1、 1 外文文献 Whats Loyalty? 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:
2、 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 those that predicted passive loyalty. The second study found that people identified by peers as high-loyalty employees performed ma
3、ny more active sets of loyalty than did those 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 What is loyalty? In this article, we will sugges
4、t some ways to consider this question. Our starting point is Hirschmans (1970) treatment of exit, voice, and loyalty. Hirschman offers exit and voice as distinct responses when firms, organizations, and states are facing decline. What Hirschman means by loyalty is less clear. He first refers to loya
5、lty 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
6、as an attitude that affects the extent to which exit and voice are made use 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 M
7、ainouss (1988) characterization of loyalty as pas- sive-constructive behavior (e.g., being quietly supportive and being patient)； Kolar- ska and Aldrichs (1980) work, which, referring to the response, silence rather than loyalty； and Grahams (1990) discussion of loyalty as an attitude without any be
8、havioral component. 外文原文 2 These 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
9、 someone or something) and passive elements (being quiet while exhibiting patient forbearance). In the present research, 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, St
10、eers, 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, several studies have considered Hirschmans loyalty construct. Far- reU (1983) clas
11、sified exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect with the use 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 separable from the other responses. Loyalt
12、y, 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 subsequent studies, raising questions about the true nature of the loyalty
13、construct and how to measure it. 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,
14、high investments, and relatively few alternatives. This view of loy- alty is consistent with a passive, constructive construct. In the second study, Withey and Cooper (1989) found quite different results. Loyalty was associated with low prior satisfaction, low investment, low organizational commitme
15、nt, 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. These results led Withey and Cooper to look to both measurement and conceptualiz
16、ation 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 used to measu
17、re loyalty are too narrow and do not conform to most peoples notion of support. The Cooper, Dyke, 3 and Kay study used the act frequency methodology (Buss & Craik, 1983) to assess the prototypicality of a num- ber of acts of loyalty, including the acts used by Farrell (1983) to measure loyalty. Inte
18、restingly, the three items used 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 need
19、s 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 research on loyalty has left much of the domain of loyalty unassessed. One promising way to approach this pro
20、blem is to make a distinction between active and passive loyalty. This distinction was first raised by Farrell (1983) in categorizing the exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect responses, but it may also prove useful in interpreting loyalty. The distinction between active and passive is also evident when
21、 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.
22、On the conceptual level, loyalty needs to be investigated as both active and passive (and possibly as both constructive and destructive, again following Farrells categorization). On the measurement level, distinct measures of the dif- ferent forms of loyalty are necessary. The present research is de
23、signed to begin to answer these needs. Goals of the Present Research To begin the investigation of active and passive loyalty, the present research poses the following general questions. First, can differential predictors of active- constructive and passive-constructive loyalty be identified? Second
24、, 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 these questions. STUDY 1 The first study is a cross-sectional study which measures the different forms of loyalty and a set of independent variables that are thought to predict loyalty. Because Study 1 is a follow-up study on the sample reported by
