Drivers of Employees’ Organizational Identification and Commitment in the Context of Sponsorship: An Abstract

Abstract

Employees are a key stakeholder group within organizations and have been target groups for sponsorships since the early years of sponsorship (Crowley 1991; Gardner and Shuman 1988). Many authors suggest that the key constructs for positive effects of sponsorship on downstream employee behaviors are employees’ organizational identification and organizational commitment (Hickman et al. 2005; Khan and Stanton 2010; Khan et al. 2013). Although researchers have identified a range of positive effects of sport sponsorship on employees, surprisingly little is known why and how sponsorship affects employees (Farrelly et al. 2012). Therefore, the goal of this study is to use literature streams related to organizational identification, internal marketing, and sponsorship effects on consumers to develop a research model of sponsorship-related drivers that influence employees’ organizational identification and commitment. An empirical study tests the corresponding hypotheses in the context of a sport sponsorship with 160 employees. Results of two moderated regressions show that perceptions of their employer’s sponsorship in general (i.e., attitude toward sponsorship, perceived altruistic and self-serving sponsor motives) affect employees’ organizational identification, whereas specific perceptions of the sponsored property relate to employees’ organizational commitment. The length of employment increases both positive effects of altruistic sponsor motive perceptions and negative effects of self-serving sponsor motive perceptions. The findings contribute to our understanding of (sport) sponsorship effects on employees and provide directions on how managers may combine socially responsible and commercially driven sponsorships to achieve distinct objectives when considering their employees as a target group for their sponsorships. First, it appears that factors related to the specific sponsored property are less relevant for employees than for consumers. For employees, it may actually be the case that commercial sponsorship of specific properties is not their primary concern but that they value and reward socially responsible employer behavior and actions that show that the company is a valuable member of the community that does not always (obviously) act based on self-serving motives. Second, effects of some sponsorship-related drivers on organizational identification and commitment are different. Factors related to sponsorship in general have a stronger impact on organizational identification, whereas factors related to the sponsored property have a stronger impact on employees’ commitment. Third, the findings suggest that employees’ active participation in the sponsored activity does not have a significant effect. This preliminary conclusion requires further research, because active participation is a fairly vague term, and the effects of active involvement may depend on the kind of and the reasons for participation. References Available Upon Request