Impact of Firm Ownership Type on Organizational Commitment and Citizenship Behaviour

In today’s globalized scenario, where advancements in technologies have facilitated people to connect, communicate and collaborate, and where organizations are striving to create an ecosystem that develops sustainable competitive advantage, people issues become a key factor. Organizations, therefore, require an understanding of the business scenario, organizational context and employee characteristics that influence employee behaviour and their workplace relationships as well as their intentions to stay. Though all organizations expect their employees to act with a sense of trust and commitment, the business context of family- and non-family firms are unique and different. While family firms are characterized by the family’s value system and emotions in building strong employee engagement, non-family firms are transactional and driven by outcomes. The study explores differences in organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour between family- and non-family firms, and it draws on the tenets from the Social Exchange theory. The data has been collected from 634 dyadic responses captured at two levels—employees’ self-reported commitment levels and their citizenship behaviour rated by their managers. Our results show that, in the Indian context, the employees of family firms demonstrate a higher affective, continuance and normative commitment as compared to those of non-family firms. However, the two groups did not differ significantly in their organization citizenship behaviour. It was also found that the relationship between organizational commitment and citizenship behaviour was stronger in employees of family firms than in employees of non-family firms.