Empty Labour and A Multidimensional Analysis of Commitment - A Case Study of Two Different Organisations

Sammanfattning: The aim of this master’s thesis is to explore the interplay of commitment and empty labour in two widely different organisations. Empty labour can be described as when you are doing anything else than your official working tasks. Commitment on the other hand is how and in what way you feel obligated to the organisation, your boss, your colleagues’ etcetera. Depending on several factors such as colleagues, the organisation in itself, compensation packages and of course psychological predispositions amongst others, we argue that organisational members will relate to their work, workplace or peers in differing ways. In general terms, the higher the commitment that is expressed, the higher the obligation to actually do your job, or other tasks that are beneficial for the organisation or the context. By conducting qualitative interviews in addition to workplace observations, we have found empirical support for our idea that the types of commitment that are present in organisations, influence the type of empty labour that employees choose to engage in. From this, the type of empty labour that certain employees’ conduct is a product of a multi-facetted construct where feelings towards the employer and/or colleagues, compensation, interest in the job, ethics and such play a vital role. Following this, we have found the need to combine the theory behind different types of commitment with the theory describing empty labour, as a way of bridging the gap that we identified exists between the two fields which are arguably important for one another.