Assessing newcomers' changing commitments to the organization during the first 6 months of work.

The authors examined changes in the level of 4 organizationally relevant constructs and their reconstitution by newcomers to a work organization using J. Schaubroeck and S. G. Green's (1989) confirmatory factor analytic procedure. Results support a general decline in levels (alpha changes) of organizationally relevant attitudes over 3 time periods (1st day, and the 3rd- and 6th-month employment anniversaries). The pattern of decline, though, varied after accounting forgamma and beta changes. Indeed, for 2 of the variables (affective and continuance commitment; N. J. Allen & J. P. Meyer, 1990), the presence of gamma changes (changes in the underlying construct) were so dramatic as to render the pattern of mean differences uninterpretable