Does the Reflection of Foci of Commitment in Job Performance Weaken as Generations Get Younger? A Comparison between Gen X and Gen Y Employees

Abstract

Today’s organizations increasingly recognize the fact that employees and employee performance are essential intangible assets that should be effectively managed. Affective commitment (AC) is a widely recognized antecedent of sustainable job performance. However, achieving AC has become a great challenge in general and has been especially difficult since the beginning of the pandemic because almost all companies asked their employees to stay at home and work remotely in an isolated manner. Today, many different generations work side by side, contrary to the past, when generational mixing was very rare. Many differences exist among these employee generations, which determine their feelings towards authority and organization. Accordingly, this paper aims to clarify generational differences in the interrelationships among AC and sustainable job performance between Gen X and Gen Y employees. As remote working structure limits the interactions that employees have with their supervisor, fellow employees, and the organization, we decided to use the foci of commitment: affective commitment to the organization, affective commitment to the supervisor, and affective commitment to coworkers. Based on data from 416 post-graduates of Beykent University and using the PLS-SEM technique, we find that commitment to the supervisor and commitment to the organization are positively associated with job performance. Moreover, the findings reveal that the impact of the relationship between commitment to the supervisor and job performance is weaker for Gen Y than for Gen X.