Commitment Profiles: An Analysis of the Portuguese Navy Officers

Abstract An individual can simultaneously develop the three dimensions of the commitment (affective - AC; continuance – CC; normative – NC), and these can combine and interact by defining their organizational commitment profile. Based on this premise, this study aimed to identify profiles of organizational commitment in the Portuguese Navy Officers. Besides, we analyzed the distribution of professional health officers and nonprofessional health officers in these different profiles. Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) was used to extract and group the profiles from the military sample, composed of 371 officers, namely 186 non-health military officers (other specialities) and 185 health military officers (physicians and nurses). The results of the analysis revealed a solution of four organizational commitment profiles: “All low”; “NC/CC-dominant”; “All high-mid”; “AC-dominant.” On the other hand, the χ2 test showed that the distribution of health military officers and non-health military officers is significantly different in these profiles: the large majority (74.59%) of health military officers are distributed in the profiles “All high-mid” and “AC-dominant,” whereas almost all (98.39%) non-health military officers are distributed in the profiles “All Low” and “NC/CC-dominant.” These results highlight the importance of commitment profiles to predict the quality of employees’ attitudes and behaviors.