Perceived organizational support and expatriate organizational citizenship behavior : The mediating role of affective commitment towards the parent company

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to empirically examine the relationships between organizational support, affective commitment, and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) for expatriates. Design/methodology/approach – Data from 162 expatriates, working in 37 subsidiaries of multinational corporations located in Mainland China, are used to examine the proposed hypotheses. The surveys are administrated in Chinese. Survey items are first translated into Chinese and then back translated to English to reduce the risk of losing meaning. Hierarchical regressions are used in the statistical analyses. Findings – Results indicate that perceived organizational support (POS) from both the parent company and the subsidiary significantly related to affective commitment and organizational‐directed OCB. The results also show that the affective commitment acted as a partial mediator of the relationship between parent company POS and organizational‐directed OCB, and a full mediator of the relationship between subsidiary POS and organizational‐directed OCB. Research limitations/implications – The sampling strategy employed possibly could weaken the generalization of the research findings. Practical implications – The empirical results would encourage practitioners to enhance their services for expatriates. Management efforts devoted to enhancing the perception and reality of organizational support to expatriates may offer positive outcomes in terms of higher expatriate affective commitment towards the parent company, which significantly mediates the impact of POS on expatriate's ultimate attitudes and behaviors toward the company. Originality/value – This study using POS as a lens to study expatriates' organizational commitment and organizational‐directed OCB provides a base for additional research to further develop the fields of POS and organizational‐directed OCB as they apply to expatriates.