THE FORCE THAT BINDS: CONCEPTUALIZING ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT UNDER TERMS OF SHIFTING EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS
Ursula Christine Loisch, Dr., Institute for Change Management and Management Development, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria
Angelika Schmidt, Dr., Institute for Change Management and Management Development, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria

Abstract
It is generally agreed that organizational commitment is a key variable that drives employees' work-related attitudes, their behavior, and consequently the firm's success. Despite the growing flexibility in employment relations, however, the question of whether, why, and how the type of contract granted to employees affects their commitment has not been addressed by extant literature thus far. This paper thus aims to enhance our understanding of organizational commitment by explicitly taking open-ended versus fixed-term contracts into account. In particular, we aim to explore whether different contracts (open-ended versus fixed-term contracts) impact employees' organizational commitment and thus lead to different employee behavior.
Keywords: organizational commitment, employment relations, open-ended contract, fixed-term contract