For a dozen years now, commitment and citizenship have been subjects of continually increasing interest in academic managerial literature. Though each benefits from a considerable body of research, study of the links between these two concepts is relatively recent. Current research does not sufficiently take conceptual advances into account. New targets of commitment (commitment to the supervisor and commitment to the workgroup) have appeared. To these, new forms of citizenship (public spiritedness and team spirit) may be added. Empirical relations between various targets of commitment and these new forms of citizenship remain to be clarified. This article proposes to explore the empirical links between affective commitment to one's organization, superior and work group, and citizenship oriented towards the organization and the individuals to determine which targets of commitment explain which forms of citizenship.
For this research, two hypotheses were tested with a sample of 138 people. First, affective commitment to the organization and supervisor are better predictors of citizenship behaviour towards the organization than organizational citizenship behaviour oriented towards individuals. Secondly, affective commitment to the work team is a better predictor of citizenship behaviour oriented towards individuals than citizenship behaviour oriented towards the organization. The results obtained contribute to a better understanding of empirical relations between commitment and citizenship in the organizational context. As expected in this research, the data show that, on one hand, affective commitment towards the organization and supervisor better predict citizenship behaviour oriented towards the organization (civic virtue and sportsmanship). On the other hand, they reveal that affective commitment to colleagues better predicts citizenship behaviour oriented towards individuals (altruism and helping). In short, the findings of the present research demonstrate better prediction of different forms of citizenship when employees' commitment to multiple targets is examined.