| As one of the key components of intellectual capital,human capital is the source of enterprise value.In order to actualize the full potential of employees,managers have paid more and more attention to the management of employees’ psychological variables.Among them,the affective organization commitment,which showed important impacts on the individual’s psychological states and workplace behaviors,has long been the focus of academic and practical fields.However,in the organization,the ultimate expectation of employees is still their job performance and the value they can create.To what extent the employees’ affective commitment toward organizations contribute to their j ob performance?The existing literature provided inconsistent conclusions.The relevant literature pointed out that the main reason for this inconsistency lies in the following two points:(1)the single commitment focus has limited interpretation of the outcome variables;(2)different commitment dimensions have their corresponding focus behaviors,and employee performance may not be the most direct focus behavior of organizational commitment.In the fiercely competitive global environment,the background of individual work values and career development paths are constantly evolving and changing,and the relationship between individuals and organizations is gradually weakening.The most apparent manifestation is that the traditional life-long employment system began to collapse and turned into the era of borderless occupation.Choosing an organization as a lifelong career development platform is almost impossible,and the individual’s career has begun to develop across organizations.Therefore,individual’s work attitude and behavior will depend on commitments toward foci out of organizations as well.Affective occupational commitment(AOCC)captures the individuals’ emotional responses to their current career/work.On the one hand,it affects individuals’ career development behaviors,the accumulations of professional skills,and the formation of sustained competitiveness.On the other hand,research indicates that employees who highly affectively committed to their occupation have a lower turnover and higher work engagement and self-improvement.Therefore,AOCC have potential links with employee performance.In this respect,this study intends to investigate the relationships between commitment and in-role and extra-role performance through two sub-studies.Specific research questions are as follows:(1)the interaction power between affective occupational commitment and organizational commitment to explain the in-role and extra-role performance;(2)compared to affective organizational commitment,whether affective occupation commitment to be a more reliable foci in the prediction of the in-role and out-role performance.In addition,based on the previous two studies that ascertain the boundary and direct effects of AOCC on employee performance,the next sub-study explores how AOCC forms and develops within organizations from the core base of AOCC.By doing so,to provide potential ways for managers to promote and take advantage of AOCC in organizational management.Based cross-section data,longitudinal data and existing empirical research data,and combined regression analyses,structural equation modeling and meta-analysis,the present study offers several conclusions as follows:First,the relationships between the affective organizational commitment and the in-role and extra-role performance are shaped by the affective commitment to current occupation;the professional ability development which driven by employees’ AOCC influence the above relationships.Second,employees’ AOCC have a direct impact on their in-role and extra-role performance,and these effects are influenced by demographic factors,cultural factors,and research design factors.Specifically,AOCC has a positive impact on both in-role and extra-role performance.The higher the AOCC,the better in-role and extra-role behaviors.The study also finds that the strengthen of the AOCC-performance relationships are stronger for:(a)males;(b)longer-tenure employees;(c)employees in the context of individualism;(d)studies that performance was reported by self;(e)studies that the AOCC were measured by the Meyer scales.Third,compared with affective organizational commitment,employees’affective commitment toward the current occupation are more effective in predicting the in-role and extra-role behaviors.Fourth,the employee’s AOCC is influenced by the individual’s emotional attitude toward their current work and career.Individuals who perceive their core job characteristics as more motivational and more likely to response positively on their current work and occupation,and thus generate more emotional and psychological attachments toward the current occupation.The innovations of the present study are as follows:first,incorporating the resource perspective into the framework of social exchange,this study explains the inconsistency of the relationships between organizational commitment and performance in existing research,and expanded the application of the resource investment corollary of resource conservation theory.Secondly,paying attention to the individual’s affective commitment to the internal and external foci of organizations,we verified the interactive interpretation of the multi-commitment targets on outcome variables;thirdly,using the technical means of meta-analysis,we quantitatively analysis the relationships between AOCC and job performance of existing research by eliminating the sampling and measurement errors.Fourth,focused on the core bases of affective commitment,and started from the psychological basis of the AOCC-the work itself,we explored the possible mechanisms for the work to active the affective commitment to occupation,and therefore the provide potential paths for cultivating AOCC within organizations.Finally,in terms of the research method,we concerned multi-point measurement and multi-sample verifications to strengthen the causal relationship between variables,and improve the persuasiveness of test results. |
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