Employees that want to stay: How relationships with leader and organization interact to predict affective commitment

Previous research has attempted to explain how Leader-member exchange (LMX) is related to subordinate affective commitment to organizations. Since affective commitment is highly related to employee turnover, understanding the effects supervisors have on affective commitment is of great importance for fostering high-quality relationships within the workplace. While previous research has been conducted on this relationship, past conceptualizations have yet to account for both the moderating effects of supervisor’s organizational embodiment (SOE) in conjunction with the mediating effect of perceived organizational support (POS). The current study proposes a comprehensive moderated mediation model, describing a path that accounts for variability due to employee perceptions of supervisors and organizations alike. The main hypothesis for the proposed study is that SOE will serve as a moderating variable such that the relationship between LMX and affective commitment will be stronger at high levels of SOE. Similarly, SOE will also moderate the relationship between LMX and POS. Finally, we hypothesize that POS will partially mediate the relationship between LMX and affective commitment. These hypotheses will be tested using the SPSS macro PROCESS, using bootstrap sampling techniques to estimate these effects. Multiple survey timepoints will be used to collect self-report data, with the intent to reduce the effect of common method bias. The predictor and moderator variables will be collected at time one, followed by the mediator, and finally the outcome of affective commitment. This collection method should enable us to make stronger claims as to the direction of these relationships. Our proposed model aims to direct future research on describing these relationships and organizational efforts to increase employees’ affective commitment to the organization, retaining employees in the long term

Organizational perceptions of I-O interventions: Construction of a diagnostic measure

Despite the fact that Industrial-Organizational (I-O) psychology consultants provide interventions meant to benefit companies, many organizations remain skeptical about the effectiveness of consultants and have concerns about I-O psychologists, their methods, and the results they promise. This skepticism may manifest through resistance towards interventions, resulting in strained client-consultant relationships and a decreased interest in future use of I-O consultant services. Understanding and evading these negative outcomes is highly relevant to the interests of I-O psychology as a whole, but research has yet to quantitatively examine factors contributing to an organization’s decision to pursue I-O consultation. The purpose of the current study is to develop a diagnostic tool to understand perceptions that organizations may have about I-O consultants and to link these to a company’s likeliness to purchase I-O consulting services. The proposed measure is made up of seven individual facets regarding both organizational and consultant entities: readiness for change, duration of project, cost/benefit, depth of intervention, internal/external implementation, faith in I-O expertise, and attitudes towards consultants. Items will be refined through pilot testing, and the measure structure will be analyzed through the use of factor analytic methods. Unique samples will be used to examine the factor structure of the measurement through both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. We hypothesize that the measure will exhibit a seven-factor structure, entailing each dimension as its own factor. We also hypothesize that a two-factor structure will also fit the measure data, including one for organizational factors and one for consultant factors. Additionally, we hypothesize that scores on the measure will positively predict the likelihood to purchase I-O consulting services. Utilization of this measure should enable consultants to quantitatively locate and target specific insecurities and skepticism contributing to organizational resistance toward I-O interventions, potentially increasing the effectiveness of these interventions and boosting consumer confidence in I-O psychologists