Does Perceived Threat to Organizational Status Moderate the Relation between Organizational Commitment and Work Behavior

Drawing on research on social identity, authors postulated perceived threat to organizational reputation moderates relationship between attitudinal organizational commitment (AOC) on one hand and in-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) on other. This hypothesis was tested with self-report data from 63 employees of a German health-service had been involved in a public scandal shortly before investigation. As postulated, higher perceived severity of scandal was associated with a more positive relationship between AOC and OCB. The hypothesis was not supported for in-role performance. Attitudinal (or affective) organizational commitment (AOC) is usually defined as the relative strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organization (Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982, p. 27). Thus, in essence, AOC denotes emotional attachment of an employee to his or her (Alien & Meyer, 1990; Mowday et al., 1982, p. 28). This construct has attracted considerable research interest over last three decades (for reviews, see Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Meyer & Alien, 1997; Mowday et al., 1982). Research has focused on plausible hypothesis AOC predicts behaviors are in accordance with organizational norms and thus are beneficial to organization. In fact, research revealed positive relations of AOC with a number of such behaviors, such as performance, attendance, and staying with (for meta-analyses, see Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002; Riketta, 2002). However, especially correlations with performance variables were weak on average. According to mentioned metaanalyses, AOC-in-role performance correlation is around .20, and AOC-organizational citizenship behavior correlation is in range of .20 to .30. In light of these generally weak correlations, some researchers explored moderators of AOC-work behavior relationship in order to identify conditions under which AOC had a stronger impact (e.g., Brett et al., 2002; Schaubroeck & Ganster, 1991 ; Riketta & Landerer, 2002). The present research was designed to continue these efforts. It focuses on a moderator variable has not yet been addressed in research on AOC before: threat to organizational reputation. Our hypothesis concerning this variable is derived from recent research on social identity. Tajfel (1978) defined social identity as that part of an individual's self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his of a social group (or groups) together with value and emotional significance attached to membership (p. 63). Since 1970s, a large number of social psychological studies have dealt with antecedents, consequences, and structure of social identity defined as defined by Tajfel (for a recent review, see Brown, 2001 ). Further, over last ten years, applications of this research to organizational settings have increased (e.g., Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Haslam, 2001; Ouwerkerk, Ellemers, & de Gilder, 1999; van Knippenberg, 2000). One feature of social identity approach makes it particularly attractive for organizational behavior researchers is it allows for a theoretical justification of why AOC should relate to (especially influence) work behavior. Specifically, one of most influential theories within this approach, social identity theory (SIT; Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel & Turner, 1986), assumes persons have a striving for a positive social identity. According to SIT, this striving is a derivative from universal human need for high self-esteem. Thus, once having identified with a group (called ingroup in following), a person strives to achieve or maintain a positive image of group. The hypothesis follows stronger a person's identification with a group, stronger person's efforts at improving group's standing relative to other groups. …