Exploring Implicit and Explicit Attitudes of Employees' Authentic Organizational Loyalty

Area of Science:

• Organizational Psychology
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Measuring organizational loyalty is crucial for employee retention and organizational success.
• Implicit attitudes, often unconscious, can influence employee behavior and commitment.
• Existing measures may not fully capture the nuances of implicit organizational loyalty.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate the Organizational Loyalty - Implicit Association Test (OL-IAT) for assessing implicit attitudes toward organizational loyalty.
• To examine the predictive validity of the OL-IAT.
• To investigate the consistency between implicit and explicit attitudes regarding organizational loyalty.

Main Methods:

• Development of the OL-IAT using open-ended questions and approach-avoidance word categories.
• Administration of the OL-IAT to 127 employees of Company P.
• Concurrent administration of self-report measures for explicit attitudes.
• Analysis of correlations between implicit and explicit attitudes, considering hierarchical differences.

Main Results:

• No significant correlation was found between implicit and explicit attitudes toward organizational loyalty, indicating attitude inconsistency.
• Organizational loyalty attitudes were consistent across hierarchical levels for managers.
• Organizational participation attitudes were consistent for both managers and general staff.

Conclusions:

• The OL-IAT is a novel tool for measuring implicit organizational loyalty.
• Attitude inconsistency between implicit and explicit measures is prevalent, suggesting complex underlying dynamics.
• Understanding these inconsistencies can inform targeted interventions to enhance organizational loyalty and support long-term growth.