Is Commitment Getting Infected Too? How COVID-19 Stay-Home Orders Influence Workgroup Commitment

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated “Stay-Home” restrictions in the United States have disrupted employees’ lives. We leverage the change brought on by the Stay-Home restrictions to examine corresponding changes in employees’ commitment to their workgroup. Specifically, we advance and test a model predicting that the Stay-Home restrictions prevented workgroups from engaging in rigidly performed, meaningful workplace activities (i.e., ritualistic workplace activities), which subsequently made members feel that the group was less cohesive and ultimately reduced members’ workgroup commitment. We also compare changes in workgroup commitment to changes in workgroup identification, hypothesizing that commitment to one’s group erodes more than identification when workgroups are perceived to be less cohesive. We test our model in a four-wave panel survey of 772 U.S. employees at the onset of the Stay-Home restrictions, which allows us to examine within-person changes to commitment over time. Consistent with our hypotheses, commitment decreased as the duration of Stay-Home restrictions increased, which was mediated by corresponding declines in engaging in ritualistic workplace activities and perceptions of the workgroup’s cohesiveness. Further, commitment to one’s workgroup declined more than did identification with the workgroup, due to the stronger relationship between perceived group cohesion and commitment (vs. identification). We replicated these results in a separate, preregistered cross-sectional survey. Our findings shed light on the mechanisms underlying workgroup commitment, demonstrating that engagement in ritualistic activities, which enhance workgroup cohesion, is linked to stronger commitment— more so than identification—over time.

The entitativity underlying meetings: Meetings as key in the lifecycle of effective workgroups

“…We suggest that there are at least three meaningful implications for organizations and employees based on our propositions. We start by focusing on the increasing virtual nature of work (Brenan, 2020; Stein et al, 2021). While there is certainly research on how to conduct good virtual meetings (Allison et al, 2015), focusing on how to instill a strong level of entitativity within these meetings provides leaders with another analytical tool to create workgroup success.…”

“…Further, as we challenge the assumption of co-location, entitativity may take on even more importance within organizations. For example, during the COVID 19 global pandemic, remote workers decreased their organizational commitment due, in part, to a lack of ritualistic workplace activities like meetings (Stein et al, 2021). Because commitment is an outcome of entitativity, successful meetings that increase entitativity with dispersed employees is going to be especially important.…”

Employee Voice and Employee Commitment Have Become a Global Emergency

“…Despite this, Willman and Pepper (2020) established that human resource management practices have been amplifying inequalities at the workplace rather than moderating them for the last 30 years across the world. Stein et al (2021) asserted that the COVID-19 virus also infected EC across the globe since employees are required to work from home. Nevertheless, there is also evidence in the literature that the recent global financial crisis affected EV and EC (see e.g., Meyer et al, 2018;McWilliams et al, 2019).…”