Organizational commitment and its effects on organizational citizenship behavior in a high unemployment environment
Organizational commitment is an important concept in management and a construct on which extensive research exists. This study considers the relationship of the three dimensions of organizational commitment (affective, normative, and continuance commitment) with employees' organizational citizenship behavior in a high unemployment environment. By analyzing the effect of high unemployment on the displacement of the self concept from individual toward relational and collective levels, this work predicts differences in the effect of unemployment on each of the organizational commitment dimensions. The results show that in a high unemployment environment the affective and normative dimensions have a similar behavior than in a full employment environment. Nevertheless, the continuance commitment dimension increases significantly in a high unemployment context. These results and the importance of the self concept in organizational commitment can explain some empirical discrepancies in previous research regarding the relationships between organizational commitment dimensions and their individual effects on employees' behavior.