Too-Much-of-a-Good-Thing? The curvilinear relation between identification, overcommitment, and employee well-being
Organizational identification reflects the link between employees and their organization and it has been consistently found positively related to employee health and well-being (Steffens, Haslam, Jetten and van Dick 2017). However, recent reviews and initial empirical evidence questioned the assumption of a uniform linear relation. We propose a U-shaped curvilinear mediation model, in which identification will be non-linearly related to changes in overcommitment over time, which in turn, will be related to employee psychological distress and job burnout. We tested the potential negative effect of over-identification in a two-wave study ( N = 85) across 18 months of both blue-collar and white-collar employees in an Italian manufacturing firm. The results confirmed our hypotheses and revealed a curvilinear effect of identification on overcommitment as well as indirect effects for health and burnout. We discuss implications for theory in form of the too-much-of-a-good-thing notion and we discuss practical implications for managers who should be conscious of these effects when designing interventions to increase identification.
Published
Avanzi, L., Savadori, L., Fraccaroli, F., Ciampa, V., & Van Dick, R. (in press). Too-Much-of-a-Good-Thing? The curvilinear relation between identification, overcommitment, and employee well-being. Current Psychology
