Combined antecedents of prison employees' affective commitment using fsQCA

The prison context is labor-intensive; therefore, a prison staff plays a key role in employees' identification with and involvement in their jobs: essential elements to the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. Although previous studies analyze the antecedents of organizational commitment, to date, no studies analyze how the combination of several variables can affect the employees' affective commitment in the prison context. Therefore, this research analyzes the relationships of seven combined effects that influence the presence or absence of affective commitment among prison employees (n = 486): (a) distributive justice, (b) procedural justice, (c) interactional justice, (d) personal-related bullying, (f) work-related bullying, (g) age, and (h) overcrowding. The findings from a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis support that, in the prison context, managers should avoid bullying to achieve employees' affective commitment, hying to improve at the same time the employees' perception of organizational justice, mainly interactional justice. Older employees are more likely to develop emotional ties with the organization than younger employees are. In addition, an important variable in the prison context is overcrowding, which plays a secondary role in the employees' affective commitment. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.