Organizational Commitment: A Further Moderator in the Relationship Between Work Stress and Strain?

Klaus-Helmut Schmidt Institut fu r Arbeitsphysiologie an der Universita t Dortmund

In recent years, a growing interest in the relations between organizational commitment of employees and their experiences of job strain can be noted. Besides main effects on these consequences, two competing hypotheses have postulated moderating effects of commitment on the relationship of work stress to measures of strain. According to the rst hypothesis highly committed employees experience the adverse effects of stress more than less committed employees, whereas according to the second hypothesis commitment operates as a buffer in the stress-strain relationship. Data from 506 staff members of a municipal administration provided evidence in favor of the buffer hypothesis. The effects of high stress on the burnout dimensions of exhaustion and depersonalization were reduced with increasing commitment to the organization.
Keywords: affective organizational commitment, buffer effect, burnout, job satisfaction

During the past two decades, organizational commitment has emerged as a central concept in the study of work-related attitudes and behavior (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990). In general terms the concept can be dened as a psychological link or bond between the employee and his or her organization. Although early work in the area was characterized by various unidimensional views of the construct, organizational commitment is now widely recognized as a multidimensional work attitude (for an overview, see Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001). Furthermore, most modern theoretical approaches share the assumption that the affective dimension represents one of the basic components of the construct. Affective commitment refers to the
Klaus-Helmut Schmidt, Institut fu r Arbeitsphysiologie an der Universita t Dortmund. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Klaus-Helmut Schmidt, Institut fu r Arbeitsphysiologie an der Universita t Dortmund, D-44139 Dortmund, Ardeystr. 67, Germany. E-mail: schmidtkh@ifado.de
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International Journal of Stress Management 2007, Vol. 14, No. 1, 26 40 Copyright 2007 by the American Psychological Association 1072-5245/07/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1072-5245.14.1.26

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identication with, involvement in, and emotional attachment to the organization. Since the development of adequate instruments for measuring affective commitment (Mowdy, Steers, & Porter, 1979; Allen & Meyer, 1990) numerous studies have examined both its antecedents, correlates, and consequences. Meta-analyses of these studies suggest that among the antecedent variables considered, certain task characteristics (like skill variety, autonomy), perceived organizational support, the various forms of organizational justice (i.e., distributive, procedural, and interactional), and transformational leadership exhibit the strongest positive relations to affective commitment. For another group of variables, often classied as correlates of commitment (like job satisfaction, job involvement), relatively strong positive correlations have been established as well. Finally, with regard to the consequences of commitment, not only turnover and withdrawal cognitions have been found to correlate negatively with affective commitment, but also measures of absenteeism. In-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior, on the other hand, show positive, albeit weak, associations with commitment (see Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002). In recent years, the set of consequences of commitment has been expanded by indicators of job strain and well-being. Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) substantiated the claim of corresponding relations with the strong emotions which, in their view, constitute the core of affective commitment. These positive emotions are expected to exert a direct inuence on a wide range of measures of strain and well-being because the strain measures themselves have strong emotional roots (see Warr, 1990). Meyer et al. (2002) provided the rst empirical evidence in favor of this assumption. On the basis of ve independent samples, their meta-analysis revealed a statistically signicant estimate of the true correlation of .21 between affective commitment and various indicators of strain. In consideration of the rather small database underlying this meta-analytic nding, Meyer et al. (2002) have stressed the need of paying more attention to the strain consequences of commitment in future research.

TWO THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

In addition to these direct inuences, two theoretical perspectives have ascribed to commitment the function of moderating the relation between work-related stress and strain and well-being at work. Although both perspectives refer to the relationship between work-related stress and experienced strain and health outcomes, they posit opposite directions of the

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moderating effect of affective commitment. According to the rst view, presented by Mathieu and Zajac (1990), highly committed employees experience the adverse effects of work stress more than less committed employees. The former should suffer more from stressors because of their high investment in and identication with the organization. Thus, commitment should increase the vulnerability of employees to the psychological threat posed by high work stressors (see Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). On the other hand, because of their greater detachment from the organization, employees with a weaker affective commitment are expected to experience stress as less threatening. By way of contrast, the second view holds that organizational commitment buffers the effects of work stress on strain and health outcomes. This hypothesis has its roots in the widely shared notion of affective commitment as a psychological bond or link of the individual to the organization (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001). This bond gives employees a sense of stability, security, and belonging that makes them more resistant to any kinds of work stressors. Thus, in this view, organizational commitment is hypothesized to be a protective resource (Kobasa, 1982). In a social psychology context, Antonovsky (1979) argues in a similar vein that organizational commitment is a crucial resource that enables individuals to resist the effects of stressful events in their environment. Accordingly, an increase in this resource should reduce, not enhance the adverse effects of those events. Commitment would then operate similarly to other hypothesized moderators of the stress-strain relationship as social support (Cohen & Wills, 1985) or control at work (Karasek, 1979; Wall, Jackson, Mullarkey, & Parker, 1996). Empirical tests of these competing hypotheses are quite rare. Only two such studies were found. The rst one was conducted by Begley and Czajka (1993) during adverse organizational changes (closing units, tightening budgets) in a hospital. A measure of work stress that indicated the extent to which participants felt stressed by these changes was analyzed in combination with Mowdy et al.s (1979) measure of affective commitment to predict a three-outcome composite of job displeasure (job dissatisfaction, intent to quit, work-related irritation). Results of hierarchical moderated regression analyses revealed signicant main effects of stress and commitment on job displeasure, with a positive sign for stress and a negative one for commitment. In addition, a signicant effect for the interaction between stress and commitment did emerge, the form of which clearly conrmed the stressbuffering function of commitment. Stress increased job displeasure more for those low in commitment. The second study was conducted by Siu (2002) among white-collar and blue-collar workers in Hong Kong, and blue-collar workers in China. In all three samples, the measure of stress combined diverse sources of workrelated stress like long working hours, conicting job tasks, lack of social

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support, underutilization of skills, and incompatible home/work demands. The outcome variables considered included both job satisfaction and indicators of mental and physical well-being. As in Begley and Czajkas (1993) study, the affective commitment to the organization was measured with the instrument designed by Mowdy et al. (1979). In addition to the expected main effects of work stress on all indicators of strain, results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that commitment was signicantly and positively related to job satisfaction, and to mental and physical well-being in Hong Kong white-collar and China blue-collar workers. In the Hong Kong bluecollar sample, only job satisfaction was subjected to a similar main effect of commitment. Furthermore, the results provided at least partial support to the notion of commitment as stress buffer. Commitment was found to interact signicantly with work stress to determine job satisfaction in the Hong Kong white-collar sample and physical well-being among Hong Kong white-collar and blue-collar workers. Whereas the ndings of both studies are consistent with the hypothesis that affective commitment serves to buffer the effects of stress and inconsistent with the hypothesis of a sensitizing action, the evidence thus far falls short of being fully convincing. First, the database is rather small, so that the issue of generalizability across geographic regions (and cultures) and types of organizations is quite unclear; the claim of a general role of commitment as a buffer for the consequences of work-related stress needs far more studies (Meyer et al., 2002). Second, generalizability across methodological variations is unclear. For example, in Begley and Czajkas (1993) study a very specic measure of work stress was used, and in both studies affective commitment was assessed by means of the same instrument. To establish the hypothesis on the construct level, more studies are needed which demonstrate invariance of the ndings across different methods.

THE CURRENT STUDY

The purpose of the present study was to broaden the database for the notion that affective commitment acts as a buffer for the consequences of work-related stress. We used a measure of quantitative and qualitative workload, which covered stressors which are well established in the organizational stress literature (Kahn & Byosiere, 1992). Furthermore, the study extended the spectrum of potential strain outcomes that might be sensitive for the moderating effects of commitment. Specically, in addition to job satisfaction the burnout dimensions of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization were included as outcome variables. These dimensions are considered as core symptoms of burnout (Green, Walkey, & Taylor, 1991). Whereas

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burnout was initially assumed to result from emotionally charged interactions in human service professions, such as social work, health care, and teaching, there is now sufcient empirical evidence of burnout outside the human services (see Bakker, Demerouti, Taris, Schaufeli, & Schreurs, 2003). Finally, in the current study a different measure of affective commitment was applied. Within this conceptual framework, two hypotheses were tested. Hypothesis 1: In line with the theoretical reasoning of Meyer and Herscovitch (2001), affective commitment was expected to exert a direct benecial inuence on all strain outcomes considered. Hypothesis 2: Besides this main effect, affective commitment was also expected to exert a moderating effect on the relationship between work stress and strain which, in view of the few ndings summarized above, should correspond with the stress buffering function of commitment.

METHODS Participants and Procedure

Participants were staff members of a municipal administration in a middle-sized city in Germany. A total of 506 staff members completed a questionnaire (response rate 78%) that included the scales described below. The questionnaire was administered in small groups of about 15 persons during normal working hours. The mean age of the sample was 43.2 years (SD 9.6). Participants average tenure in their present positions was 17.7 years (SD 11), and 54.5% were women. The majority (70%) worked on a full-time basis.

Measures

Main Predictor Variables Work stress. A measure of work stress was derived by combining the items of the quantitative workload (four items) and qualitative workload (ve items) subscales of a job analysis instrument developed by Pru mper, Hartmannsgruber, and Frese (1995). The items for measuring quantitative workload address aspects like time pressure and excessive amount of work, whereas the items of the qualitative workload scale consist of state-

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ments referring to high demands on concentration and high complexity of tasks. Each item asks respondents to indicate the extent to which the respective statement applies to ones own job on a ve-point scale ranging from 1 (totally incorrect) to 5 (totally correct). A summary measure of work stress was dened as the mean of the item scores. The internal consistency (Cronbachs alpha) of the stress measure was .85 for the present sample. Organizational commitment. For the measurement of organizational commitment, Allen and Meyers (1990) 8-item affective commitment scale was used in a German translation by Schmidt, Hollmann, and Sodenkamp (1998). This scale reects the affective attachment to and involvement in the organization and is highly correlated with Mowdy et al.s (1979) commitment measure (see Allen & Meyer, 1990). The scale has a seven-point response range (strongly disagree to strongly agree), and a total score was obtained by averaging the item scores. Typical items are, for example, I really feel as if this organizations problems are my own, and I would be very happy to spend the rest of my career with this organization. The internal consistency (Cronbachs alpha) of the resulting commitment measure was .86.

Outcome Measures Burnout. The two burnout dimensions of emotional exhaustion (nine items), and depersonalization (ve items) were measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach & Jackson, 1981, 1986) in a German translation by Bu ssing and Perrar (1992). Emotional exhaustion refers to feelings of being overextended and drained by the emotional demands of ones work. Depersonalization is characterized by a detached, callous, indifferent, and cynical attitude toward other persons one has to interact with at work. Exemplary items are I feel emotionally drained from my work (exhaustion) and I have become more callous toward people since I took this job (depersonalization). Each item is scored on a seven-point intensity rating scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very strong). The internal consistency of the exhaustion scale was a .90, that of the depersonalization scale was a .76. Job satisfaction. Overall job satisfaction was assessed by means of a seven-item scale using Kunins (1955) faces. The items address the satisfaction with various job facets, namely colleagues, supervision, task content, physical working conditions, organization and management, opportunities for professional development, and pay. The instrument was developed by Neuberger and Allerbeck (1978) who also give a description of its psychometric properties. A measure of overall job satisfaction that covers a seven-

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point range was obtained by means of averaging the item scores. The internal consistency of this measure was .75. Statistical Analyses The main and interaction effects of work stress and organizational commitment were examined by means of hierarchical moderated regression analyses performed separately for each strain measure. In the rst step, the biographical variables (age, gender, tenure, working time) were introduced to control for their potential inuences on the relationships under examination. In the second step, work stress and commitment were jointly added to the equation to examine their unique main effects. Finally, an interaction term computed as the cross-product of work stress and commitment was introduced. The test for the interaction effect is based on the variance explained by the cross-product over and above that accounted for by the main effects of stress and commitment. In order to eliminate nonessential correlations between the interaction term and its constituent variables, all predictors were standardized prior to calculating the cross-product term and conducting the analyses (see Aiken & West, 1991).
RESULTS Descriptive Statistics and Intercorrelations

Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations of all study variables are presented in Table 1. Some of the biographical variables were signicantly related to both work stress and the burnout dimension of depersonalization. The association of stress and organizational commitment was only weak and nonsignicant. As expected, work stress was positively correlated with both dimensions of burnout and negatively related to job satisfaction. Commitment was also signicantly correlated with all indicators of strain, but with an inverse pattern of signs. All strain measures were signicantly intercorrelated. However, all variables of the present study showed lower levels of intercorrelations than their respective scale reliabilities which suggests that empirically distinct, yet related, constructs were assessed.
Regression Analyses

The results of the hierarchical moderated regression analyses are summarized in Table 2. The biographical variables accounted for a statistically

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Table 1. Descriptive Statistics and Intercorrelations of Study Variables Scale Variable 1. Age 2. Gendera 3. Organizational tenure 4. Working timeb 5. Work stress 6. Commitment 7. Exhaustion 8. Depersonalization 9. Job satisfaction
a

Intercorrelations 1 .18** 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

SD

43.19 9.62 1.45 0.50 17.72 1.71 3.11 4.58 2.64 2.24 4.74

10.99 .66** .13** 0.46 .05 .54** .15** 0.68 .09* .01 .12** .06 1.29 .07 .05 .08 .06 .05 1.02 .01 .08 .09* .13** .56** .22** ** ** ** ** 0.92 .12 .23 .02 .23 .27 .20** .53** 0.92 .03 .01 .02 .08 .24** .45** .50** .36**
b

Note. N 506. Gender (1 female, 2 male). * p .05. ** p .01.

Working time (1 half-time, 2 full-time).

signicant proportion of variance in both burnout dimensions. The entry of work stress and commitment in Step 2 contributed a highly signicant amount of variance to the prediction of all indicators of strain. In all nal regression equations, both stress and commitment had signicant beta weights, with signs corresponding to expectations. More important, however, the introduction of the two-way interaction between stress and commitment in Step 3 added a signicant amount of incremental variance to the prediction of both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. For both burnout dimensions, this interaction accounted for an additional proportion of variance

Table 2. Results From Hierarchical Moderated Regression Analyses Predicting Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Job Satisfaction Regression steps and effect tested Step 1 Age Gendera Organizational tenure Working timeb Step 2 Work stress Commitment Step 3 Interaction R2 F Emotional exhaustion .10* .07 .09 .07 .58** .26 .11
** **

Depersonalization .19** .20** .06 .11* .26** .20** .10** .23 21.19** R
2

Job satisfaction .01 .02 .02 .10* .24** .43** .02 R2 .01

.02*

.10**

.37 .02

**

.11** .02**

.28**

**

.41 46.46**
b

.00 .29 28.67**

Note. N 506. a Gender (1 female, 2 male). * p .05. ** p .01.

working time (1 half-time, 2 full-time).

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of 2%. By way of contrast, job satisfaction failed to reect such an interaction effect. The specic form of the interaction effects of work stress and organizational commitment on two of the strain measures considered was analyzed with the method recommended by Aiken and West (1991). Accordingly, values of the predictors were chosen two standard deviations and one standard deviation above and below the means. Then, for both dimensions of burnout, simple regression lines were generated by inserting these values into the regression equation. The resulting plots are depicted in Figure 1. It is evident from the gure that work stress and commitment had a quite similar interactive inuence on both strain measures, the form of which conrms the hypothesized buffer function of commitment. For employees with very low and low levels of commitment the adverse impact of work stress was much more pronounced than for employees with high and very high levels of commitment. In other words, the effects of high stress on emotional exhaustion and depersonalization were dampened and perhaps even eliminated with increasing affective commitment to the organization. With the ndings shown in Figure 1, the obvious question arises whether commitment has not only the potential of mitigating the adverse effects of work stress on strain, but indeed may even eliminate them. Simple slope analyses were performed to answer this question (see Aiken & West, 1991). Whereas the signicant interaction terms of the regression analyses indicate that the regressions of the criterion variables on work stress differ signicantly across levels of commitment, simple slope analyses allow to determine whether for a specic level of commitment the regression of the criterion variables on work stress is signicantly different from zero. The results of these analyses revealed that the regressions of exhaustion on work stress were signicantly different from zero at all levels of commitment, even at very
Emotional Exhaustion
5.0
Very low commitment (-2) Low commitment (-1) High commitment (+1) Very high commitment (+2)

Depersonalization
4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5
Very low commitment (-2) Low commitment (-1)

4.0

3.0

High commitment (+1) Very high commitment (+2)

2.0

1.0 -2 -1 0 1 2

-2

-1

Work stress

Work stress

Figure 1. Interaction effects of work stress and organizational commitment on emotional exhaustion and depersonalization.

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high levels ( .36, t 4.76, p .01). The same was true for the regressions of depersonalization on work stress at very low, low, and high levels of commitment. However, at very high levels of commitment the corresponding regression was not signicantly different from zero ( .06, t 0.76, ns). With this level of commitment, thus, the adverse effects of work stress on depersonalization were indeed eliminated.

DISCUSSION

The present study examined the moderating effects of affective organizational commitment on the relation between work stress and strain in addition to main effects. In the literature, two competing hypotheses on the moderating effects have been posited. According to the rst one, employees affective commitment to the organization should sensitize for the adverse effects of stress on strain and related outcomes (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990). In contrast, according to the second hypothesis commitment exerts a buffer function for this relationship (Antonovsky, 1979; Kobasa, 1982; Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001). The results of the present study add to the quite limited evidence on the contrasting hypotheses (Begley & Czajka, 1993; Siu, 2002). They show that commitment to the organization is a valuable personal resource which exerts benecial inuences on strain and well-being in two ways. First, all outcome variables reected a signicant direct inuence of commitment, with negative signs for the burnout dimensions of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and a positive sign for job satisfaction. That is, affective commitment reduces strain and promotes well-being in a direct way. The effect sizes observed were, on average, somewhat higher than the meta-analytical ndings reported by Meyer et al. (2002). In addition to this direct inuence commitment also exerted a moderating inuence on the stress-strain relationship, the form of which corresponded to the hypothesized buffer function. The strength of relations between high work stress and emotional exhaustion and depersonalization decreased with increasing affective commitment. Only for job satisfaction this interaction failed to reach signicance, although the sign of the corresponding -weight signies a similar form of interaction. A possible reason for the different interactive inuences on the burnout variables, on the one hand, and job satisfaction, on the other hand, may be that job satisfaction, as an affective response to the job situation, is more susceptible to short-term affective events in the work environment than indicative of long-term strain states, which are reected in the burnout variables. This conception is in line with recent studies on the impact of various events at work on well-being. In this research, it was consistently

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found that specic events have an inuence on how people feel at work and this, in turn, determines job satisfaction (see Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996; Weiss, 2002). The present results broaden the empirical foundation of both the main and interaction effects of commitment. Furthermore, they show that both effects become evident with other outcome measures and other measures of work stress than used in previous studies. Thus, the main and interaction effects of commitment are not bound to specic indicators of strain and work stressors, but exhibit at least some degree of invariance across methodological variations. A task of future research will be to map out the scope of validity even more precisely. Finally, going beyond Begley & Czajkas (1993) and Sius (2002) observations, the simple-slope analyses show that commitment has not only the potential to mitigate the adverse inuences of work stress on strain, but can even (at least in the burnout dimension of depersonalization) eliminate them. As in previous studies, the current ndings show that work stress is not signicantly related to commitment (see Begley & Czajka, 1993; Siu, 2002). This observation is counterintuitive at rst glance and has important theoretical implications for an understanding of the mechanisms which underlie the observed buffering effect of commitment. The absence of a correlation between work stress and commitment implies that highly committed employees do not cope with stressors by actively and directly limiting their exposure to them. Such active and direct coping efforts should become manifest in a signicant negative correlation between work stress and commitment. It is, therefore, more likely that the buffering effect of commitment is because of appraisal processes which inuence individuals responses to work stress (see Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). As result of these appraisal processes, highly committed employees may experience stress as less threatening and disturbing because commitment gives them a sense of stability, security, and belonging (see Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001).

Limitations

The present study is, of course, not without limitations that need to be considered. First, the cross-sectional design does not allow rm conclusions about the direction of causality. Therefore, the current ndings await further empirical examination in longitudinal studies. Second, since both the predictor and criterion variables were assessed by self-reports, the results might be contaminated by common method variance or a self-report bias (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Podsakoff, & Lee, 2003). However, the impact of a self-report bias or common method variance would mainly be reected in inated main

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effects which, in turn, impair the chances of detecting signicant interaction effects (Aiken & West, 1991). This fact gives the interactions between work stress and affective commitment additional weight. Nevertheless, future research could gain in methodological clearness and practical signicance by considering more objective criterion measures which, like absenteeism or work performance, for example, are largely immune against the chronic common method inuences of self-report measures. Furthermore, it might be argued that the incremental variance explained by the interaction terms is rather low. However, Evans (1985) concluded that moderator effects are so difcult to detect that even those explaining as little as one percent of the total variance should be considered important. Moreover, Champoux and Peters (1987) reviewed much of the relevant literature and reported that eld study interactions typically account for about 13% of the variance (see also McClelland & Judd, 1993). Thus, the additional amount of variance explained by the interaction in the current study (2% in each dimension of burnout) is not only statistically signicant but also theoretically and practically relevant. Finally, although the present study adds to the small evidence base of previous studies, it was conducted with a small sample consisting of only one kind of job holders. Clearly, future research should study larger samples covering a wider range of jobs and should examine whether ndings generalize across different work settings and professions (see Donald et al., 2005).

Implications

From a theoretical perspective, the present ndings reveal largely neglected functions of organizational commitment as a protective resource which has the potential to reduce strain directly and by way of buffering the effects of work-related stress. Thus, a new facet can be added to the existing knowledge on commitment as an important antecedent of other work-related variables (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990). From a practical perspective, the ndings reveal a further starting point for interventions which aim at the prevention or reduction of strain at work. Creating work environments in a way that employees feel affectively committed to their organization is a promising option for practitioners which can be used in analogy to the well-established stress buffers of social support (Cohen & Wills, 1985) and control at work (Wall et al., 1996). With respect to the enhancement of affective commitment of employees, the most effective antecedents of commitment may help to derive specic measures. Consequently, perceived organizational support can be assumed to have the strongest benecial impact on the development of employees

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affective commitment to their organization. This conclusion is in accord with Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, and Sowas (1986) argument that organizations that want affectively committed employees must demonstrate their own commitment by providing a supportive work environment. In line with this argument, Donald et al. (2005) have recently demonstrated among a large sample of a broad range of occupations that commitment from the organization to the employee is a signicant predictor of individual work performance. Therefore, organizations and managers interested in promoting commitment and performance of their employees can nd guidance in the growing organizational support literature. Perceived organizational support has been found to be affected by a variety of human resource management policies and practices which contribute to the employees experiences of being treated in a fair and solicitous way by the organization (see overview by Eisenberger, Cummings, Armeli, & Lynch, 1997). These practices include, for example, family-oriented actions, developmental training and promotion plans, procedural justice in performance appraisal decisions, or fair compensation and distribution of benets. In addition, managers themselves have many opportunities to strengthen those experiences in their day-to-day interactions with their employees. As recently shown (Eisenberger, Stinglhamber, Vandenberghe, Sucharski, & Rhoades, 2002), perceived supervisor support is a signicant determinant of organizational support. The ndings of the current study suggest that investments in strengthening employees affective commitment to their organization are not limited to that aim but, at the same time, have both direct and indirect effects on employees experienced strain and well-being at work. In conclusion, the affective commitment of employees offers a new and promising avenue of stress management that merits further attention in both research and practice.

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