Probing into commitment's nonlinear relationships to work outcomes

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possibility of curvilinear patterns of relationships between workplace affective commitment and in‐role performance, organizational citizenship behaviors and burnout. As most commitment theories assume strictly linear relations with these outcomes, demonstrating that these positive associations do not hold above some ceiling point in the commitment continuum is potentially important for research and practice. Design/methodology/approach The possibility of nonlinear relations was examined in a sample of 273 hospital employees. Findings The results yielded strong support for the authors' hypotheses. Indeed, most of the relations observed (ten of 15) between affective commitment foci and work outcomes were curvilinear, revealing a ceiling to the positive association between commitment and outcomes. Although these results vary in strength across work outcomes and commitment targets, they reveal that affective commitment has negative associations with employee productivity and psychological health at extreme levels. Originality/value Methodologically, these results illustrate the need to systematically explore the true nature of relations among constructs, even in areas where it is assumed to be well known. Practically, these results suggest that, ultimately, moderate levels of commitment may be more beneficial than extremely high levels.