TY  - JOUR
AB  - Purpose The purpose of this paper is to address two questions: who commits? And who engages? For example, does an individual’s likelihood of committing/engaging vary with his/her age; or with the level of his/her qualifications; or with his/her occupation? Of what consequences are the characteristics of the workplace at which the individual is employed?Design/methodology/approach The investigation uses the Skills and Employment Surveys Series Data set to construct the indicators of commitment and engagement. Using an ordered-logit model and an OLS model, these indicators are analysed to identify their covariates.Findings Who commits and who engages depends upon the indicator used to measure the attitude/behaviour in question. Changing these indicators sometimes means that an individual no longer commits/engages. Further, even for the same indicator of commitment/engagement, who commits/engages varies across individuals.Research limitations/implications The indicators of commitment and engagement examined are derived from the responses in a pre-existing data set which has its origins in survey instruments which had quite comprehensive terms of reference. Owning to the cross-sectional nature of this data set and the statistical methodology applied, the statistical results are correlations between some possible indicators of commitment and engagement and some variables which denote the personal characteristics of individuals and the characteristics of the organisations with which they are employed. Causation cannot be inferred from these correlations.Originality/value Commitment and engagement are central to many models of the management of human resources. However, the likelihood that an individual commits and/or engages differs across the workforce has rarely been examined. This paper addresses this research lacuna using a data set which is rich in detail about an individual’s personal characteristics.
VL  - 40
IS  - 1
SN  - 0142-5455
DO  - 10.1108/ER-02-2016-0033
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-02-2016-0033
AU  - Sutherland John
PY  - 2018
Y1  - 2018/01/01
TI  - Who commits? Who engages?
T2  - Employee Relations
PB  - Emerald Publishing Limited
SP  - 23
EP  - 42
Y2  - 2024/04/24
ER  -