300 INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS REVIEW

fair share of the fruits of their labor" (p. 6).However, the disctission is implicitly within thecontext of capitalist society, in contrast to Vanek'sThe Participatory Economy (1971). Moreover, thediscussion focuses more on the workplace thanon society at large, in contrast to Pateman's Par-ticipation and Democratic Theory (1970).

Without going into particular detail on thefailures of hierarchically-controlled workplaces,the readings in the book discuss alternative waysto share the control of workplaces. Many of thosewho turn to this book will not need convincingof the failures and the need for alternatives.Other readers will not be as convinced as theeditors and their contributors about the needto create alternative structures. Nonetheless,even these more skeptical readers may profitfrom the perspectives these examinations of thealternatives bring to light concerning legalstructures, ownership, hierarchy, power, anddecision making in conventional organizations;as well as organizational theory, grassrootsmovements, quality-of-working-life(QWL) proj-ects, and economic development.

The selections from other sources and thearticles written originally for this book covertheory, case studies, and essays on the practic-ability of workplace democracy. The theoreticalpieces are classics in this young field by Roths-child-Whitt, Bernstein, Berman, and EUerman(a student of Vanek). Even case studies havesignificant theoretical import. For instance,Kanter, Stein, and Brinkerhoff use a QWL pro-gram to develop a theory of co-existing parallelstructures to meet goals of productivity and par-ticipatory democracy.

The case studies are drawn from the widestassortment of organizations. They includeworker buyouts of manufacturing facilities, olderworker cooperatives (such as San Francisco'srefuse collectors and the Pacific northwest's ply-wood cooperatives), an insurance company,alternative schools, radical legal collectives,worker-owned groceries and small service busi-nesses, and even a feminist illegal abortion col-lective. Some of the articles about these casesare academically analytical and dispassionatediscussions; others are politically rhetorical andjournalistic narrations; still others are counter-cultural criticism and self-criticism. Despite theoptimism expressed, the editors and contribu-tors tend to be honest, showing many instancesof how workplace democracy in America hasnot worked well. A few articles, however, aretoo full of dated syndicalist or anti-establishmentrhetoric. Even sympathetic readers may findarticles by Benello and Gorz tiresome. (Inci-dentally, Gorz himself has recendy moved awayfrom the faith in workers' control that he

expressed in the 1973 piece reprinted in thebook.) Some of the articles also show a poor orsuperficial understanding of labor movementhistory and operations.

The book evokes the spirit of late 1960s andearly 1970s countercultural radicalism broughtinto the workplace. Not that the concerns aboutworkplace hierarchy, authority, and equity arepasse, it just seems that much ofthis book needsupdating. As shown by Boyte's The Backyard Rev-olution (1981), Carnoy and Shearer's EconomicDemocracy {198\), and Whyteetal.'s Worker Own-ership and Participation (1983), grass-roots par-ticipatory economic development andalternatives to corporate control are not '60sghosts. They are economic, social, and politicalrealities of the 1980s. Unfortunately, owing per-haps to publishing delays, the articles in this1982 book tend to date earlier than 1980. Infact, the median date of writing seems to havebeen 1977-78.

Despite these flaws, this is overall a fine col-lection of pieces documenting the plural con-temporary strains of workplace democracy. Thebook's advocacy of a "third sector" of self-managed enterprises may not be to every read-er's liking. Nevertheless, its presentation of thepossibilities, particularly through actual exam-ples, should stimulate further understanding of,if not optimism about, workplace democracy.

Arthur Hochner

Assistant Professor of Industrial Relationsand Organizational Behavior

School of Business AdministrationTemple University

Organization

Employee-Organization Linkages: The Psychol-ogy of Commitment, Absenteeism tf Turnover.By Richard T. Mowday, Lyman Porter andR. M. Steers. New York: Academic Press,1982. 253 pp. N.p.

Here is good news and bad news for industrialrelations users of behavioral research methods.The good news is that at a time industrial rela-tions research is being increasingly focused onrelating industrial relations outcomes to systemcharacteristics, Employee-Organization Linkagesprovides needed impetus to model the effectsof industrial relations practices on productivity.The bad news is that this book does not fullyaccomplish the task of bringing greater concep-tual clarity to the complex and poorly under-stood employee-organization interface.

BOOK REVIEWS 301

The concept of commitment is caretullydeveloped by the authors to a point where itcan be used by researchers in fields other thanorganizational behavior. Because it sorts outsome of the theoretical confusion surroundingthe elusive job satisfaction-performance link, theconcept of organizational commitment could beuseful to many researchers. In contrast to theconcept of job satisfaction, which is mired incontroversy over its antecedents, consequences,and relative stability over time, commitment ismore precisely and clearly defined by the authorsas a "stable attitude" that develops over time(p. 45). Commitment develops when individualswho have "needs, desires, skills" find that theorganization is able to titilize their skills andsatisfy their needs. In contrast to job satisfactionthat is linked to the job, commitment empha-sizes links to the organization. The authors arguethat although day-to-day events may cause largefluctuations in job satisfaction, they may notcause employees to reassess their over all attach-ment to the organization. To the authors, theconcept of employee linkages to organizationsis the encompassing concept that may be qual-itatively described as organizational commit-ment, or quantified in terms of absenteeism orturnover.

Commitment is defined and described; andan instrument, the Organizational CommitmentQuestionnaire (OCQ), to measure commitmentis developed. Painstaking years of research bythe authors and their associates is evident in theresults reported on tests for internal consistencyreliability, test-retest reliability, and convergentand discriminant validity of the instrument. Thebook attempts to develop a model of the processby which commitment develops and affects joboutcomes. In longitudinal studies, commitmentwas found to be significantly related to job per-formance during early employment, but the linkappeared to fade when monitored later(Chapter 3). Clearly, the authors have notanswered all the questions in this context, buttheir efforts mark a big step forward.

Chapters 2 and 3 provide a comprehensivereview of the treatment of commitment by otherwriters. Useful summaries of individual, struc-tural, and situational determinants of commit-ment are provided. The book also presentscomprehensive reviews of research on turnoverand absenteeism—an excellent resource toresearchers and practitioners alike. Little mate-rial here, however, adds to the literature as sub-stantially as the research on commitment does.

Another useful feature of the book is a seriesof research agendas developed, at the end ofeach chapter, for both managers and academics.A wide variety of readers will find the book avaluable resource for creative consideration ofhtmian resotirce management issties. Michael E.Gordon etal. (1980), building on previous workof the authors, have reported developing ameasure of commitment to the union (see"Commitment to the Union: Development of aMeasure and An Examination of Its Corre-lates," yownw/ of Applied Psychology, Monograph65(4), 1980, pp. 479-99). Thus there is evi-dence that researchers with varied concerns havefound and will continue to find the concept oforganizational commitment useful.

Despite its efforts to bring conceptual clari-fication to the person-job or person-organizationlinkage, the book fails to stibstantially improveour understanding of how commitment relatesto behavior. For example, the authors describecommitment in terms of the employee's willing-ness to retain membership in the organization.The case of the employee whose productivity islower than the compensation received from theorganization will add "error" to the commit-ment -^ productivity relationship because suchan underperformer will want to stay in the orga-nization (i.e., he or she will score high on OCQ)but contribute relatively less to output. Of 15items in OCQ, only two explicitly ask respondentsabout effort exerted on the job. The other itemsstress loyalty and generally describe attachmentto the organization. This balance of items mayexplain in part why correlations with job per-formance are not as high as those relating com-mitment to turnover or absenteeism. Theauthors recognize the negative consequences ofcommitment at the outset but fail to explore thisimportant aspect in research reported later on.

Clearly, commitment as defined by the authorscomprises two distinct but related dimensionsof ef'fort and attachment. The authors do notexplore the connective conceptual links andpossible empirical separation of these twodimensions. Research efforts in the future maybe directed toward further clarification and sep-aration of effort and attachment within a gen-eralized conceptual framework of commitment.

Anil VermaAssistant ProfessorFaculty of Commerce and

Business AdministrationUniversity of British Columbia