Effects of workplace relationships among organizational members on organizational identification and affective commitment: nuanced differences resulting from supervisor vs. colleague relationship

This study aims to investigate the impact of relationships with supervisors (RS) and relationships with colleagues (RC) on two key employee attitudes toward organizations: organizational identification (OI) and affective commitment (AC). Data was collected from a survey of employees of a Korean conglomerate. The sample company was chosen due to its organizational culture that values interactions and relationships among its members. We conduct a response surface analysis and demonstrate that, while RS increases OI, RC enhances AC. We also discover that the imbalance between RS and RC has contrasting effects on OI and AC, which exerts a positive impact on OI and a negative impact on AC. In particular, the asymmetrical impacts of the imbalance are identified in which the imbalance of the relatively stronger RS has a greater influence than the imbalance of the relatively stronger RC. Although employees have two distinguished workplace relationships (i.e., RS and RC) which are governed by different mechanisms, studies that have distinguished these two relationships and examined the effect of each relationship are limited. By revealing the distinct patterns that OI and AC exhibit when they are affected by RS and RC and discovering the asymmetrical impacts of the imbalance between RS and RC, this study provides new insights into the effects of personal workplace relationships on employee behaviors. By offering valuable information for the conceptualization and differentiation of OI and AC, this study enriches the existing literature on these two key employee attitudes.