Title

The problem of empirical redundancy of constructs in organizational research: An empirical investigation

Authors

Authors

H. Le; F. L. Schmidt; J. K. Harter;K. J. Lauver

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process.

Keywords

Construct proliferation; Construct empirical redundancy; Discriminant; validity; Job attitude; Measurement error correction; Disattenuation; Measurement artifacts; Reliability; Generalizability theory; Structural; equation modeling; JOB-SATISFACTION; MEASUREMENT ERROR; DISCRIMINANT VALIDATION; MEASUREMENT INVARIANCE; LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS; NORMATIVE COMMITMENT; WORK COMMITMENT; CAUSAL-MODELS; FIT INDEXES; ANTECEDENTS; Psychology, Applied; Management; Psychology, Social

Abstract

Construct empirical redundancy may be a major problem in organizational research today. In this paper, we explain and empirically illustrate a method for investigating this potential problem. We applied the method to examine the empirical redundancy of job satisfaction (JS) and organizational commitment (OC), two well-established organizational constructs. Analysis based on responses from a sample of 292 employees collected at two occasions showed that: (a) the construct-level correlation between JS and OC was very high (.91) and (b) both JS and OC are similarly related to positive affectivity and negative affectivity. These results suggest that the constructs may be empirically indistinguishable, despite their well-established conceptual distinction. These findings illustrate the problem of empirical redundancy of organizational constructs and provide a basis for a possible movement towards parsimony in the realm of constructs that could open the way to more rapid advances in knowledge in organizational research. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Journal Title

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Volume

112

Issue/Number

2

Publication Date

1-1-2010

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

112

Last Page

125

WOS Identifier

WOS:000279135500003

ISSN

0749-5978

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