Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-2024

Publication Title

Organizational Psychology Review

Volume

14

Issue

2

Pages

169-369

Publisher Name

SAGE Publications

Abstract

This paper critiques a research practice that we call “bundling,” which has produced highly popular constructs in the organizational behavior literature, including organizational commitment, employee engagement, and organizational embeddedness. We show how these bundled constructs, using broad labels from common parlance, have produced overlapping meanings, confounded theoretical mechanisms, and imposed limiting “ideal employee” conceptions in the literature, organizations, and ultimately, societal discourse about employees. We argue that “unbundling” these constructs can provide multiple benefits to theory, empirical inquiry, and practical assessment of complex employee motives. As a demonstration, we unbundle the three focal constructs to integrate and clarify their component relations within the nomological net of turnover motivation. Thereby, we enrich conceptions of proximal withdrawal states, while synthesizing the most comprehensive model of turnover motivations. Finally, we discuss further research implications suggested by unbundling our focal constructs, and unbundling more generally.

Comments

Author Posting © The Author(s), 2024. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of SAGE Publications for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Organizational Psychology Review, VOL. 14, ISS.2, May 2024, https://doi.org/10.1177/20413866241245310

Download

Included in

Business Commons

Share

COinS