John Meyer

Dr. John Meyer

Chair - Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Email: meyer@uwo.ca
Office: SSC 8411
Tel: 519-661-2111 ext. 83679
Curriculum Vitae

  • Bio

  • Publications

  • Research

Biographical Information

Dr. John Meyer received his Ph.D. from The University of Western Ontario.  After spending three years at St. Thomas University in Fredericton NB, he returned to Western where he is now a professor and chair of the graduate program in industrial and organizational psychology.  His research interests include commitment in the workplace, work motivation, leadership, and employee well-being.  His work has been published in leading journals in the field of I/O psychology (e.g., Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology), management (e.g., Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management), and research methods (e.g., Organizational Research Methods, Multivariate Behavior Research) and has been cited more than 80,000 times according to Google Scholar. Dr. Meyer is also co-author of Commitment in the Workplace: Theory, Research and Application (Sage Publications, 1997) and Best Practices: Employee Retention (Carswell, 2000), co-editor of Commitment in Organizations: Accumulated Wisdom and New Directions (Routledge, 2009), and editor of The Handbook of Employee Commitment (Edward Elgar, 2016). He has consulted with private and public organizations in Canada on issues related to his research and has been invited to conduct seminars and workshops in Europe, Asia, and Australia.  Dr. Meyer is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, the American Psychological Association, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the International Association of Applied Psychology, and the Association for Psychological Science.  He is a former chair of Canadian Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, served as editor of the OB/HRM section of the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, and held the Science seat on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Psychological Association. In 2007 he was recognized by the Canadian Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology for his "distinguished contributions to Industrial-Organizational Psychology in Canada," and in 2012 was awarded the Helmuth Prize for Achievement in Research by The University of Western Ontario. Dr. Meyer also holds a part-time Professorship at the Curtin University School of Business in Perth, Australia.

Selected Publications

Books

Meyer, J.P. (Ed.) (2016), Handbook of Employee Commitment. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Klein, H.J., Becker, T.E., & Meyer, J.P. (Eds.) (2009). Commitment in Organizations: Accumulated Wisdom and New Directions. Florence, KY: Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group.

Meyer, J.P., & Allen, N.J. (1997). Commitment in the workplace: Theory, research, and application. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Journal Articles

Meyer, J.P., Morin, A.J.S., Stanley, L.J., & Maltin, E.R. (2019, in press). Teachers’ dual commitment to the organization and occupation: A person-centered analysis. Teaching and Teacher Education, 77, 100-111.

Espinoza, J.A., Meyer, J.P., Anderson, B.K., Vaters, C., & Politis, C. (2018, in press). Evidence for a bifactor structure of the Scales of Psychological Well-being using exploratory structural equation modeling. Journal of Well-being Assessment.

Meyer, J.P., Morin, A.J.S., & Wasti, A. (2018). Employee commitment before and after an economic crisis: A stringent test of profile similarity. Human Relations, 71(9), 1204-1233.

Daljeet, K.N., Bremner, N.L., Giammarco, E.A., Meyer, J.P., & Paunonen, S.V. (2017). Taking a person-centered approach to personality: A latent-profile analysis of the HEXACO model of personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 70, 241-251.

Meyer, J.P. (2017). Has employee engagement had its day: What’s next and does it matter? Organizational Dynamics, 46, 87-95.

Kam, C., Morin, A.J.S., Meyer, J.P., & Topolnytsky, L. (2016). Are commitment profiles stable and predictable? A latent transition analysis.  Journal of Management, 42, 1462-1490.

Meyer, J.P., & Morin, A.J.S. (2016). A person-centered approach to commitment research: Theory, research, and methodology. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36, 584-612.

Morin, A.J.S., Meyer, J.P., Bélanger, É., Boudrias, J.-S., Gagné, M., & Parker, P.D. (2016). Longitudinal associations between employees’ perceptions of the quality of the change management process, affective commitment to change and psychological empowerment. Human Relations, 69, 839-867.

Morin, A.J.S., Meyer, J.P., Creusier, J., & Biétry, F. (2016). Multiple-group analysis of similarity in latent profile solutions. Organizational Research Methods, 19, 231-254.

Kam, C., & Meyer, J.P. (2015). How careless responding and acquiescence response bias can influence construct dimensionality: The case of job satisfaction. Organizational Research Methods, 18, 512-541.

Kam, C., & Meyer, J.P. (2015). Implications of item keying and item valence for the investigation of construct dimensionality. Multivariate Behavior Research, 50, 457-469.

Meyer, J.P., Morin, A.J.S., & Vandenberghe, C. (2015). Dual commitment to organization and supervisor: A person-centered approach. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 88, 56-72.

Morin, A.J.S., Meyer, J.P., McInerney, D.M., Marsh, H.W., & Ganotice, F.A. (2015). Profiles of dual commitment to the occupation and organization: Relations to well-being and turnover intentions. Asian Pacific Journal of Management, 32, 717-744. (electronic supplementary material available at doi:10.1007/s10490-015-9411-6)

Meyer, J.P. (2013). The science-practice gap and employee engagement: It’s a matter of principle. Canadian Psychology, 54, 235-245.

Meyer, J.P., Kam, C., Goldenberg, I., & Bremner, N.L. (2013). Organizational commitment in the military: Application of a profile approach. Military Psychology, 25, 381-401.

Jackson, T.A., Meyer, J.P., & Wang, X.H. (2013). Leadership, commitment, and culture: A meta-analysis. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 20, 84-106.

Meyer, J.P., Stanley, L.J., & Vandenberg, R.M. (2013). A person-centered approach to the study of commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 23, 190-202.

Meyer, J.P., Stanley, D.J., Jackson, T.A., McInnis, K.J., Maltin, E.R., & Sheppard, L. (2012). Affective, continuance, and normative commitment levels across cultures: A meta-analysis. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80, 225-245.

Meyer, J.P., Stanley, L.J., & Parfyonova, N.M. (2012). Employee commitment in context: The nature and implications of commitment profiles. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80, 1-16.

Meyer, J.P., & Maltin, E.R. (2010). Employee commitment and well-being: A critical review, theoretical framework, and research agenda. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 77, 323-337.

Meyer, J.P., Hecht, T.D., Gill, H., & Toplonytsky, L. (2010). Person-organization (culture) fit and employee commitment under conditions of organizational change: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 76, 458-473.

Meyer, J.P., & Parfyonova, N. (2010). Normative commitment in the workplace: A theoretical analysis and re-conceptualization. Human Resource Management Review, 20, 283-294

McInnis, K. J., Meyer, J. P., & Feldman, S. (2009). Psychological contracts and their implications for commitment: A feature-based approach. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 74, 165-180.

Meyer, J.P., Srinivas, E.R., Lal, J.B., & Topolnytsky, L. (2007). Employee commitment and support for an organizational change: Test of the three-component model in two cultures. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 80, 185-211.

Gellatly, I.R., Meyer, J.P., & Luchak, A.A. (2006). Combined effects of the three commitment components on focal and discretionary behaviors: A test of Meyer and Herscovitch’s proposition. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 69, 331-345.

Meyer, J.P., Becker, T.E., & Van Dick, R. (2006). Social identities and commitment at work: Toward an integrative model. Journal of Organizational Behavior. 27, 665-683.

Meyer, J.P., Becker, T. E., & Vandenberghe, C. (2004). Employee motivation and commitment: A conceptual analysis and integrative model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 991-1007.

Herscovitch, L., & Meyer, J.P. (2002). Commitment to organizational change: Extension of a three-component model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 474-487.

Meyer, J.P., Stanley, D.J., Herscovitch, L., & Topolnytsky, L. (2002). Affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization: A meta-analysis of antecedents, correlates and consequences. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 61, 20-52.

Lee, K., Allen, N. J., Meyer, J.P., & Rhee, K-Y. (2001). Cross-cultural generalizability of the Three-Component Model of organizational commitment: An application to South Korea. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 50, 596-614.

Meyer, J.P., & Herscovitch, L. (2001). Commitment in the workplace: Toward a general model. Human Resource Management Review, 11, 299-326.

Research

My research interests are in the areas of workplace commitments, work motivation, leadership, and employee well-being. A major objective of my research over the last 30 years has been to gain a better understanding of the meaning, development, and consequences of commitment in the workplace. Together with Dr. Natalie Allen, I developed the three-component model (TCM) of commitment along with a set of measures for use in research and practice. These measures have now been used in well over a thousand studies in more than 50 countries around the world. Although developed initially to explain employee commitment, the TCM has been extended to include other targets of commitment including occupations, teams, supervisors, and organizational change. Most recently, I have been involved in the promotion and application of a person-centered approach to research. In contrast to the more traditional variable-centered approach typically used in most branches of psychology, including industrial and organizational psychology, the person-centered approach is more holistic and examines the different ways that multiple variables combine within individuals. I started by applying this approach to investigate how the different forms of commitment in the TCM (affective, normative, continuance) combine, and later extended the approach to examine combinations of commitment to different targets (e.g., organization and occupation). Most recently, I have been using the person-centered approach to examine how the six trait dimensions in the HEXACO model combine to form personality profiles. In the future, I plan to apply this approach to identify patterns of motivation, leadership, and well-being among other multifaceted constructs. Finally, I have an interest in the ‘science-practice’ gap and its implications for research and practice in the workplace of the future.