Towards sustainable development in human resource management framework: consequences of organizational commitments for Chinese knowledge workers

In an era of knowledge economy, knowledge workers play increasingly a significant role for achieving sustainable development in varied organizations. Thus, retention of knowledge workers becomes a vital issue for numerous human resource managers in developed countries. Considering the commitment's relationship to such important consequences as turnover intention, occupational stressor, and the topic of organizational commitment has attracted abundant attention of researchers both in theory and in practices for decades. However, less empiric studies of knowledge workers' organizational commitment conduct in mainland China that having the most population and being the largest emerging economy in the world. This study has empirically investigated the consequences of knowledge workers' organizational commitments in mainland China. Eighteen interviews with knowledge workers in different sectors were realized. Meanwhile, one hundred and twenty questionnaires were distributed in order to explore the relationships between knowledge workers' organizational commitments and their consequences. Particularly, the consequences concerning sustainable development of knowledge workers have analyzed. The result of correlations analyses show that this research have not only supported the extending organizational commitment theories in non-western cultural context, but also provided a greater understanding of human capital for the sustainability of organizations. Different managerial implications are also discussed.