The Social Enterprises’ Organizational Commitment: The Effect of Psychological Ownership and the Moderation Effects of Social Entrepreneurship and Organizational Support

Abstract

This study was to investigate the organizational commitment of members of social enterprises, and the effects of the individual and the organizational variables. The social entrepreneurship was defined as the organizational-level value that includes balanced social and economic purposes to differentiate social enterprises from commercial enterprises or non-profit organizations. The study examined the effect of psychological ownership on organizational commitment, and the moderating effect of social entrepreneurship using multilevel methodology. Also, it tested the effect of perceived organizational support as an individual-level moderator. A survey research was conducted by gathering 140 employees of 32 companies(social enterprises=16, smaller enterprises=16), and HLM 6.08 was used to analyze the cross-level relationships. In terms of the results of affective commitment. the positive effect of psychological ownership and the moderating effect organizational support were significant, while cross-level moderating effect of social entrepreneurship was not found. The results of continuance commitment showed a different pattern where the cross-level moderating effect of social entrepreneurship was found significant, indicating that the non-significant effect of psychological ownership needs to be examined in more detail. From the results, the study provided theoretical and practical implications for the human resource management to improve members’ organizational commitment of Korean social enterprises.