Good is Not Good, When Better is Expected: Discrepancies between Ideal and Actual Collectivism and their Effect on Organizational Commitment

Abstract

We draw on social exchange theory to investigate whether discrepancies between ideal and actual organizational collectivism influence the three types of organizational commitment, namely affective, normative, and continuance commitment. We employ the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) project methodology with a sample of 638 employees and find that different manifestations of collectivism discrepancies have heterogeneous effects on commitment. In particular, the results of polynomial regression analyses show that a high discrepancy between ideal and actual institutional collectivism leads to lower affective and normative organizational commitment. In contrast, a discrepancy of in‐group collectivism does not affect organizational commitment. The significance of the above results and their practical implications are discussed.