Management has been considering employee commitment as one of the strategic priorities, due to many studies suggesting the positive influence of commitment on high performance, innovative work behavior, employee retention, and many other important business outcomes. Nevertheless, commitment is considered an abstract construct, from which human resources management needs to create policies and practices that effectively support the business strategy and organizational culture. The existence of many foci of commitment in the workplace has been a challenge in that scenario, being important to understand how different foci relate to each other and how they influence the employee commitment process. To contribute to filling this gap, this research aims to compare two different models, analyzing the relationship between two foci of commitment, namely the affective commitment to the leader and organizational commitment. For this purpose, the employees’ emotional awareness has been considered as an independent variable. Hence, this study seeks to identify which model has higher explanatory power, and consequently, a more significant impact on the process of the employees’ commitment. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Commitment has been perceived as a strategic topic in organizations due to its positive effect on retaining talent, increasing performance, or boosting employees’ innovative behavior. However there are many focis of commitment in the workplace, which has represented a challenge to human resources management, who need implement measures to improve the employee’s commitment. Recent research has suggested a need to conduct studies about commitment, namely antecedents and the relationship between different focis, to understand the dynamic and directionality between them. Hence, the purpose of this work is to analyze how employees’ emotional awareness relates with two focis of commitment (the leader and the organization), also assessing the mediating role of affective commitment to the leader. The study uses structural equation modeling and Lisrel to test the hypotheses considering the multidimensionality of organizational commitment (affective; normative; and continuance), employees emotional awareness (understanding self-emotions; self-control when facing criticism; and understanding others’ emotions), and the affective commitment to the leader, under the scope of Social Exchange Theory. The Mackinon’s Z Test was used to assess the mediation role of affective commitment to the leader. The sample is composed for 403 employees from two multinational companies. The results provide empirical evidence about the mediating role of affective commitment to the leader in the relationship between employees’ emotional awareness and organizational commitment, and the employees’ emotional awareness as an antecedent of commitment. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.