Discussion
In the light of a growing interest in the interplay of multiple commitments, dual commitment can be considered as a specific case when members of an organization are simultaneously committed to the entire organization and to their team or work unit that is nested in this organization. The aim of this study was to investigate the joint impact of team and organizational commitment on employees' team- and organization-directed citizenship behavior, efficacy beliefs, and turnover intentions from both a variable- and from a personcentered perspective. Existing research based on the target similarity principle (Lavelle et al., 2007) suggests that commitment to one target is sufficient to influence behavior directed at the same target. Therefore, commitment to the other target should be largely redundant in predicting target-specific behaviors, resulting in compensatory interactions. By contrast, for example, van Dick et al. (2008) proposed that team and organizational commitment should interact synergistically to enhance employee performance outcomes because of satisfied needs for self-consistency and optimal distinctiveness. Although our hypotheses primarily drew on and extended van Dick et al.’s (2008) reasoning, our study provides support for both perspectives and shows that interactions may work in one direction (e.g. organization) but not the other (e.g. team). Furthermore, the adoption of a person-centered approach provided insight into the meaning of dual commitment by showing that different team and organizational commitment profiles exist in terms of dual and unilateral commitment, and differentially relate to outcome criteria.
