or an-
other.
Situation 1.: Initiating Tieiv pro-
grams. One common situation is that of com-
mitting individuals to pursue a new program
or objective for the organization. The man-
ager wants someone to be committed to the
program. Those involved with the program
either agree with it or at least have not voiced
disagreement. But they do have objections
to the program. What does the manager do?
Does he try to persuade them and overcome
their objections? Does he try to show them
how wrong their point of view is? No! To
do so, only places them in the position of
having to justify a position that is being at-
tacked. We know from several experiments
that when individuals committed to a posi-
tion are attacked for it. they become more
entrenched. Indeed, martyrs are made in
just this way.
The way a manager should handle
such a situation is to not allow a person to
become committed to his objections in the
first place. He should encourage the person
to outline his thoughts about the new pro-
gram but not allow these objections to be
made in his presence or with his knowl-
edge. If he does so, he will become a party
to the employee's expectations of failure. In-
stead, the manager should let the person
keep track of the problems with the new
program on his own and should not ask for
a report of the problems he thinks he has
located. The manager should tell the person
that if he locates a problem, he should then
handle it, solve it, and keep track of the solu-
tion. After an employee has done this—more
than once, perhaps—then ask for a report of
how well the new program is doing, if you
feel you need one. The important point is
that the manger should communicate only
expectations that he thinks the program is
workable and that the employee can make
it workable. The employee will then be
committed to making it workable, and the
difficulties that normally arise—real or im-
agined—will be dealt with rather than ac-
cepted as evidence that the program is not
workable.
Some managers may not want to
give their employees such discretion in im-
plementing a new program. They may wor-
ry that something will go wrong. That is
fine. Managers should worry about whether
something will go wrong. But the worry has
nothing to do with commitment; it has to
do with their ability to hire competent em-
ployees, and that is their responsibility. If
they act on their worry, the managers will
be committing their employees to an cxpcc- 77
 cation of failure. By outlining all the things
that could go wrong with a new program
and by constantly discussing them, the man-
ager is essentially setting up a situation
where both he and the employee become
committed to accepting failure.
Situation 2.: Employee satisfaction
with a task. This topic is too important to
deal with briefly. But there is one aspect of
jobs that is general enough to be discussed.
All jobs, no matter how glorious or demean-
ing, have both good and bad features. The
writer who spends his day penning erotic
tales, even literary ones, gets a sore back and
uncomfortable lacerations. The day laborer
who breaks his back carrying the troughs of
wet cement to the master bricklayer amuses
himself with fantasies about the onlookers
peeping through the cracks in the site fence.
All jobs are good and had. The important
thing that determines whether a person is
satisfied or not with those jobs is not the
presence of the good and bad itself but the
way the person focuses on those qualities. A
person may come to terms with the bad fea-
tures and embrace the good. One of the
things that determines whether he does or
not is the person's identification with the
task and his commitment to it.
Part of what inhibits a person's
commitment to a task is the extrinsic and in-
strumental basis of the work. If people are
constantly reminded of the money they are
paid and the benefits they receive in ex-
change for their work, they are put in the
position of thinking of themselves as work-
ing for those things. As a consequence they
do not evaluate the job on the basis of the in-
trinsic features of the task itself. It becomes
a chore, an obstacle, a means to some other
end. It is boring, because "It is only a job . . .
and I'm only doing it for the bread." There
78 is experimental evidence that a task is per-
ceived as less interesting when its instru-
mental value is made salient. Individuals seem
to identify less with such tasks and see fewer
reasons for doing them in terms of their
value to them. The task is not something the
person is doing for its own sake but some-
thing that he is using to get something else.
The commitment to the task is thus low and
so is the person's evaluation of the task.
That the instrumental value of a
task inhibits commitment to it does not mean
one should pay people less for the work
they do. There is no evidence to support
such a proposal. It does mean, however, that
the salience of pay should be diminished. For
when pay is salient—or other instrumental
and external purposes are salient—it becomes
the dominant reason for the work. This in it-
self may not be consequential, but when the
usual undesirable aspects of a w ork situation
arise, there will be nothing more desirable
about the work to offset them. The lesson
here is that a style of supervision that harks
about how much the employee is being paid
to do a job only instills a climate that makes
pay the only reason for doing anything.
From this, individuals may develop a sense of
a fair day's work for a fair day's pay and
give that much and not an ounce more.
Situation 3.: Coopting opinions in
group ?)ieetmgs. Individuals will frequently
commit themselves to positions and courses
of action without being entirely aware that
they are. This is common in group meetings,
often convened for just such a purpose. Peo-
ple employing this form of cooptation make
use of "we" as an inclusive de\ ice in devel-
oping a consensus. Thus the ciiairperson of
the meeting might say, "I think we can all
agree," and from that point go to state a po-
sition that those attending had not thought
about before. The committing aspect of this
situation comes from sitting quietly by
without objection as the statement is being
made. A more subtle form of the same ap-
proach is when a member of a committee in
open discussion includes some other mem-
ber in his opinions and speaks from his
mouth as though it were the other person's
opinion too. The standard phrase is, "Well,
as you indicated, John...." And zap! There
John is, being cooptcd to a point of view. A
pu!)lic statement regarding your position is
being made, and while it is clear at the time
that it comes from someone else, if you sit
idly by, it will end up being taken by all—
including yourself—as your opinion.
In some cases, a manager might
want to practice these stratagems to enhance
a group consensus within a meeting. On
the other hand, he may wish to avoid being
so easily taken in by his peers or superiors.
One way of avoiding this commitment is to
carefully segregate spheres of personal re-
sponsibility. When the familiar "I think we
can all agree . . ." conies, take a deep breath
and say, "You might be right, hut let us just
see. . . . I, for one, would like to hear the
points of view of others." This may not al-
ways work or it may brand the manager as
an outlandish sort of person. But these are
bearable consequences when the purpose of
a meeting is to find out the alternatives
rather than to form a consensus around one
point of view. The general approach to
avoiding being unnecessarily associated with
another person's beliefs is to explicitly dis-
tance yourself from the other person by
clearly outlining your individual responsibil-
ities and differentiating them from those of
the other person.
The strategy of distancing and seg-
regating personal responsibilities plays an
important role in reducing other persons'
commitments when they are no longer de-
sirable from the manager's own point of
view. If someone disagrees with the manag-
er's view and becomes locked into rhe posi-
tion, that is, committed, a common response
is to attack them for their position and to try
to convince them that the "official" position
is better. This usually has mixed results. At-
tacking a person only invites him to submit
convincing justifications. And the more at-
tacked, the more the justifications become
personal myths—beliefs that are completely
insubstantiatable, such as, "I wanted to," "I
like doing that," or, as in the case with ab-
sences, "I hate your stinking job."
One way of loosening a person's
commitment to a position is to provide him
with substantial external justifications for his
position. In one experimental study of this,
Nixon supporters were given many justifica-
tions for voting for him, but after that they
were given recent news articles about the
Watergate affair. The result was that they
then became more willing to sign an "im-
peach Nixon" petition. And in another
study, we are trying to have people who re-
port substantial absenteeism from work to
attribute the absences to extrinsic and situa-
tional circumstances, such as the severe
winter weather. Our expectation is that this
will eventually lead to a decrease in their
absences.
Whether a manager wants to in-
crease or decrease a person's commitment to
a position or goal, his tools are the same:
publicity, irreversibility, and volition. These
three characteristics of behavior create the
conditions of commitment and as such they
represent important sources of social influ-
ence that organizations use to shape the be-
havior of their participants. But this is the
process of commitment. The effects that it
will bring either to individuals or organiza-
tions are entirely another matter, having to
do with the specific characteristics of the 79
 behavior involved and the imphcations that
such behavior has for future behavior.
CONCLUSION
It seems appropriate to end somewhere near
where we began. Ours is an age that seeks
solace in ideas of individual freedom and po-
tency in human affairs. The catchphrases
that segregate us so well from the past ex-
press our belief in the power of integrating
the conflicting interests of the individual and
the organized aggregate—participation and
fulfillment. Commitment, wliich in recent
years has entered more and more into discus-
sions of worker motivation, we think is just
a vehicle for this. We characterize the past,
the turbulent beginnings of the industrial
era, as a period in which the individual was
used merely for the purposes of the organi-
zation. And we dislike this approach and
comfort ourselves by thinking that the pres-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
There is not too much on commitment as it re-
lates to organization. Many of the ideas dis-
cussed here are elaborated on in "Commitment
and che Control of Organizational Behavior and
Belief," a chapter I wrote for publication in
New Directions in Organizational Behavior (St.
Clair Press 1977). Readers may also refer to
Charles A. Kiesler's Tbe Psychology of Co?n-
initrneiit: Exper'mte7its Linking Behavior to Lik-
ing (Academic Press, 1971) for a more thorough
theoretical and experimental treatment of the
commitment process. Several recent articles
80 have appeared in Administrative Science Quar-
ent is and the future will be different. Thus
the concern with individual fulfillment and
with participation in organizational manage-
ment.
But, if you have read carefully what
I have said about the processes of commit-
ment, about how it comes about and where
it leads, you will be less sanguine about the
future relationship of the individual to the
organization. You will recognize that com-
mitment is a strikingly powerful and subtle
form of coopting the individual to the point
of view of the organization. And in charac-
terizing this age it may be more accurate to
see it as a form of totalitarianism that Aldous
Huxley, the author of Brave New World,
so perceptively envisioned forty years ago.
As he put it. "The secret of happiness and
virtue is liking what you've go to do. All
conditioning aims at that: making people like
their inescapable social destiny."
The tools are there; use them as
you will.
terly that have outlined a quite different per-
spective on commitment, namely one that sees
comniitnient as the result of worker satisfaction
with an organization. This point of view is also
available in Bruce Buchanan's recent article, "To
Walk an Extra Mile: The Whats, Whens, and
Whys of Organizational Commitment" (Orga-
•nizatioiial Dynaimcs, Spring 1975, pp. 67-80).
Editor William Dowling recently outlined the
role of commitment in consensus management
in organization in "Consensus Management at
Graphic Controls" {Organization Dynamics,
Winter 1977, pp. 22-47).