Purpose The purpose of this paper is to argue that affective commitment plays a significant and complex role in the relationship between social support and turnover intention. Design/methodology/approach Surveys were returned by 217 hospital employees with an average tenure of 11.55 years (SD=10.20). Findings Findings suggest that perceived organizational support and perceived supervisor support (PSS) could directly impact turnover intention without the mediation of affective commitment. Thus, affective commitment only partially mediates the negative relation between perceived support and turnover intention. In addition, the results suggest that enhanced PSS reduced turnover intention more powerfully, when affective commitment increased. For a highly committed employee, support from the supervisor can be more influential than that of a less committed employee. Originality/value This is an initial investigation on the moderating role of affective commitment in the relationship between perceived social support and turnover intention. Further, the findings emphasize the independent impact of perceived social support above and beyond the effect mediated by affective commitment, thus adding evidence to the debate on the extend of the mediating effect of affective commitment.

This study examines how members of a global virtual team chose communication media while managing multiple boundaries. The study is unique in that it considers the perspectives of U.S. managers who teleworked from

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Purpose Growing up in the technology era and heavily invested in longer full-time education, the millennial workforce holds unique characteristics that may influence important job outcomes. Building on the recent research on workforce generations, this paper aims to investigate not only the overall effect of the millennial generation on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) but also the nuanced effect of how workforce generations may interact with two factors in career development (i.e. job crafting and career anchor) in predicting OCB. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was conducted among full-time workers in the USA, 321 (64 per cent) of whom were millennials. Hierarchical regression was used to test the hypotheses. Findings Results indicated that millennials appeared to be less interested in OCB compared to earlier generations in the workforce. Nevertheless, some dimensions of OCB increased when millennials conducted resource-related job crafting or when they held a career anchor on service. In addition, both of these career development factors were positively correlated with OCB. Research limitations/implications This study offers important implications to researchers as well as practitioners and highlights the significance of career development factors in motivating millennials toward desired job outcomes. Originality/value This research is among the initial attempts to assess the impact of job design and career factors on OCB among millennial workers. The findings highlight millennials’ unique perspectives toward OCB and how job crafting and career anchor may play influencing roles on OCB. With millennials becoming the largest generation in the workforce, such knowledge is critical.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to distinguish different types of guanxi from a historic perspective and to investigate the effects of different types of guanxi on trust between alliance partners through an empirical study.Design/methodology/approachThe paper first reviews the role of guanxi in Chinese history and identifies two types of guanxi. Next, it reports an empirical study that tests the effects of these two types of guanxi on interorganizational trust through a survey among automobile parts suppliers in China.FindingsFirst, this paper identifies two types of guanxi: role‐based hierarchical guanxi endorsed by Confucianism and soil‐rooted egocentric guanxi derived from daily practices of Chinese people. The ever changing social environment in Chinese history supports a spiral development model of guanxi evolution. Each of the two types of guanxi takes a dominant position in different periods of time. Second, a subsequent empirical study demonstrates that, in today's Chinese business environment, role‐based guanxi makes a more significant impact on interorganizational trust than soil‐rooted guanxi. Moreover, these two types of guanxi produce a positive synergistic effect and facilitate each other in boosting interorganizational trust.Originality/valueThis is the first paper that identifies and empirically tests the effects of role‐based hierarchical guanxi and soil‐rooted egocentric guanxi. More broadly, the paper highlights the importance of studying guanxi from a historic perspective. It demonstrates how a historical analysis may further the understanding of guanxi and its effect on interorganizational trust in today's business context.