Attachment Dimensions as Moderators of the Relationship between Commitment to Supervisors and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Abstract

The aims of this study are to examine the correlation between the commitment to supervisors and Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) by using two different commitment conceptions and to determine whether this relationship is moderated by personal internal attachment dimensions. The theoretical framework was provided by the concept of Affective Commitment (AC), derived from Meyer and Allen’s Three-Component Model (TCM), the target-free approach of Klein et al. (2014), and attachment personality theory. The study used the Affective Commitment to Supervisors (ACS) scale and Klein’s Unidimensional and Target-free (KUT) scale. The predictive value of supervisory commitment was confirmed by both methods. However, depending on the scale, the results revealed different links between commitment, OCB, and attachment personal dimensions as moderating factors. The ACS scale interacted with the dimension of attachment anxiety: In the case of a low or moderate supervisory commitment, anxiety decreased engagement in OCB. By contrast, the moderating model indicated that there was no such interaction when using the KUT scale.