INFLUENCE OF INTRINSIC MOTIVATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ON FAMILY BUSINESS AFFECTIVE COMMITMENT: FORMAL AND INFORMAL CONTROLS AS MEDIATING ELEMENTS

Abstract

An important part of management literature has focused on understanding the backgrounds of affective commitment by the staff of organizations. Besides, a growing body of literature highlights the influence of individual and organizational issues on affective commit¬ment, while other studies indicate that formal and informal controls have a mediating effect on the relationship between individual and organizational issues and the affective commitment to¬wards organizations. Therefore, this study seeks to analyze the influence of intrinsic motivation and organizational culture mediated by formal and informal controls on the affective commit¬ment of employees working for family businesses. To do that, we applied a survey to 10 medium¬sized family businesses and administered a questionnaire to 116 employees from these firms. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed hypotheses. Results show that the relationship between employees' intrinsic motivation and affective commitment is explained by the inclusion of intervening variables, such as informal controls, whose indirect effects on such relationship were positive and significant and also contributed to higher structural coefficients and greater significance in the total effect of the proposed model. On the other hand, a signifi¬cant relationship was observed for the variable organizational culture only after the inclusion of informal controls by managers. This research contributes to the literature by presenting evi¬dence that intrinsic motivation and organizational culture may appear as antecedents of the use of formal and informal controls by managers and supervisors, also adding to family businesses management practices by highlighting the role of informal controls on the affective commit¬ment of employees. It is concluded that intrinsic motivation and organizational culture mediated by the use of informal controls positively influence affective commitment.