Commitment capital: Bridging the gap between organizational commitment and human capital resources

Abstract

Even though, the human resource management literature has highlighted the importance of having employees that are committed to the organization, research on strategic human capital has yet to fully consider how commitment is related to human capital resources. In order to overcome the dominant individual‐level conceptualization of commitment and to detail how commitment affects human capital resources, we develop the unit‐level concept of commitment capital, which we divide into three levels: affiliative commitment capital, affinitive commitment capital, and absolute commitment capital. These conceptualizations are based on a 10‐year case study and incorporate commitment into a strategic human capital framework, thus bridging the current gap between organizational commitment and human capital resources.