The Relationships among Supervisor Support, Affective Commitment, and Altruistic Behavior

Abstract

Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to research the mediating effect of “employees’ affective commitment to the organization” in the relationship between “perceived supervisor support” and “these employee’s altruistic behavior”. Design/methodology/approach: Dataset of the study consisted of 215 questionnaires gathered from nurses working in two private hospitals in Ankara. SPSS statistical program was used for data entry and analyses. “Hierarchical regression” and “Sobel test” analyses were employed for hypothesis-testing in this study. Findings: According to the analysis results in terms of participants in this study, nurses’ perception of support from immediate supervisors directly affects their affective commitment to the hospital in a significant and positive way. And then, their affective commitment has a direct, significant and positive effect on their altruistic behavior. In addition, perceived supervisor support affects nurses’ altruistic behavior in a significant and positive way both directly and indirectly through their affective commitment. Therefore, nurses’ affective commitment to the hospital has a partial mediating role in the mechanism established within the scope of the study. Discussion: In this study, answer is sought for the question of “is it possible to contribute to the hospital through the enhancing effects of an increase in nurses’ perception level of supervisor support on their levels of affective commitment to the hospital and altruistic behavior?”. According to the research results, it is possible to contribute to the hospital thanks to the mechanism established in this study.