Are prosocially motivated employees more committed to their organization? The roles of supervisors’ prosocial motivation and perceived corporate social responsibility

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media New York. How to enhance prosocial employees’ commitment to their organizations is of both theoretical and practical importance. The present study argues that a high level of organizational commitment in prosocial employees is predicted by bipartite synergy between employees’ prosocial motivations and their supervisors’ prosocial motivations, between employees’ prosocial motivations and their organizations’ prosocial orientations, and tripartite synergy among all three. Polynomial regressions and hierarchical regression analyses are undertaken on data collected from a sample of 216 full-time employees in China. The results show that perceived fit between employees and supervisors’ prosocial motivations (i.e., person-supervisor [PS] fit) is positively related to employees’ organizational commitment (i.e., there is bipartite synergy between employees and supervisors’ prosocial motivations). Perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) moderates the relationship between employees’ prosocial motivations and their organizational commitment such that when employees’ prosocial motivations and perceived CSR are both high (as opposed to when either or both are low), their organizational commitment is stronger (i.e., there is bipartite synergy between employees’ prosocial motivations and CSR). Furthermore, perceived CSR moderates the relationship between PS fit in relation to prosocial motivations and organizational commitment. Notably, organizational commitment is strongest when there is a strong alignment among employees’ prosocial motivations, supervisors’ prosocial motivations, and CSR (i.e., there is tripartite synergy among employees’ prosocial motivations, supervisors’ prosocial motivations, and CSR). The theoretical contributions and practical implications of this study are discussed.