Building organizational commitment in nested groups: Theory and new evidence from South Korea

We investigate team commitment as a nested group phenomenon and examine perceived organizational support as a mechanism through which nested team commitment is generalized to the larger organizational unit. We theorize that employees develop nested team commitments by attributing positive emotions (e.g., job satisfaction) to teams more than to the larger organization. At issue with nested teams is how to mobilize local commitments to the larger organization and thereby coordinate and integrate inter-team activities at the organizational level. We propose perceived organizational support as a solution, which operates as a re-categorization mechanism to help employees expand their nested group boundary to include the larger organization. We derive two main effect hypotheses and two moderation effect hypotheses. These hypotheses are tested using data from 768 employees of a large Korean organization. The results provide support for three of the four hypotheses. The order of authorship is random and does not reflect differing contributions.