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What's Loyalty?
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Michael J. Withey 1 and William H. Cooper
Loyalty in organizations has proved difficult to predict. One reason is that loyalty is complex and poorly understood. We report two studies that attempt to understand and predict loyalty by focusing on two components of the construct: active-constructive loyalty and passive-constructive loyalty. In the first study, we found that active acts of loyalty were predicted by variables quite different from tho that predicted passive loyalty. The cond study found that people identified by peers as high-loyalty employees performed many more active ts of loyalty than did tho who were identified as low-loyalty employees. We conclude that loyalty consists of both active-constructive and passive-constructive behavior.
KEY WORDS: loyalty ; commitment; active; passive. INTRODUCTION
thursday怎么读What is loyalty? In this article, we will suggest some ways to consider this question. Our starting point is Hirschman's (1970) treatment of exit, voice, and loyalty. Hirschman offers exit and voice as distinct r
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espons when firms, organizations, and states are facing decline. What Hirschman means by loyalty is less clear. He first refers to loyalty as a form of attachment that makes voice more attractive when exit is available (Hirschman, 1970, p. 77). He describes loyalty as the product of (primarily economic) factors that wed the individual to the organization, making exit costly and reducing voice. At times, Hirschman describes loyalty as an attitude that affects the extent to which exit and voice are made u of. At other times he speaks of loyalty as a form of behavior in which the individual sup- ports the organization.
Other treatments of loyalty have also been varied. They include, for example, Rusbult, Farrell, Rogers, and Mainous's (1988) characterization of loyalty as pas- sive-constructive behavior (e.g., being quietly supportive and being patient); Kolar- ska and Aldrich's (1980) work, which, referring to the respon, "silence" rather than loyalty; and Graham's (1990) discussion of loyalty as an attitude without any behavioral component.
The depictions of loyalty mirror the ambiguity of the construct in ordinary language. We sometimes speak of loyalty as an attitude, other times of loyalty as behavior. Within the loyalty behavior domain, there are both active elements (doing things that are supportive of someone or something) and passive elements (being quiet while exhibiting patient forbearance). In the prent rearch, we will
consider loyalty as a behavior and discuss the attitudinal elements of loyalty in terms of organizational commitment, defined as sharing the values of the firm (Porter, Steers, Mowday, & Boulian, 1974). Further, we will attempt to refine our under-standing of loyal behavior by distinguishing between the active and passive elements of loyalty. Summary of the Loyalty Literature
Recently, veral studies have considered Hirschman's loyalty construct. Far- reU (1983) classified exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect with the u of multidimensional scaling techniques. This study measured loyalty in passive terms, such as "quietly doing my job and letting higher-ups make the decisions," and found that loyalty is indeed conceptually parable from the other respons. Loyalty, however, did not conform exactly to expectations, being shown to be passive (as expected) but slightly destructive to the organization (not constructive, as expected). This unexpected clas- sification of loyalty recurs in subquent studies, raising questions about the true nature of the loyalty construct and how to measure it.disappoint
Loyalty has been investigated in two recent studies of exit, voice and loyalty. In the first, Rusbult et al. (1988) found support for investment model predictions of loyalty. Specifically, loyalty was more likely to occur under conditions of high prior satisfaction, high investments, and relatively few alternatives. This view of loy- alty is consistent with a passive, constructive construct. In the cond
study, Withey and Cooper (1989) found quite different results. Loyalty was associated with low prior satisfaction, low investment, low organizational commitment, an external locus of control, and the belief that improvement in the situation was not likely. No re- lationship with alternatives was reported. Thus, loyalty takes on a clearly destructive appearance in this study. The results led Withey and Cooper to look to both measurement and conceptualization of loyalty as explanations.
The measurement problem has been described by Cooper, Dyke, and Kay (1990) in terms of construct validity: loyalty has been operationalized in ways that do not match the loyalty construct. While loyalty is defined as supporting the or-ganization, items ud to measure loyalty are too narrow and do not conform to most people's notion of support. The Cooper, Dyke,
阿黛尔的歌and Kay study ud the act frequency methodology (Buss & Craik, 1983) to asss the prototypicality of a num-
ber of acts of loyalty, including the acts ud by Farrell (1983) to measure loyalty. Interestingly, the three items ud in both the Farrell and the Withey and Cooper studies cited above (e.g., "say nothing to others and assume things will work out") ranked 99th, 101st, and 102nd among 103 acts of loyalty. More prototypical were acts such as "give something extra when the organization needs it" (lst) and "do things above and beyond the call without being asked" (4th).
The Cooper et al. study supports the claim that there is a construct validity problem and suggests that previous rearch on loyalty has left much of the domain of loyalty unassd. One promising way to approach this problem is to make a distinction between active and passive loyalty. This distinction was first raid by Farrell (1983) in categorizing the exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect respons, but it may also prove uful in interpreting loyalty. The distinction between active and passive is also evident when the items studied by Cooper et al. (1990) are examined. That is, a key difference between the prototypical loyalty items and the Farrell loyalty items is that the former are active while the latter are passive.
In summary, more attention is needed at both the conceptual and the mea-surement level. On the conceptual level, loyalty needs to be investigated as both active and passive (and possibly as both constructive and destructive, again following Farrell's categorization). On the measurement level, distinct measures of the dif- ferent forms of loyalty are necessary. The prent rearch is designed to begin to answer the needs.
Goals of the Prent Rearch
To begin the investigation of active and passive loyalty, the prent rearch pos the following gen
eral questions. First, can differential predictors of active- constructive and passive-constructive loyalty be identified? Second, what is the re- lationship between active and passive loyalty and to what extent are they related over time? Third, in what ways are the actions of people who are defined as loyal different from actions of people who are defined as not being loyal? Two studies were conducted to address the questions.
STUDY 1
The first study is a cross-ctional study which measures the different forms of loyalty and a t of independent variables that are thought to predict loyalty. Becau Study 1 is a follow-up study on the sample reported by
Withey and Cooper (1989), it is possible to asss relationships among active and passive loyalty over a six-year time lap. It is also possible to conduct a six-year longitudinal study of the predictors of active and passive loyalty. Methodology
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Data were collected during the summer of 1990 through a survey mailed to tho graduates of the Queen's University Bachelor of Commerce program who had, in 1984, participated in the study reported by Withey and Cooper (1989). Of the 360 potential respondents, 210 returned their questio
nnaires reprenting a re- spon rate of 58.0%. Sixty-eight percent of the respondents were male, all had undergraduate degrees, their average age was approximately 33 and their average work experience was approximately 10 years.
Descriptive statistics for all measures appear in Table I. All, excepting locus of control which us a 23-item forced choice format, are 5-point Likert scales. The independent variables were measured in terms of agreement with the statement; the loyalty measures were bad on frequency of engaging in the behavior. With the exceptions noted below, all scales achieved a satisfactory level of interitem re-liability. Low internal consistency would be expected to attenuate correlation coef- ficients. The independent variables .and the measure of passive loyalty ud were tho reported by Withey and Cooper (1989). The measure of active loyalty was bad on Cooper et al. (1990). A description of the variables follows. Examples of scale items are provided when the scale is new to the literature.
A total of nine independent variables was included. "Exit costs" include skill specificity (e.g., "My prent job involves skills which would be uful in many other organizations," reverd) and sunk costs (e.g., "If I left this job, my pension plan loss would be significant."), which are both aspects of Becker's (1960) side bets, and investments (Rusbult et aL, 1988). The sunk costs scale had low internal con-sistency. "V oice costs" asked about the effort required to bring about change and the lik
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elihood of punitive respons to such efforts (e.g., "It is risky to say too much about working conditions in this office"). "Belief in the possibility of improvement" was measured by a 9-item combi- nation of measures of receptiveness to change (e.g., "This office is organized so as to be receptive to employee input") and Graen, Liden, and Hoers (1982) measure of leader/member relations. "Job satisfaction" was measured using Brayfield and Rothe's (1951) 18-item scale. "Locus of control" was measured using Rotter's (1966) standard 23-item forced choice instrument. "Organizational commitment" was measured using
Porter et al.'s (1974) scale. The "availability of alternative jobs" was measured using the two items of Price and Bluedorn's (1979) scale that refer to alternatives that are better than the prent job.
Analysis was conducted by using correlations and regression analysis to asss the ability of the independent variables to predict each form of loyalty. Further, correlations between independent variables and loyalty measured in 1984 and forms of loyalty measured in 1990 are reported. Several independent variables were associated with passive loyalty (e Table II). The passive loyalist emerged as being dissatisfied and uncommitted, having a relatively external locus of control, and facing high costs of change that emed unlikely. This pattern of results replicates the findings of Withey and Cooper (1989). Quite different results were found for active loyalty. Active loyalty was as
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so- ciated with high commitment and satisfaction, a belief that improvement is possible and a t of costs that favor action and not passivity. Specifically, active loyalty was associated with high psychological exit costs (i.e., investment) but low economic exit costs (i.e., skill specificity and sunk costs) and low voice costs. It is noteworthy that, for most of the independent variables, the signs of the correlation coefficients are different for active and passive loyalty.
玩具谷Finally, the zero-order correlation between the two forms of loyalty is negative and significant .Becau the prent study is a follow-up of an earlier study, it is possible to prent six-year longitudinal results. All measures described above (except active loyalty) were measured in the earlier study. In spite of the long time lag, a strong positive correlation was found between passive loyalty in 1984 and in 1990 , and a negative correlation was found between passive loyalty in 1984 and active loyalty in 1990 .银行账号英文
Further, some modest correlations were found between the independent vari-ables measured in 1984 and both forms of loyalty measured in 1990. Specifically, passive loyalty was negatively related to belief in the possibility of improvement, organizational commitment , and locus of control , and positively related to skill specificity . Active loyalty was related only to skill specificity .
Study 1 provides clear evidence for two distinct types of loyalty. First, the findings for passive loyalty that Withey and Cooper (1989) reported as counterin- tuitive were replicated. The earlier study had expected to find loyalty as a passive but esntially supportive behavior; instead loyalty emerged as something that re-mbled entrapment rather than support.
