Millennials and organisational commitment: current and future perspectives

ABSTRACT

Considerable research in recent decades has been devoted to investigating the nature of organisational commitment, as well as the factors influencing it, and the effects that it has on decisions and actions. In the current paper we contribute to this research by investigating the question as to whether millennials (i.e. people born in the years between 1980 and 2000) might differ from earlier generations in terms of their organisational commitment. We report the results of a literature review of recent theoretical and empirical research on organisational commitment. While some studies provide reason to suspect that millennials might exhibit less organisational commitment than previous generations, the overall body of existing evidence points towards a more nuanced conclusion. Specifically, existing evidence suggests that millennials are not less committed in the workplace than previous generations, but that some factors may be increasing in importance for them compared to previous generations.

KEYWORDS:

• Organisational commitment
• millennials
•  generational differences
• work-related values
• commitment antecedents
• targets of commitment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).