Supervisor undermining and organizational commitment: A contingency approach

Research has largely documented the detrimental effects of social undermining in the workplace on employee attitudes and performance. However, the relationships between social undermining and the three components of organizational commitment remain scarcely studied. Moreover, research on undermining behaviors from supervisors is still neglected. The purpose of this study was two-fold. First, as supervisors act as agents of the organization, we expected supervisor undermining to be detrimental to employee affective, normative, and continuance organizational commitment. Indeed, we argue that supervisor undermining weakens the employee’s affective bond with the organization (affective commitment), their sense of moral obligation and loyalty towards the organization (normative commitment), and their perception of the advantages associated with staying in the organization (continuance commitment). Second, we expected employee self-blame to reduce the effects of supervisor undermining by clearing the organization’s responsibility for this behavior and perceived supervisor organizational status to exacerbate these effects by increasing the organization’s responsibility. Specifically, when employees’ self-blame is high, employees would endorse the responsibility for the supervisor’s undermining behavior, while when they perceive the supervisor as having high organizational status, they would implicitly consider that the supervisor acts on behalf of the organization. Based on a sample of 1 003 employees working in a variety of organizations and industries, we found that supervisor undermining was negatively related to employee affective commitment but unrelated to normative and continuance commitment. Moreover, employee self-blame interacted with supervisor undermining to predict the three components of commitment. Supervisor undermining was negatively related to affective, normative, and continuance commitment when employee self-blame was lower. Similarly, perceived supervisor organizational status interacted with supervisor undermining to predict affective and normative commitment. Supervisor undermining was negatively related to affective and normative commitment when perceived supervisor organizational status was higher. These findings are discussed in the context of research on supervisor undermining and organizational commitment.