A matter of feeling? The affective tone of organizational commitment and identification

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between organizational commitment, organizational identification, and self‐reported affect at work. The results of a questionnaire survey of 365 engineers show that affective organizational commitment was correlated with experiencing more positive affective states. On the other hand, continuance commitment was not characterized as involving significant negative affect. Organizational identification was correlated with the frequency of both positive and negative affective states, but the correlation with positive affect was no longer significant when controlling for affective commitment. The paper concludes with comments on the nature of organizational commitment and identification, based on these findings. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.