Correlating Affective Commitment with Prosocial Behavior: Does Perceived Meaningfulness at Work Matter?

Abstract

The present work studies the engagement of prosocial behavior as an antecedent of affective commitment within for-profit organizations. In order to accomplish this, the work focuses on the role of positive feelings. It tests a partial least square-structural equation model using a cross-sectional survey of 144 professional employees from several Colombian industries. Results obtained show that prosocial behavior is associated with affective commitment, but only with the intervention of meaningfulness at work. These associations provide insight into professional employees’ attitudes towards the search for intrinsic motivation and engagement in for-profit organizational environments. Further implications revolve around the justification for working on practices that not only found and foster prosocial behavior in the workplace but also promote skill variety, task identity, and task meaningfulness to obtain adequate levels of engagement and commitment. Finally, since most studies have been conducted in developed countries, this study also contributes to a better understanding of the topic in previously unexplored contexts. In this case, a Latin American emerging economy, like Colombia.