Affective and normative commitment to organization, supervisor, and coworkers: Do collectivist values matter?

Employees’ commitment to their organization is increasingly recognized as comprising of different bases (affect-, obligation-, or cost-based) and different foci (e.g., supervisor, coworkers). Two studies investigated affective and normative commitment to the organization, supervisor and coworkers in the Turkish context. The results of Study 1 confirmed that employees differentiate between affect versus obligation-based commitment towards the organization, supervisor and coworkers. Study 2 tested the “cultural hypothesis” which argues for the moderating influence of collectivistic values on the relationship between person (local) commitments and organizational level (global) outcomes. The results supported the “compatibility hypothesis” which posits that the relationship between a given attitude and other attitudes or behaviors is based on the attitudes and behaviors having the same targets. Taken together, the findings suggest that the influence of culture may be less straightforward and may require a more sophisticated measurement of the nature of relationships and organizational characteristics in general.