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Journal of Applied Psychology1993, Vol. 78, No. 5, 774-780

Copyright 1993 by the Am erican Psychological Association, Inc.0021-90IO/93/S3.00

Com mitment and Employee Behavior: Comparison of AffectiveCommitment and Continuance Commitment With Perceived

Organizational Support

Lynn McF arlane Shore and Sandy J. Wayne

The social exchange view of commitment (R. Eisenberger, R. Huntington, S. Hutchison, & D . Sowa,

1986) suggests that employees' perceptions of the organization's commitment to them (perceived

organizational support, or POS) creates feelings of obligation to the employer, which enhances em-

ployees' work behavior. The authors addressed the question of whether POS or the more traditional

commitment concepts of affective commitment (AC)and continuance commitment (CC) were better

predictors of employee behavior (organizational citizenship and impression management). Partici-

pants were 383 employees and their managers. Although results showed that both AC and POSwere

positively related to organizational citizenship and that CC wasnegatively related to organizational

citizenship, POS was the best predictor. These findings support the social exchange view that POS

creates feelingsof obligation that contribute to citizenship b ehaviors. In addition, CC was unrelated,

whereas AC and POS were positively correlated, w ith some impression managem ent behaviors.

Much literature has examined the notion of organizationalcomm itment, and m any conceptualizations and measures havebeen proposed and tested (Meyer & Allen, 1991; Mow day, Por-ter, & Steers, 1982). Meyer and Allen have extensively re-searched two types of commitment, called a f f e c t i v e commit-

ment and continuance commitment (Allen & Meyer, 1990;Meyer & Allen, 1984). Affective commitment is denned as "an

affective or emotional attachment to the organization such thatthe strongly committed individual identifies with, is involvedin, and enjoys membership in, the organization" (Allen &Meyer, 1990, p. 2). Continuance co mm itment is "a tendency to

'engage in consistent lines of activity' (Becker, 1960, p. 33) basedon the individual's recognition of the 'costs' (or lost side bets)associated with discontinuing the activity" (Allen & Meyer,

1990, p. 3). Mu ch evidence has been accrued on the distinctive-ness of Meyer and Allen's (1984 ) Affective Commitment Scale(ACS) and Continuance Commitment Scale (CCS; Allen &

Meyer, 1990; McGee & Ford, 1987; Meyer, Allen, & Gellatly,1990) and on the differential relationships each has with ante-cedents and outcomes (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Meyer, Paunonen,Gellatly, Goffin, & Jackson, 1989; Shore & Barksdale, 1991).

Although affective and continuance commitment representemployee commitment to the organization, recent work byEisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, and Sowa (1986) has sug-

Lynn McFarlane Shore, Dep artme nt of Manageme nt and W . T.

Beebe Institute of Personnel and Employment Relations, Georgia State

University; Sandy J. Wayne, Department ofManagement, University of

Illinois at Chicago.We gratefully acknowledge Kevin Barksdale for his assistance in data

collection and preparation and Rodger Griffeth, Tom Lee, K. M.

Kacmar, and Janet Szumal for their helpful reviews of earlier drafts of

the article.

Correspondence concerning this article should beaddressed to LynnMcFarlane Shore, Department of Management, Georgia State Univer-

sity, P.O. Box 4014, Atlanta, Georgia 30302-4014.

gested the value of studying the organization's commitment to

the employee. Eisenberger et al. suggested that emp loyees' per-ceptions of the organization's comm itment to the m, referred to

as perceived organizational support (POS), are based on em-ployees' global beliefs concerning the extent to which the orga-nization values their contributions and cares about their well-

being. Using a social exchange framework, Eisenberger and his

colleagues argued that employees who perceive a high level of

organizational support are more likely to feel an obligation to"repay" the organization in terms of affective commitment(Eisenberger et al., 1986) and work-related behavior (Blau,

1964; Eisenberger, Fasolo, & Davis-LaMastro, 1990; Eisenber-ger etal., 1986).

Although POS is a commitment concept, it represents a de-parture from the traditional approach of studying employeecommitment to the organization, raising the question ofwhether employer commitm ent, or POS, provides a un ique andvaluable contribution to the literature. A recent confirmato ry

factor analysis by Shore and Tetrick (1991) indicated tha t theACS, the CCS, and the Su rvey of Perceived Organizational Sup-

port (Eisenberger et al., 1986) are distinct measures. However,before the present study, research has not compared employeecommitment with employer comm itmen t (i.e., POS) to deter-mine the potentially u nique explanation of behavior provided

by PO S relative to the well-established concepts of affectivecommitment and continuance commitment.

In a recent meta-analysis, Mathieu and Zajac (1990) pre-sented evidence on the links between organizational co mm it-ment and a num ber of critical in-role behaviors, includ ing per-formance, absence, lateness, and turnover. However, commit-ment may also be important in explaining behaviors that arenot formally rewarded or sanctioned by the organization, re-ferred to as nonrole behaviors. As with in-role behaviors, non-role behaviors can contribute to or detract from organizationaleffectiveness (Borman & Motowidlo, in press), so that under-

774



COMMITMENT AND EMPLOYEE BEHAVIOR 775

standing how commitment relates to these types of behaviorswould be a valuable contribution to the literature. Further-more, commitment may be particularly important in predict-ing nonrole behaviors (Scholl, 1981; Wiener, 1982), such as or-

ganizational citizenshipand impression management.Wechoseto include these two nonrole behaviors in our study because theformer has been viewed as enhancing organizational function-

ing (Organ, 1990) whereas the latter has been shown to detract

from organizational effectiveness by, for example, resulting in

lower job satisfaction (Gandz & Murray, 1980)or creating biasin performance ratings (Wayne & Ferris, 1990).

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is extrarole be-

havior that isgenerallynot considered a required duty of the job

or part of a traditional job description (Bateman & Organ,1983; Organ, 1990). OC B includes behaviors that an individualchooses to offer or withhold without concern for immediate for-

mal rewards or sanctions. Several empirical studies have sug-gested that the relationship between commitment and OC B de-pends on the type of commitment examined. O'Reilly andChatman (1986) found that identification and internalization,

which are conceptually similar to affective commitment, werepositively related to OCB. However, Williams and Anderson(1991 ) failed to replicate these findings; they found that inter-nalization and identification were not significantly associated

with OCB. This inconsistency of results may be becauseO'Reilly and Chatman used self-reports of OCB whereas Wil-liams and Anderson gathered OC B information from managers.Basically, these studies suggest that affective commitment willbe positively, bu t perhaps weakly, related to OCB.

Because prior empirical research has not examined the rela-tionship between continuance commitment and nonrole behav-iors, a question arises about whether or not this type of commit-ment should be linked with OCB. We did expect a relationshipbetween continuance commitment and OCB for two reasons.

First, as suggestedby Meyer and Allen (1991), "Employees whowant to belong to the organization (affective commitment)might be more likely than those who need to belong (continu-ance commitment) . . . to exert effort on behalf of the organi-zation" (pp. 73-74). Second, because in-role behaviors tend to

be correlated with OCB (Williams &Anderson, 1991) and con-tinuance commitment hasbeen found to result in lower job per-formance (Meyer et al., 1989), we expected that there would bea negative relationship between continuance commitment andOCB.

Eisenberger and his colleagues found that POS was relatedto absenteeism (Eisenberger et al., 1986), conscientiousness incarrying out conventional job responsibilities, and innovationon behalf of the organization (Eisenberger et al., 1990). In addi-

tion, the social exchangeframework that underlies PO S suggeststhat these perceptions create feelings of obligation that serve toincrease behaviors that support organizational goals. We there-fore expected that POS would be positively associated withOCB.

Hypothesis 1: Affective commitment and POS will be positivelyassociated with OCB, whereas continuance commitment will benegatively associated with OCB.

Impression management (IM) consists of behaviors that em -ployees may use to influence others' attributions for their be-

havior and, thus, the impressions that others form of them(Jones & Pittman, 1982). IM may consist of behaviors whereby

the employee alters ormanipulates information givento the su-

pervisor for his or herperformance to be viewed more positivelythan it should be (e.g., Caldwell & O'Reilly, 1982) or may con-sist of doing favors or complimenting the supervisor (e.g., Wort-man & Linsenmeier, 1977). A common theme in the literature

is that the use of IM is influenced by a need to defend or pro-mote oneself to avoid punishment or to receive a desirable re-

ward (Liden & Mitchell, 1988). We predicted that employeeswith a strong affective commitment would have less of a need topromote themselves because their emotional attachment to the

organization is, by itself, useful for creating and maintaining apositive impression on others. Similarly, employees with highlevels of POS may have less of a need to use IM because they arealready receiving desirable rewards in terms of support from

the organization. Therefore, we predicted that employees witha strong affective commitment and high levels of POS would beless likely to use IM. On the other hand, Meyerand Allen (1991)have suggested that, when an employee's primary tie to the or-

ganization is need based (continuance commitment), the em-ployee engages in behaviors that would help guarantee contin-ued employment; nonetheless, such an employee is not likely toexert extra effort on behalf of the organization. Thus, in an

effort to protect their job security, employees with high contin-uance commitment may engage in IM behaviors to appear asthough they are supportive of the organization. This suggeststhat there would be apositive relationship between continuancecommitment and IM.

Hypothesis 2: Affective commitment and POS will be negativelyassociated with IM,whereas continuance commitment will be pos-itively associated with IM.

A number of views have been put forth in the literature that

are relevant for comparing affective commitment and continu-ance commitment with POS in terms of the ability to predict

employee behavior. On the one hand, Eisenberger et al. (1990)found that POS was positively related to expressed affective andcalculative involvements in the organization. This raises thequestion about whether POS may be necessary for understand-ing employee behavior, because affective and continuance com-mitment m ay be outcomes of organizational support and thusmay be more closely linked to employee behavior. However, thisperspective assumes that the influence of organizational sup-

port on employee behavior is solely through affective and con-tinuance commitment. Theoretical andempirical research doesnot seem to support this proposition (Shore & Tetrick, 1991).Thus, although POS is likely to be related to affective and con-tinuance commitment, these forms of commitment are not re-dundant with POS. From a theoretical perspective, the relation-ship between POS and work behavior, unlike the conceptualiza-tions for affective commitment and continuance commitment,is based on a social exchange framework. That is, although per-ceptions of organizational support obligate employees to sup-port organizational goals as repayment, affective and continu-ance commitment do not generate these same feelings of obli-gation. Rather, affective commitment ma y increase OCB anddecrease IM because it is the right and moral way to behave(Wiener, 1982), whereas continuance commitment reflects feel-



776 LYNN McFARLANE SHORE AN D SANDY J. WAYNE

ings of being stuck (Shore & Barksdale, 1991), leading to lowerOCB and greater IM. Given the vastly different conceptualiza-tions linkin g these three constructs and employee behavior, weexpected that POS would provide additional explanation ofwork behavior beyond that provided by affective and continu-ance com mitment.

Hypothesis 3: POS will expla in additional variance in OCB andIM beyond the explanation provided by affective commitment andcontinuance commitment.

Method

Subjects

Participants were 276 pairs of employees and their direct supervisorsworking in a large multinational firm headquartered in the southeasternUnited States. Three hundred eighty-three employees (305 men and78 women) and 231 supervisors (198 men and 33 women) completed

surveys. Although some supervisors rated more than 1 employee (18%),

very few supervisors (6.5%) rated more than 2 employees. The average

age of the employees was 43.62 years, and the average age of the super-visors was 48.42 years. The participants held a variety of job positions,such as mechanic, secretary, and accountant.

Measures

Employees reported their levels of affective commitment, continu-ance commitment, and POS. Supervisors described their employees'OCB and IM behavior.

A f f e c t i v e and continuance commitment. Affective commitment and

continuance commitment were assessed with 16 items developed byMeyer and Allen (1984). The Cronbach alpha estimates were .88 foraffective commitment and .82 for continuance commitment. Scale an-chors ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

POS. Weuseda 17-itemscaledevelopedbyEisenbergeretal.(1986)to measure POS. The Cronbach alpha estimate was .95. Scale anchors

ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

OCB. We assessed OC B with a 16-item scale developed by Smith,Organ, and N ear (1983). The scale measures two dimensions of OCB:altruism (7 items) and compliance (9 items). The Cronbach alpha esti-mates were .88 for altruism and .87 for compliance. Scale anchors

ranged from 1 (disagree completely) to 5 (agree completely).

IM behavior. We modified the 24-item Wayne and Ferris (1990) Im-

pression Management Scale, which was developed for employee self-

reports of IM behavior, to measure supervisory reports of IM behavior.Supervisors reported how often their subordinates had engaged in a par-

ticular IM behavior on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (al-

ways).

Procedure

The measures used in this study were included in a larger organiza-tional survey. A random stratified sample (by age and tenure) of 1,071employees were contacted b y mail and asked to participate in a longitu-dinal study of employee attitudes that involved completing four surveysover a 2-year period. Forty-one percent of the employees contacted

agreed to participate and were thus sent surveys. The data used in thepresent study came from the second and third survey administrations.The return rate for employees who agreed to participate was 90%, andthe ret urn rate for their supervisors was 73%. The employee data weused were collected 6 months before the supervisor data (note that thesurveys administered at these two times were virtually identical, so that

predictor and criterion data were collected at both survey administra-tions). (Hereinafter, the first survey, employee data, is referred to as Sur-

vey 1 and the second survey, manager data, is referred to as Survey 2.)

The surveys were mailed to participants along with a cover letter, com-puter answer sheets, and a preaddressed return envelope.

Results

Before testing the hypotheses, we conducted a series of prin-

cipal-component factor analyses using varimax rotation for theIM and OCB scales. An initial analysis with two factors desig-nated a priori included all IM and O CB items for both Survey1 and Survey 2 (separately). Results showed that 12 of the IMitems w ere loading on a factor with OC B items. W hen these 12

items were eliminated, subsequent analyses indicated that theremaining 12 items loaded on a separate factor from the OCBitems. OCB items were factor analyzed separately from IMitems, with two factors designated a priori. This factor structurewa s quite similar to the Compliance and Altruism subscalesgenerated by Smith et al. (1983), although 2 items that did notload clearly on either factor in the Smith et al. study did so inthe present sample (1 item loaded on the altruism factor and the

other item loaded on the compliance factor). Thus, in our study,the Altruism scale consisted of 7 items and the Compliancescale consisted of 9 items.

An exploratory principal-component analysis with varimaxrotation for the 12 IM items yielded three factors (for both Sur-veys 1 and 2), producing three IM scales (see Table 1). The firstscale was called manipulation because item s reflected direct at-tempts by the employee to m anip ulate the manager's percep-tion of his or her work quality and effort. The second scale wascalled supervisory awareness because these items reflected em-ployee attempts to communicate and display efforts and accom-plishments to the manager. The third scale, called supervisory

favors, contained items that described employees doing favorsfor the supervisor. The Cronbach alpha estimates for the three

scales were .89, .68, and .71, respectively. The factor structureof the scale m easuring supervisor reports of employee IM be-havior was replicated with a separate sample of 193 supervisorsworking in a large firm located in the southwestern UnitedStates.

Means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations among thevariables are shown in Table 2. The pattern of correlations forOC B provided support for Hypothesis 1. As we predicted,affective commitment and POS were positively correlated withboth compliance and altruism, whereas continuance commit-ment was negatively correlated wit h these same scales.

Hypothesis 2 was not supported by our results. We expectedthat affective commitment and POS would be negatively relatedto IM b ehaviors whereas continuance com mitm ent w ould showa positive relationship with IM behaviors. Continuance com-mitment was not significantly related to any of the IM behav-iors. In addition, none of the com mitm ent measures predictedmanipulation behaviors. Furthermore, supervisory favor waspositively correlated with both affective commitment and POS,and supervisory awareness was positively correlated with POS.

Results of hierarchical regression analyses are shown in Table3. Results pertaining to OCB strongly supported Hypothesis 3.POS accounted for a significant portion of unique variance inOC B beyond that provided by affective commitment (for altru-ism, AJ?

2= .043, p < .01; for compliance, A/?

2= .032, p < .01)




Table 1Factor Analysis of Impression Management Items

Survey 1 factors

To what extent does the employee:

1 . Play up the value of a positive event that he or she has

taken credit for to you.2. Try to take responsibility for positive events, even

when he or she is not solely responsible.3. Try to make a positive event t hat he or she is

responsible for appear better than it actually is.4. Try to make a negative ev ent that he or she is

responsible for not appear as severe as it actually is toyou.

5. Try to let you think that he or she is responsible forthe positive events that occur in your work group.

6. Work hard when he or she knows the results will beseen by you.

7. Let you know that he or she tries to do a good job inhis or her work.

8. Create the impression that he or she is a "good"person to you.

9. Work later than the regular hours in order to make agood impression.

1 0. Make you aware of his or her accomplishments.11. Do personal favors for you.12. Offer to do som ething for you which he or she is not

required to do; that is, he or she did it as a personalfavor for you.

Eigenvalue% variance explained

Cumulative % variance explained

1

.90

.89

.83

.78

.74

-.08

.25

.16

-.01.42.08

.174.46

37.237.2

2

.08

.05

.11

.08

.31

.78

.73

.60

.57

.57

.12

.061.89

15.852.9

3

.11

.04

.12

.04

.12

.09

-.04

-.05

.31

.20

.88

.861.40

11.7

64.6

Survey 2 factors

1

.88

.84

.85

.77

.73

.04

.36

.22

.01

.46

.09

.274.81

40.140.1

2

.09

.11

.08

.16

.29

.80

.50

.70

.54

.51

.13

.09

1.5813.253.3

3

.09

.08

.15

.08

.16

.13

.24

-.18

.36

.22

.85

.811.23

10.263.5

Note. Factor 1 represents the manipulation scale; Factor 2 represents the supervisory awareness scale; Factor 3 represents the supervisory favorsscale. Item 10 was retained despite loading on two factors because the reliability of the supervisory awareness scale dropped significantly and becausethis item appeared to be conceptually consistent with the other items in this scale. Boldfaced values indicate factors with the strongest loadings.

and continuance commitment (for altruism, A/?

2

= .081, p < supervisory awareness, A/{

2

= .021, p < .05; for supervisory.01; for compliance, A/?2

= .046, p < .01). However, for IM, we favors, Atf2

= .028, p < .01).

found mixed support for Hypothesis 3. POS did not account

for unique variance in IM beyond that provided by aifective Discussion

commitment. In contrast, POS did account for unique variance As predicted, affective commitment and POS were positively

beyond continuance commitment in two of the IM scales (for related to both compliance and altruism whereas continuance

Table 2

Means, Standard Deviations, and Intercorrelations Among

the Attitudes and Employee Behaviors

1 .2.3.

4.5.6.7

8.

Variable

Affective commitmentContinuance commitmentPerceived organizational support

AltruismComplianceManipulationAwarenessFavors

1 2 3 4

Survey 1

.10 .64* .22*— -.08 -.20*

— .30*

Survey 2

5

.14*-.20*

.23*

.63*

6

.02

.04-.02

-.14*-.37*

—

7

.09-.04

.15*

.10-.06

.48*

8

.17*

.07

.16*

.29*-.00

.32*

.36*—

M

3.893.403.40

3.623.9?1.902.741.96

SD

0.710.740.68

0.900.880.720.690.78

*p<.05.



778 LYNN McFARLANE SHORE AND SANDY J. WAYNE

Table 3Results of Regression Analyses

Citizenship Impression management

Altruism Compliance

Step&

variable ft R2

AR 2 AF

Manipulation Awareness Favors

R2

AR2

AF 0 R2

AR2

AF 0 R2

AR2

AF 0 fl2

AF

Model 1

1. AC2. POS

.05

.27**

.048

.091 .04313.77"12.74"

-.01.23"

.020

.052 .0325.58*

9.01".05

-.06.000.002

0.07.002 0.52

.00 .009

.15 .0222.43

.013 3.58.1 1.09

.028

.0337.91"

.005 1.37

Model 2

1. POS .27" .090 26.76** .23" .052 14.81" -.06 .000 0.15 .15 .022 6.06* .09 .026 7.25**2. AC .05 .091 .001 0.41" -.01 .052 .000 0.00 .05 .002 .002 0.44 .00 .022 .000 0.00 .11 .033 .007 2.01

Overall F 13.55" 7.38" 0.29 3.02 4.65*

Model 3

1 . CC -.18** .040 11.33" -.18" .038 10.72" .04 .002 0.47 -.02 .001 0.33 .08 .004 1.172. POS .29" .121 .081 24.84" .21" .084 .046 13.29" -.02 .002 .000 0.11 .15 .022 .021 5.84* .17" .032 .028 7.82"

Model 4

1 . POS .29" .090 26.76" .21" .052 14.81" -.02 .000 0.15 .15 .022 6.06* .17" .026 7.25"2. CC -.18" .1 21 .031 9.57" -.18" .084 .032 9.24" .04 .002 .002 0.43 -.02 .022 .000 0.15 .08 .032 .006 1.74

18.59" 12.25" 0.29 3.09* 4.51*verall F

Variable F(3, 268) F(3, 267) F(3,268) F(3, 268) F(3. 268)

AC .03

CC -.18"POS .26" .122

Overall F 12.42"

Model 5

-.02 .06 -.00 .12

-.18" .04 -.02 .09.23" .084 -.06 .004 .15 .022 .09 .041

8.16" 0.36 2.05 3.78*

Note. AC = affective commitment ; POS = perceived organizational supp ort; CC = continuance commitment. M odels I through 4 utilized hierarchic al regression, andone variable wa s entered on each step; Model 5— which displays the results of simultaneous entry of AC, CC, and POS—was no t directly relevant to the hypotheses, bu twas provided for potentially interested readers. For all AF tests, d fe = 1 and 270—with the exception of compliance, where dfs = 1 and 269. For models 1 -4, d fo = 2 and

269 for the overall Ftests—with the exception of compliance, where d fs = 2 and 268.

*p<.05. * * />< . 0 1 .

commitment was negatively related to these same constructs.Furth ermo re, the regression results suggest that POS may be abetter predictor of employee citizenship behaviors than eitheraffective commitment or continuance commitment. This isquite consistent with Organ's (1990) perspective th at social ex-change theory provides a stronger conceptual framework for un-

derstanding OC B than does organizational commitment. Thus,employees who feel that they are supported by the organizationmay, over time, reciprocate and reduce the imbalance in therelationship by engaging in citizenship behaviors. In contrast,affective commitment, which is based on emotional attachment

and identification w ith the goals of the organization, may beinadequate for sustaining employees' citizenship behaviors.Over time, affectively committed employees wh o engage inOCB may perceive the overall exchange as unfair if the organi-zation does not reciprocate by providing support. Therefore,the present results suggest that employee behavior that goes be-

yond role requirements is most likely to be elicited when theemployee feels obligated to repay the organization for support

received.Our pattern of results may also help to explain a previous

inconsistency in the literature (O'Reilly & Chatman, 1986; Wil-

liams & Anderson, 1991) linking affective commitment and

OCB. POS has been found to predict both affective commit-ment (Eisenberger et al., 1986) and OCB, so that when asig-nificant correlation is found between affective commitment andOCB this may reflect a common cause (i.e., POS) rather than acausal link . Indirect support for this contention was shown inWilliams and Anderson's study, in which they found that OC Bwas not influenced by affective commitment but was influenced

by the fairness of overall organizational treatm ent. However, be -cause neither O'Reilly and Chatman nor Williamsand Ander-son included POS in their study designs, it was not possible to

determine conclusively whether PO S influenced the differentialresults. Clearly, additional research is needed to determinewhether the present pattern of relationships exists across othersettings and also to examine the notion of common cause.

The results of our study indicate the im portance of PO S as adeterm inant of employee behavior. Thus, a critical issue is w hatinfluences employees' perceptions of organizational support.Eisenberger et al. (1986) suggested that perceived sup port is in-fluenced by various aspects of an employee's treatment by theorganization, such as the organization's likely reactions to, forexample, the employee's mistakes, performance, suggestions,




and illnesses. However, the relative importance of these factorshas not been explored. Consequently, additional research is

needed to explore the individual and situational factors thatmay influence perceptions of organizational support.

Another interesting finding was that continuance commit-

ment p rovided additional explanation of OCB over and abovethat provided by POS. Furthermore, consistent with prior re-

search on job performance (Meyer et al., 1989), our resultsshowed that continuance comm itment w as associated withlower levels of OCB. These results suggest that employees whofeel bou nd to th eir employing organization because of an accu-mulation of side bets are less inclined to engage in extrarolebehaviors that suppo rt organizational goals. This result was par-ticularly interesting given that both side bet theory (Becker,1960) and social exchange theo ry (Blau, 1964) are based on thenotion of exchange. This pattern of results suggests that em-ployees who are bound by economic exchanges (i.e., side bettheory) are least likely to be good citizens whereas those who

are bound by social exchanges are most likely to be good citi-zens. That is, employees operating und er an economic exchange

would engage in OCB only if the behavior was directly re-warded, w hereas employees operating un der a social exchang ewould engage in OCB despite no immediate reward.

It is importan t to note that employees who perceived highlevels of organizational support were more likely to engage insupervisory awareness behavior. This pattern implies that com -municating accomplishments may not represent employee at-

tempts to manage impressions for self-serving pu rposes, bu tmay, in fact, be viewed by supervisors as an appropriate workbehavior. In addition, both affective commitment and POS were

positively associated with supervisory favors, and this form ofIM was positively related to altruism (r = .29). A ltruism andsupervisory favors have some conceptual similarity in that theymay both involve some degree of self-sacrifice. Whereas altru-

ism involv es prosocial gestures toward others in the organiza-tion (e.g., new employees, co-workers, or supervisor; Borman& Motowidlo, in press), supervisory favors represent prosocialbehaviors that specifically benefit the supervisor. Thus, doingfavors for the supervisor may be less of an attempt to impressthe supervisor than a consequence of having positive feelingsabout the organization. An implication of these results is that itis important to examine various forms of IM because manage-rial perceptions of these tactics may vary.

On e limitation of our results was the rather low correlationsbetween employee attitudes and managerial reports of IM andOCB. Although these results were fairly typical of studies link -ing employee attitudes and behaviors, they do suggest the needfor including additional variables, such as employee ideology

(Eisenberger et al., 1986), to help better explain employee be-havior. An other limitation was the fairly low occurrence of IMbehaviors. This may explain the somewhat small amounts ofvariance accounted for in these behaviors by the three commit-ment measures. A nothe r possible explanation for these resultsmay be that some forms of IM m ay have less to do with feelingsabout the emp loying organization th an with feelings about themanager. Fu ture research should replicate the present study andshould also includ e inform ation on employee perceptions of themanager to furth er explore these relationships.

Although there are limitations of this study, there are also

a number of strengths. In particular, this study extended prior

research by focusing on two outcom es rarely examined in rela-tionship to com mitment: OCB and IM . In addition, we studiedthe relationship between the outcome variables and threedifferent forms of commitment. This approach allows for agreater understanding of the un derlying reason for the relation-ship between commitment and behavior. Furthermore, the

hypotheses of interest were tested longitudinally and includedresponses from both employees and supervisors.

One of our most im portant conclusions is that PO S explaineda significant proportion of the variance in OCB beyond affective

commitment and that these perceptions appear tobetter predictOC B than does affective comm itment. T his suggests that feel-

ings of obligation, rather than emotional attachment, may be

the basis for citizenship behaviors. Future research should fur-ther explore the role tha t social exchange plays in the develop-ment of commitment and extrarole behaviors. Finally, addi-tional studies that compare perceptions of organizational sup-port w ith more extensively researched com mitm ent constructs,such as affective and continuance comm itment, are clearly war-

ranted.

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of affective, continuance, and normative commitment to the organi-

zation. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 63 , 1-18.

Bateman, T. S., & Organ, D. W. (1983). Job satisfaction and the good

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Received May 28, 1992

Revision received January 11, 1993

Accepted January 15, 1993 •

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