New insights from variable and person centered studies of the relation between retrospective and current organizational commitments[Une étude de la relation entre les implications rétrospectives et actuelles centrée sur les variables et les profils]

The effects of a job change on organizational commitment are still very few taken into account in research. When they are, the reality of the previous professional experience is unfairly equated with the employee's memory of it. After mobilizing neuropsychological knowledge about the functioning of human memory, two independent studies are carried out to question the link between retrospective organizational commitment at the former employer and current commitment. The first study, quantitative, is variable centered. It reveals that this link is significant and that it is moderated neither by the factual differences between the two jobs nor by the conditions of termination of the previous employment contract. The second, more qualitative because person centered, reveals that these HRM decisions are associated with differences in assignment in the commitment profiles. First of all, these results invite us to take into account a new concept: retrospective commitment. By authorizing the integration into the reasoning of a process of comparisons of situational characteristics, it enriches the explanation of commitment in the context of a disrupted career. These theoretical contributions make it possible to identify the managerial strategies to adopt to promote positive contrasts of commitment.