Towards Sustainable Organizations: Supervisor Support, Commitment to Change and the Mediating Role of Organizational Identification

Abstract

According to psychology of sustainability, healthy organizations conduct successful businesses, regenerate employees’ belongingness, and promote organizational and individual growth and change. In line with this assumption, this study investigates: a) The relation between perceived supervisor support and the affective, normative, and continuance components of commitment to change (CtC), and b) the mediating role of organizational identification on the relation between perceived supervisor support and components of CtC. Participants were 243 employees of a company that, in order to introduce a new organizational vision, was implementing multiple change initiatives. Results show the direct effect of perceived supervisor support on affective and normative CtC, the partial mediating effect of organizational identification on affective and normative CtC, and the full mediating effect on continuance CtC. Such results extend previous studies and are in line with the assumptions of the psychology of sustainability: Supervisor support can be considered as a primary preventive intervention that increases employees’ belongingness and encourages them to commit to change initiatives.