Abstract

NUNES, Francisco; RETO, Luís; MARTINS, Luís  and  TINOCO, Armando. The meanings of loyalty in Hirschman: the role of organizational identity. Rev. Portuguesa e Brasileira de Gestão [online]. 2014, vol.13, n.3, pp.48-61. ISSN 1645-4464.

Building on Hirschman’s (1970) seminal work and on the theory of organizational identity we suggest the existence of two meanings of the loyalty concept: as attachment, describing the connection between individuals and organizations, the prevalent in author’s work; as a response, conveying a passive and confident attitude, the most common in the ensuing literature. In accordance with Hirschman’s original formulation, the results obtained from a sample of Portuguese Navy military revealed that: loyalty as attachment and loyalty as response are distinct concepts and both are explained by perceived organizational identity; loyalty as attachment fully mediates the relation between perceived organizational identity and voice; exit and loyalty as a response are directly influenced by perceived organizational identity without any mediation effect of loyalty as attachment. These results support partially Hirschman’s core proposition whereby the role of loyalty is to activate voice and to prevent exit.

Keywords : Exit; Voice; Loyalty; Organizational Identity.

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