How Organizational Adaptations to Recession Relate to Organizational Commitment

This study explored how organizations adapted to the recent recession. One research question was whether organizations adapted in ways that could be characterized as caring or callous. Another research question was how the different organizational adaptations were related to organizational commitment. The authors administered 154 employees the Meyer and Allen's (1997) revised organizational commitment scales and a new instrument, the Caring Intervention Scale. In response to the first question, most of the companies preferred caring adaptations to cope with the recession. In response to the second question, affective commitment and normative commitment were positively related to caring organizational adaptations. The findings suggest that how an organization adapts to economic difficulty may have psychological ramifications that could affect organizational performance.