Organizational Commitment, Profession and Form of Employment (COBB)

1. Abstract

The Organizational Commitment, Profession and Form of Employment scale (known in German as Commitment gegenüber Organisation, Beruf und Beschäftigungsform, abbreviated as COBB) is a specialized psychometric assessment instrument developed by Bernd Six, Jörg Felfe, Renate Schmook, and Claudia Knorz (2001). The instrument is designed to address a critical theoretical and practical limitation of traditional organizational psychology: the historical conflation of workplace psychological attachment solely with a single, permanent employing organization. In modern flexible labor markets characterized by decentralized structures, contingent work, and non-standard employment contracts, individuals experience multifaceted patterns of loyalty, economic obligation, and professional identification that extend across distinct workplace targets.

The COBB operationalizes a comprehensive 3 × 3 multidimensional matrix that intersects John P. Meyer and Natalie J. Allen’s classic Three-Component Model of commitment—encompassing affective, continuance (calculative), and normative commitment—with three distinct commitment foci or targets: (1) the Organization, (2) the Profession/Occupation, and (3) the Form of Employment (specifically differentiated into conventional permanent employment, temporary agency work, and self-employment/freelancing). Depending on the respondent’s contractual employment status, the inventory administers a total of 41 items for permanent employees (Festangestellte), 37 items for temporary agency workers (Zeitarbeiter), and 44 items for self-employed individuals and independent contractors (Selbständige). Responses are recorded on a standardized 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (does not apply at all) to 5 (completely applies).

Empirical validation conducted on a diverse occupational sample of N = 580 German workers established solid psychometric properties. Principal component analyses (PCA) with Varimax rotation confirmed the postulated dimensional separation across all sub-inventories, explaining between 59.21% and 65.17% of total variance. The internal consistency of the subscales ranges from acceptable to excellent, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients spanning α = .67 to .91 across the nine latent dimensions. Evidence for convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity demonstrates meaningful relationships with job satisfaction, organizational tenure, employee age, and turnover intention, establishing the COBB as a rigorous instrument for both industrial-organizational research and strategic human resource management in changing labor landscapes.

2. Keywords

organizational commitment, occupational commitment, form of employment, COBB scale, affective commitment, continuance commitment, normative commitment, temporary work, self-employment, psychometrics

3. Authors

The COBB measurement instrument was conceptualized, constructed, and psychometrically validated by a research team in industrial, organizational, and social psychology in Germany:

• Prof. Dr. Bernd Six: Leading organizational and social psychologist, formerly affiliated with the Institute of Psychology at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Recognized for foundational research on workplace attitudes, social influence, and structural changes in modern work environments.
• Prof. Dr. Jörg Felfe: Professor of Work, Organizational, and Business Psychology at Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, Germany. Renowned internationally for his prolific contributions to organizational commitment theory, transformational leadership, occupational health, and employee attachment profiles.
• Dr. Renate Schmook: Researcher and practitioner in work and organizational psychology, contributing extensively to empirical research investigating contingent employment, employee well-being, and organizational change dynamics.
• Claudia Knorz: Industrial and organizational psychologist specializing in occupational diagnostics, personnel psychology, and empirical survey methodology.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the COBB inventory is to provide a theoretically grounded, psychometrically standardized diagnostic tool that maps the complex psychological ties binding individuals to their work life in contemporary, deregulated labor economies. Throughout the mid-to-late twentieth century, industrial-organizational psychology operated on the tacit assumption of a “standard employment relationship”—characterized by open-ended, full-time contracts where organizational loyalty, career advancement, and occupational identity were predominantly nested within a single corporate entity. However, macro-economic shifts, organizational flattening, outsourcing, and the exponential rise of flexible employment relationships (such as temporary staffing, project-based contracts, and solo self-employment) have decoupled workers from permanent organizational structures.

Under these shifting parameters, measuring only organizational commitment fails to capture the true locus of an individual’s professional motivation and psychological investment. For example, a temporary nurse contracted through an external agency may exhibit minimal attachment to the hospital where they are placed, yet display exceptionally high emotional dedication to the nursing profession and strong deliberate attachment to the temporary form of employment that provides lifestyle flexibility. Conversely, an entrepreneur or solo contractor may direct their loyalty toward self-directed enterprise while possessing distinct normative and calculative reasons for rejecting traditional corporate hierarchy.

The COBB serves both theoretical and applied objectives:

• Academic Research: It allows researchers to investigate multi-foci commitment models without confounding the target of attachment with the psychological nature of the bond. It facilitates structural equation modeling (SEM) and latent profile analysis (LPA) to determine how different commitment configurations interact to predict workplace stress, subjective career success, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB), and turnover behavior across divergent contractual statuses.
• Human Resource & Organizational Diagnostics: For organizational developers, staffing agencies, and personnel managers, the COBB reveals the underlying motivational structure of the workforce. By diagnosing whether employees stay due to emotional attachment (affective), perceived financial penalties and lack of alternatives (continuance/calculative), or felt obligation (normative), organizations can design targeted retention strategies, tailor onboarding programs, and adjust psychological contracts.
• Labor Market Policy & Occupational Counseling: The instrument offers career counselors and labor researchers nuanced insight into how workers adapt to atypical employment, helping evaluate whether temporary agency workers or freelancers experience their employment status as an empowering choice or an economic trap characterized by elevated calculative entrapment.

5. Psychological Construct

The core construct measured by the COBB is workplace commitment, defined as a stabilizing psychological force or psychological state that binds an individual to a course of action of relevance to one or more specific targets. The instrument models this construct along two orthogonal axes: the psychological nature (component) of the bond, and the target (focus) of the bond. Crossing the three components with the three targets produces a 3 × 3 matrix encompassing nine distinct sub-constructs.

The Three Psychological Components

Following the seminal conceptualization of Meyer and Allen (1991, 1997), the COBB differentiates three distinct psychological motivations:

• Affective Commitment (Desire-Based): Refers to the individual’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and genuine involvement in the target. Individuals with elevated affective commitment remain attached because they want to. They internalize the core values and mission of the target, deriving intrinsic joy, pride, and personal fulfillment from the relationship.
• Continuance / Calculative Commitment (Need-Based): Rooted in rational economic cost-benefit assessments and Howard S. Becker’s (1960) side-bet theory. This component reflects the perceived financial, social, and personal costs associated with terminating the relationship, coupled with the perceived scarcity of viable alternatives. Individuals with high calculative commitment remain because they need to, fearing the disruption, lost investments, or potential unemployment that departure would incur.
• Normative Commitment (Obligation-Based): Captures a generalized feeling of moral duty, loyalty, and ethical obligation to maintain the relationship. Driven by socialized expectations, psychological contract reciprocity, or internalized social codes, individuals with high normative commitment remain because they feel they ought to, believing that abandonment would be morally improper or socially reprehensible.

The Three Foci of Attachment

The COBB operationalizes these three components across three distinct operational spheres:

1. Organizational Commitment (Organisationales Commitment)

Addresses the specific employing enterprise, institution, or client firm. The generic term “organization” is flexibly adapted within the survey administration to fit the respondent’s specific setting (e.g., enterprise, hospital, school, police precinct).

• Affective Organizational Commitment (OCA): Characterized by pride in belonging to the organization, congruence of personal and corporate values, and a strong sense of organizational belonging (e.g., “I feel proud to belong to this organization”).
• Calculative Organizational Commitment (OCC): Captures the individual’s calculation of the personal disruption, sunk effort, and lack of external employment opportunities associated with leaving (e.g., “Too much in my life would change if I left this organization now”).
• Normative Organizational Commitment (OCN): Reflects feelings of guilt, social disapproval, and moral obligation toward colleagues or leaders that prevent departure (e.g., “I would feel somewhat guilty if I left this organization now”).

2. Occupational/Professional Commitment (Berufsbezogenes Commitment)

Addresses the individual’s vocation, craft, field of specialization, or operational activity, independent of the organization in which it is practiced.

• Affective Occupational Commitment (BCA): Personal identification with professional tasks, finding joy in executing the craft, and the desire to remain active in that specific occupation indefinitely (e.g., “My current activity brings me joy”).
• Calculative Occupational Commitment (BCC): The awareness of specialized professional training investments, sunk capital, and lack of alternative vocational paths that restrict occupational re-orientation (e.g., “I have invested too much in this profession to think about switching now”).
• Normative Occupational Commitment (BCN): The conviction that one must remain loyal to one’s vocational calling and that changing trades reflects poorly on professional integrity (e.g., “I believe that one should stay true to one’s profession”).

3. Form of Employment Commitment (Commitment gegenüber der Beschäftigungsform)

Evaluates the psychological attachment to the contractual framework or institutional status under which work is conducted. Because the psychological realities of distinct employment contracts diverge fundamentally, the COBB provides three separate contextualized sub-modules:

• Conventional Permanent Employment (Festangestellte):
  • Affective (SCAA): Value placed on long-term stability, continuous income security, and being a steady part of an ongoing collective enterprise.
  • Calculative (SCCA): Sunk investment in permanent social security benefits, fear of entrepreneurial risks, and reluctance to sacrifice employment protections.
  • Normative (SCNA): Socialized belief that a permanent post is a privilege that should not be casually forfeited.
• Temporary Agency Work (Zeitarbeit):
  • Affective (SCAZ): Enjoyment of workplace variety, constant novelty, flexibility, and experiencing varied organizational cultures without long-term entanglement.
  • Calculative (SCCZ): Perceived difficulty of securing permanent employment, or reliance on temporary agencies due to absence of alternative options.
  • Normative: Systematically omitted from this module based on empirical and theoretical pilot work indicating that temporary workers do not develop internalized moral obligations to remain within a contingent agency status.
• Self-Employment / Freelancing (Selbstständigkeit):
  • Affective (SCAS): Pride in entrepreneurial autonomy, self-determination, and the intrinsic thrill of successfully selling one’s services independently.
  • Calculative (SCCS): Severe financial and personal capital invested in the enterprise, high costs of unwinding the business, and difficulty transitioning back to subordinate employment.
  • Normative (SCNS): Moral self-obligation to succeed, fear of the public stigma of entrepreneurial failure, and internalized responsibility toward family or social networks.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the COBB integrates multiple landmark paradigms from organizational behavior, sociology of work, and social exchange theory:

Meyer & Allen’s Three-Component Model and Multi-Foci Expansion

The foundation of the COBB rests directly on Meyer and Allen’s (1991, 1997) Three-Component Model of commitment. Meyer and Allen posited that commitment is not an all-or-nothing unidimensional construct, but rather an attitude profile composed of simultaneous, varying degrees of affective attachment, cost-based awareness, and moral obligation. Importantly, in their 1997 treatise, Meyer and Allen explicitly argued that their tripartite conceptualization possessed universal applicability across different workplace domains, advocating for its generalization beyond the employing firm to targets such as the work team, the profession, unions, and personal goals.

Six, Felfe, Schmook, and Knorz (2001) extended this logic by identifying a critical lacuna in organizational psychology: while occupational commitment had been previously developed (e.g., Meyer, Allen, & Smith, 1993; Schmidt, Hollmann, & Sodenkamp, 1998), the contractual form of employment had never been formally conceptualized as a psychological target of commitment. The COBB operationalizes this theoretical extension, arguing that an individual’s contractual status constitutes an active psychological object toward which individuals direct distinct emotional preferences, economic rationales, and social norms.

Becker’s Side-Bet Theory and Calculative Rationality

The conceptualization of calculative commitment within the COBB is rooted in Howard S. Becker’s (1960) side-bet theory. Becker hypothesized that individuals become locked into consistent lines of activity because extraneous actions, investments, and social conventions—“side bets”—accumulate over time. For permanent employees, these side bets include pension accruals, seniority privileges, and firm-specific skills. For self-employed individuals, they encompass bank loans, capital equipment investments, and client networks. The COBB’s calculative subscales systematically measure these side-bet dynamics, capturing how accumulated investments restrict perceived mobility.

Socialization, Reciprocity, and Normative Attachment

The normative dimension draws heavily from Richard Mowday, Richard Steers, and Lyman Porter’s (1982) work on internalized organizational values, alongside Alvin Gouldner’s (1960) universal norm of reciprocity. Normative commitment develops through family and cultural socialization processes that emphasize occupational constancy, loyalty to an employer, and personal accountability. Within the COBB, normative attachment measures the degree to which an individual feels that breaching a contractual or professional relationship violates internalized ethical standards or triggers acute social disapproval.

The Changing Psychological Contract in Atypical Employment

Finally, the COBB is informed by psychological contract theory (Rousseau, 1995). As traditional relational psychological contracts (promising long-term job security in exchange for unquestioned loyalty) give way to transactional psychological contracts (emphasizing short-term performance and market-driven flexibility), the locus of employee attachment shifts. When an employer no longer offers tenure, employees redistribute their affective energy toward their professional identity or toward an autonomous form of employment. The COBB captures this redistribution empirically within a unified psychometric framework.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the COBB was rigorously established through the primary validation study conducted by Six, Felfe, Schmook, and Knorz (2001), involving a heterogeneous sample of 580 working professionals across industrial manufacturing, service sectors, and professional agencies.

Construct and Factorial Validity

To verify the construct validity and latent structural integrity of the sub-inventories, separate principal component analyses with orthogonal Varimax rotations were conducted on each of the five sub-questionnaires:

• Organizational Commitment: Yielded a clear three-factor solution representing affective (OCA), calculative (OCC), and normative (OCN) dimensions, accounting for a cumulative 61.8% of the total variance (OCA = 25.3%, OCC = 16.6%, OCN = 19.9%). Factor loadings on intended dimensions were strong, ranging from .52 to .80.
• Occupational Commitment: Yielded three distinct factors corresponding to affective (BCA), calculative (BCC), and normative (BCN) dimensions, accounting for 63.6% of the variance (BCA = 30.4%, BCC = 18.1%, BCN = 15.1%), with primary loadings spanning .52 to .85.
• Conventional Employment Status Commitment: Accounted for 59.2% of the variance across three factors: affective (SCAA = 19.9%), calculative (SCCA = 21.0%), and normative (SCNA = 18.3%).
• Temporary Agency Status Commitment: Demonstrated a clean two-factor structure (affective SCAZ and calculative SCCZ), explaining 64.3% of the variance (SCAZ = 37.9%, SCCZ = 26.4%). Factor loadings were robust, ranging from .70 to .87 for affective items and .74 to .85 for calculative items.
• Self-Employment Status Commitment: Successfully extracted three factors (affective SCAS = 22.1%, calculative SCCS = 22.6%, normative SCNS = 20.5%), explaining a cumulative 65.2% of the total variance. Factor loadings ranged from .53 to .92 across the 14 retained items.

Convergent, Discriminant, and Criterion-Related Validity

Bivariate correlation analyses and mean comparisons across sub-groups supported the theoretical validity of the COBB:

• Job Satisfaction: Correlated strongly and positively with affective organizational commitment (OCA) and affective occupational commitment (BCA), confirming convergent validity with positive work attitudes. Conversely, job satisfaction showed negligible or weak negative correlations with calculative commitment, corroborating the theoretical distinction between desire-based attachment and economic entrapment.
• Tenure and Job Age: Evaluated against organizational tenure (average 6.3 years across the sample, ranging from 9.7 years for permanent employees to 3.3 years for self-employed, and 1.6 years for temporary workers). As predicted by Becker’s side-bet model, organizational tenure correlated significantly with calculative organizational commitment (OCC), reflecting the gradual accumulation of non-transferable side bets.
• Group Differentiation (Known-Groups Validity): The subscales successfully differentiated between employment statuses. Permanent employees scored significantly higher on affective status commitment (SCAA, M = 4.10) compared to temporary agency workers’ status commitment (SCAZ, M = 3.50). Self-employed individuals exhibited exceptionally high affective occupational commitment (BCA) and entrepreneurial status commitment (SCAS, M = 4.34), confirming that the instrument discriminates effectively between distinct labor cohorts.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the COBB subscales was assessed via internal consistency analysis using Cronbach’s alpha (α). Despite the relative brevity of several subscales (consisting of only 3 to 7 items each), all subscales exhibit satisfactory to excellent internal consistency:

As demonstrated in the reliability matrix above:

• The highest internal consistency is observed for Affective Occupational Commitment (α = .91), indicating exceptionally high homogeneity among statements evaluating task identification, vocational passion, and vocational pride.
• The organizational commitment subscales demonstrate solid reliability (α = .86 for affective, .75 for calculative, and .77 for normative), fully mirroring or exceeding benchmark reliabilities reported for Meyer and Allen’s original English instruments.
• The sole subscale dipping marginally below the conventional .70 threshold is Calculative Commitment to Temporary Agency Work (α = .67). This slight attenuation is psychometrically expected due to the restricted number of items (3 items) and the inherent heterogeneity of temporary work arrangements.
• The self-employment subscales demonstrate outstanding structural stability, each exceeding α = .81.

9. Factor Analysis

During the scale development and purification phase, the initial item pool comprised 91 candidate statements (20 for organizational commitment, 21 for occupational commitment, 18 for conventional permanent employment status, 12 for temporary agency work, and 20 for self-employment). Systematic item reduction was executed using principal component factor extraction with Varimax rotation, supplemented by classical item difficulty and corrected item-total correlation (Trennschärfe) analysis.

Item Discrimination and Difficulty Parameters

The corrected item-total correlations across the inventory demonstrated strong psychometric discrimination:

• For organizational commitment, item discrimination indices ranged between r_it = .46 and .78 (with only Item 13 exhibiting a modest discrimination of .32). Item difficulty indices (p) spanned from .38 to .73.
• For occupational commitment, item discrimination coefficients were exceptionally robust, ranging from r_it = .46 to .80, with item difficulties between .42 and .83.
• For the employment form sub-inventories, item discrimination values ranged between .44 and .61 for permanent employees, .42 and .74 for temporary workers, and .50 and .82 for self-employed professionals.
• While several items measuring affective commitment among permanent employees and entrepreneurs exhibited difficulty parameters exceeding .80 (e.g., p = .88 for Item 3 of permanent employment, and p = .89 for Item 4 of self-employment), the authors demonstrated that these elevated difficulty values reflect genuine subpopulation selectivity. Because these targeted sub-questionnaires were administered exclusively to specific occupational cohorts, high endorsement rates for autonomy or security are theoretically expected and serve to differentiate between employment groups rather than within them.

Structural Factor Allocations

Across all five sub-inventories, the empirical factor structures aligned closely with theoretical expectations. Minimal cross-loadings emerged, and where minor secondary loadings occurred (such as Item 7 on organizational commitment loading .45 on affective and .53 on calculative, or Item 2 on self-employment loading .43 on affective and .66 on calculative), the primary factor loading was substantially dominant, preserving clear subscale boundaries. In a few instances during scale development, items originally drafted for one component were reassigned to their empirically dominant dimension, resulting in the refined, robust 41-, 37-, and 44-item test forms.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The COBB is a multidimensional self-report psychometric questionnaire administered either in paper-and-pencil or computer-assisted digital formats.

Modular Administration Architecture

The inventory consists of three sequential modules:

• Module 1: Organizational Commitment (Administered to all respondents; 14 items total):
  • Affective Organizational Commitment (OCA): Items 1, 3 (reverse-scored), 4, 11, 12 (5 items)
  • Calculative Organizational Commitment (OCC): Items 2, 5, 6, 7 (4 items)
  • Normative Organizational Commitment (OCN): Items 8, 9, 10, 13, 14 (5 items)
• Module 2: Occupational/Professional Commitment (Administered to all respondents; 16 items total):
  • Affective Occupational Commitment (BCA): Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 12, 14, 15 (7 items)
  • Calculative Occupational Commitment (BCC): Items 5, 7, 8, 10, 13 (5 items)
  • Normative Occupational Commitment (BCN): Items 6, 9, 11, 16 (4 items)
• Module 3: Form of Employment Commitment (Tailored conditional module; respondents complete ONLY the version matching their contractual status):
  • Version A: Permanent Employees (Festangestellte) — 11 items:
    • Affective (SCAA): Items 1, 3, 6, 11 (4 items)
    • Calculative (SCCA): Items 2 (reverse-scored), 5, 7, 8 (4 items)
    • Normative (SCNA): Items 4, 9, 10 (3 items)
  • Version B: Temporary Agency Workers (Zeitarbeiter) — 7 items:
    • Affective (SCAZ): Items 1, 3, 6, 7 (4 items)
    • Calculative (SCCZ): Items 2, 4, 5 (3 items)
    • Normative: Not applicable / omitted from this form
  • Version C: Self-Employed / Freelancers (Selbstständige) — 14 items:
    • Affective (SCAS): Items 1, 4, 7, 13 (4 items)
    • Calculative (SCCS): Items 2, 5, 8, 9, 11 (5 items)
    • Normative (SCNS): Items 3, 6, 10, 12, 14 (5 items)

Total Item Count by Respondent Group

• Permanent Employees: 14 (Organization) + 16 (Occupation) + 11 (Status) = 41 items
• Temporary Agency Workers: 14 (Organization) + 16 (Occupation) + 7 (Status) = 37 items
• Self-Employed / Freelancers: 14 (Organization) + 16 (Occupation) + 14 (Status) = 44 items

Response Scale

All items are evaluated using a standardized 5-point Likert rating scale:

• 1 = Trifft nicht zu (Does not apply / Strongly disagree)
• 2 = Trifft eher nicht zu (Barely applies / Disagree)
• 3 = Teils, teils / Unentschieden (Neutral / Neither agree nor disagree)
• 4 = Trifft eher zu (Largely applies / Agree)
• 5 = Trifft vollständig zu (Completely applies / Strongly agree)

Scoring Protocol and Guidelines

• Reverse Coding: Prior to computing subscale scores, reverse-coded items must be inverted using the transformation formula: Item_Recoded = 6 - Item_Raw. Specifically:
  • Organizational Commitment Item 3 (“Ich fühle mich emotional nicht sonderlich mit dieser Organisation verbunden”) is inverted.
  • Conventional Employment Item 2 (“Manchmal spiele ich mit dem Gedanken, mich selbständig zu machen”) is inverted.
• Subscale Score Calculation: Subscale scores are calculated as the arithmetic mean of the items comprising each sub-dimension. Computing mean scores (ranging from 1.0 to 5.0) preserves direct interpretability against the original 5-point Likert scale.
• Administration Time: Completion requires approximately 15 to 20 minutes.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The COBB measurement instrument was formally published in 2001 by Bernd Six, Jörg Felfe, Renate Schmook, and Claudia Knorz within academic research literature in Germany. The inventory is documented in scientific instrument repositories, including the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) Open Test Archive.

• Usage Rights & Royalties: The COBB is an open-access psychometric instrument made freely available for non-commercial academic research, pedagogical purposes, and scientific inquiry. No licensing fees or royalties are required for academic studies.
• Commercial Applications: Commercial organizations, corporate HR departments, and management consultancies utilizing the scale for internal corporate audits or commercial diagnostic services should seek formal permission or cite the primary authors in accordance with German copyright standards and professional psychological assessment ethics.
• Adaptation Rule: In accordance with author instructions, the term “Organization” in Module 1 should be explicitly contextualized to match the target environment (e.g., substituting “hospital”, “school”, “police department”, or “firm”).

12. References

• Becker, H. S. (1960). Notes on the concept of commitment. American Journal of Sociology, 66(1), 32–40. https://doi.org/10.1086/222820
• Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25(2), 161–178. https://doi.org/10.2307/2092623
• Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1984). Testing the “side-bet theory” of organizational commitment: Some methodological considerations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 69(3), 372–378. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.69.3.372
• Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1991). A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 1(1), 61–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/1053-4822(91)90011-Z
• Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1997). Commitment in the workplace: Theory, research, and application. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452231556
• Meyer, J. P., Allen, N. J., & Smith, C. A. (1993). Commitment to organizations and occupations: Extension and test of a three-component conceptualization. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78(4), 538–551. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.78.4.538
• Mowday, R. T., Porter, L. W., & Steers, R. M. (1982). Employee-organization linkages: The psychology of commitment, absenteeism, and turnover. New York: Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-509370-5.50005-8
• Rousseau, D. M. (1995). Psychological contracts in organizations: Understanding written and unwritten agreements. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452231594
• Schmidt, K.-H., Hollmann, S., & Sodenkamp, D. (1998). Psychometrische Überprüfung einer deutschsprachigen Fassung des Commitment-Fragebogens von Allen und Meyer (1990). Zeitschrift für Differentielle und Diagnostische Psychologie, 19(2), 93–106.
• Six, B., Felfe, J., Schmook, R., & Knorz, C. (2001). Commitment gegenüber Organisation, Beruf und Beschäftigungsform (COBB). In Zusammenstellung sozialwissenschaftlicher Items und Skalen (ZIS). Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften (GESIS). https://doi.org/10.6102/zis59

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)