How Does Organizational Commitment Relate to Job Performance? A Conservation of Resource Perspective

Abstract

We use the conservation of resources theory to explain why and how organizational commitment facets relate to job performance. We posit the nature of recourses central to an employee differs thus the commitment facets and job performance corresponds efforts to accumulate these resources. Analysis of data collected from 403 sales representatives with their supervisors shows, although the positive association of affective and normative commitment with job performance was less different across levels of transformational behavior, the relationship was strong when the supervisor’s transactional behavior was low. However, the negative relationship of continuance commitment with job performance was weak when the supervisor’s transformational behaviors were low or when transactional behaviors were high. Also, interactions between the commitment dimensions reveal interesting patterns predicting job performance.