Abstract

This chapter reviews empirical work that has been conducted on employee commitment in China, with a predominant focus on organizational commitment, and offers suggestions for future research. In addition to highlighting how commitment has been conceptualized and measured, work which suggests that organizational commitment might have distinct dimensions in China is reviewed. Following this, work on the antecedents and outcomes of employee commitment is examined. Finally, gaps in existing knowledge are highlighted and potential avenues for future research suggested. In addition to calling on researchers to be consistent in how they measure organizational commitment and conduct more work on occupational, supervisor, and work group commitment, this chapter highlights the need for more work to examine the influence of industrial contexts and generational differences on employee commitment, and the need for multi-level work to examine the relative influence of antecedents at the individual, team, and organizational level on employee commitment.