Organizational politics and work identity as predictors of organizational commitment

Building on the organizational-politics (Kacmar & Baron, 1999) and social-identity (Hogg & Terry, 2000) literatures, we examined the moderating effect of work identity on the organizational-politics/organizational-commitinent relationship, Data collected from 500 employees of a data-reporting organization and 943 employees of a customer-service organization indicate that employees who identified primarily with their occupations were less affected by the level of perceived politics in the organization in the consideration of their commitment than were employees who identified primarily with their employing organizations or one of its units. Implications for research and management practice are discussed.