Abstract

This chapter reviews empirical findings related to the antecedents and consequences of social commitments. These commitments refer to commitment to the people employees are in contact with while completing their tasks, that is, supervisors, teams and workgroups, and customers. The literature review however focuses on the affective component/form of social commitments because research on other components/forms (for example, continuance and normative) has been scarce. Findings generally show that social commitments are linked to specific antecedents and predict work attitudes and behavior over and beyond organizational commitment. Several studies also indicate that social commitments and organizational commitment enter in compensatory forms of interaction when predicting work outcomes. Based on accumulated evidence and theoretical arguments, the author then develops a unit-level model and an individual-level model of social commitments whose nomological networks are only partly homologous.