The Role of Feedback Quality and Organizational Cynicism for Affective Commitment Through Leader

Abstract

Affective commitment is crucial for employees to guarantee that they adhere to organizational interests and goals, but not self-evident for street-level bureaucrats who have a great deal of discretionary freedom in doing their work. Street-level bureaucrats can deviate from organizational goals during the execution of custom-fit solutions, and particularly so when they are cynical toward their organization. To increase affective commitment among street-level bureaucrats, leaders may play an important role by providing qualitative feedback and having a high-quality leader–member exchange relationship with their team members. We examined the cross-level interaction of leaders’ feedback quality and police officers’ organizational cynicism in relation with affective commitment through Leader–Member eXchange (LMX). Building on theorizing on human resource (HR) attributions and on the assumption in social exchange theory that individuals engage in different reciprocation efforts, we expected that police officers who are more cynical toward their organization would be hesitant to reciprocate with more commitment to their organization when their leader’s feedback quality is low. Our findings in a sample of 266 police officers nested in 71 teams supported this expectation. Hence, this study contributes to a better understanding of how to foster the affective commitment of employees who have discretion in their work. Feedback quality appears to be crucial, both for LMX and affective commitment, and this particularly for police officers who are more cynical about their organization.

Keywords

feedback quality LMX affective commitment organizational cynicism street-level bureaucrats police officers

Introduction

In many public sector organizations, employees gain more and more discretion, and their affective commitment may be threatened by teleworking (De Vries et al., 2019), by knowledge work (Walsh, 2016), and by the changing employment relationship in this sector (Audenaert et al., 2019a). This study seeks to enhance our understanding about how to foster the affective commitment of street-level bureaucrats, being employees in a public sector context who have a lot of discretion. In particular, this study focuses on police organizations which are “street-level bureaucracies” that are characterized by tight hierarchy, but in which police officers have a considerable discretion to act according to their personal priorities and beliefs (Lipsky, 1980). Although discretion is functional for police officers to create custom-fit solutions in specific situations, it might hinder the realization of organizational goals when police officers choose not to act on behalf of their organization. Therefore, police managers seek to enforce compliance of their staff with bureaucratic requirements and performance standards (Cronin et al., 2017). This approach to managing employee performance is questionable because it is impossible to prescribe procedures with sufficient detail for every possible situation (Johnson, 2015).

An alternative approach police managers can take is to reinforce affective commitment, which entails emotional attachment to the organization by identifying with the organization, enjoying membership, and feeling involved (Meyer & Allen, 1991). Police officers may be more willing to pursue the organizational interests and goals if they feel and experience high levels of affective commitment (Van Gelderen & Bik, 2016). Earlier research indeed supports that affective commitment makes police officers adhere to ethical standards and engage less in deviant behaviors (Haarr, 1997). However, empirical studies demonstrate that police officers’ commitment to the organization is vulnerable and typically declines with tenure (e.g., Beck & Wilson, 2000). Thus, further enhancing our understanding of how to maintain and foster police officers’ affective commitment appears to be relevant for the overall human resource management (HRM) knowledge base regarding managing employees with significant discretion. More specifically, this study can advance theory and research on performance management practices for street-level bureaucrats.

Building on previous research, we have chosen to focus on the effectiveness of police managers’ feedback quality for fostering affective commitment (e.g., Metcalfe & Dick, 2001; Perez et al., 2017). Police officers’ work environment is characterized by ambiguous goals (Van Thielen et al., 2018). From situation-to-situation, there may be different desired outcomes and different pathways to achieve these outcomes (Johnson, 2015). Therefore, it is challenging for police managers to provide high-quality feedback that is specific, consistent over time, and informative for performance outcomes (Steelman et al., 2004).

We specifically aim to enhance our understanding of the motivational underpinning of the linkage between police managers’ feedback quality and police officers’ affective commitment. Based on social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), and the role of the leader as an agent of the organization (Levinson, 1965), we introduce LMX as a possible mediator in this relationship. In LMX theory, it is assumed that leaders develop different exchange relationships with their team members (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Furthermore, notwithstanding the multilevel nature in which leaders affect employees (e.g., Tseng & Levy, 2019), we posit that each and every individual police officer will react differently to their leader’s feedback quality. Therefore, we include the role of individual attributions (Nishii et al., 2008) in the relationship between feedback quality, LMX, and affective commitment. Such attributions can determine how, in particular, management’s intentions and actions are interpreted by the specific employee. Specifically, building further on social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), in understanding this interpretation process, we argue that it is relevant to study system trust or interpersonal trust (Gould-Williams, 2003; Gould-Williams & Davies, 2005). Therefore, we assume an attribution of specific relevance in the context of police officers is organizational cynicism, because police officers typically distrust management (Johnson, 2015). Organizational cynicism represents an individual attribution that is highly relevant to police officers because they are frequently confronted with the negative side of society, and their ideal of being able to fix things often fades after a couple of years in service (Osborne, 2014). Moreover, also in many organizations outside the police context, unfavorable attitudes among employees are a fact of life (Naus et al., 2007), and these attitudes are likely to be increasing due to a declining employee trust. This deteriorating trust in public organizations is a response to cutback management, which threatens job security (Piatak, 2019).

This article makes a twofold contribution. First, we add to previous work that shows that public servants are increasingly committed to achieving their own work goals rather than being committed to their organization’s goals (Ordóñez et al., 2009), linked to the changing focus on overdemanding jobs in the public sector due to pressures arising from New Public Management (Audenaert et al., 2019a). This can be interpreted as a worrying trend as research suggests that the increasing workload is unfortunate to organizational performance because it fosters intentions to quit one’s job and it lowers job satisfaction (Gould-Williams et al., 2014). This makes it important for HRM studies to increase our understanding of how public sector employees can be managed in a challenging work environment (Bauwens et al., 2019a; Steen & Schott, 2019).

Second, we extend the findings of past empirical work on feedback quality and affective commitment at the individual level (Johnson, 2015; Metcalfe & Dick, 2001; Perez et al., 2017) by finding support for a cross-level effect of a leader’s feedback quality on police officers’ affective commitment, specifically street-level bureaucrats (i.e., police officers) for whom affective commitment may be particularly threatened due to their high degree of discretion (Keulemans & Groeneveld, 2020). We particularly address calls in public administration and HRM literature to develop arguments from organizational psychology (e.g., Olsen et al., 2018). On one hand, we introduce LMX quality as a possible mechanism in the linkage between feedback quality and affective commitment. On the other hand, we respond to a need to increase our understanding of the effects of organizational cynicism (Osborne, 2014) by exploring differences in the effectiveness of high-quality feedback. Indeed, organizational cynicism may generate different individual schema’s to interpret their managers’ behaviors in implementing feedback quality (Nishii et al., 2008).

The conceptualization of feedback quality at the leader-level and the other variables at the individual-level implies a multilevel model (see Figure 1). In particular, while team-level feedback quality reflects that leaders differ in their approach to feedback, and that leaders are more likely to provide feedback during team meetings than individually in the police context, individual police officers differ in (a) organizational cynicism, (b) LMX, and (c) affective commitment.

Figure 1.

Multilevel moderated mediation of the linkage between feedback quality and affective commitment.

Theory and Hypotheses

Toward a Mediation Model for Enhancing Affective Commitment to the Organization

The challenging work environment of public sector organizations, such as police organizations, is characterized by ambiguous goals and pathways to these goals (Johnson, 2015; Van Thielen et al., 2018). Street-level bureaucrats face this ambiguity with discretion to create custom-fit solutions which might hinder the realization of organizational goals, particularly when they are not affectively committed to the organization. In this section, we argue that high-quality feedback might be an important antecedent for affective commitment.

Feedback quality refers to the extent to which feedback is specific, consistent over time, and informative, in reference to the specific goal-oriented behaviors and processes that foster performance outcomes (Steelman et al., 2004). As such, feedback quality forms part of the feedback environment in which the team members operate and is regarded as beneficial by the team members because it increases their beliefs that their performance behaviors will lead to the desired outcomes (Rosen et al., 2006). In particular, by guiding and reinforcing desired behaviors, feedback reduces ambiguity and the associated uncertainty (Rosen et al., 2006). Earlier research among police officers indeed indicated that sound feedback allows police officers to correct deficiencies and to modify their performance to meet their supervisor’s expectations (Johnson, 2015). Feedback environment pertains to the contextual aspects of the daily supervisor-subordinate feedback processes “rather than to formal appraisal feedback” (Steelman et al., 2004, p. 166).

Relational leadership theory (Uhl-Bien et al., 1997) suggests that leadership behaviors can signal a psychological safe environment in which followers can “divert their attention away from themselves to their organization as a whole” (Gottfredson & Aguinis, 2017, p. 582), which explains why they are committed to the organization. According to this theory, social interactions such as leadership behaviors can generate a relational process, which is argued to construct new employee attitudes (Uhl-Bien, 2011). Building on this relational leadership theory, leader’s behaviors in providing qualitative feedback are hypothesized to lead to affective commitment because, following their behaviors, they can develop a caring bond with their employees (i.e., LMX quality). A meta-analysis by Dulebohn et al. (2012) demonstrates that leader behaviors, such as contingent reward behaviors and transformational leadership behaviors, are indeed linked to employee attitudes and behaviors through LMX quality. Dulebohn and associates (2012) also provide support for linking other leadership behaviors, such as feedback quality, with affective commitment through LMX. We further build on social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) to expect that the provision of high-quality feedback by the leader fosters team members’ affective commitment—the extent to which team members experience an emotional attachment to, and identification with, the organization’s values and objectives (Meyer & Allen, 1991).

In accordance with social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), affective commitment can be regarded to be a return by the team members to their leader in accordance with the social exchange obligations between the organization and its employees. As an essential corner stone of the social exchange theory, the norm of reciprocity explains why an organization’s commitment to employees (which is here demonstrated by the leaders’ efforts in providing high-quality feedback) translates in employees’ commitment to the organization (Gouldner, 1960). Individual team members connect themselves emotionally to their organization and its objectives in return to inducements that they received from their organization (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005). As leaders act on behalf of the organization (Levinson, 1965), leaders’ feedback quality toward the team demonstrate the organization’s commitment to employees which makes them feel obliged to be committed to their organization in return. In other words, when employees perceive that their leader supports them and cares about their well-being, they act in accordance with the norm of reciprocity (Eisenberger et al., 1986). As such, the social exchange process is strengthened by ongoing mutual contributions that can be compared with climbing a ladder of give-and-take (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005). In support for our reasoning, research on policing supports the linkage of individual-level feedback quality and affective commitment (Johnson, 2015; Metcalfe & Dick, 2001; Perez et al., 2017).

Moreover, we expect that the relationship between feedback quality and affective commitment is mediated by LMX—referring to the extent to which the relationship between the leader and the follower is characterized by trust, affect, professional respect, and mutual contributions (Liden & Maslyn, 1998). Building on social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), and in line with relational leadership theory (Gottfredson & Aguinis, 2017; Uhl-Bien, 2011; Uhl-Bien et al., 1997), we argue that positive leader behaviors affect employees through developing the quality of their LMX with their leader (see also Bos-Nehles & Audenaert, 2019). By receiving high-quality feedback from their leaders, employees will like them more because the positive leaders’ behaviors demonstrate that they care for their employees. In addition, employees are more likely to form professional respect for their leaders because the latter have demonstrated to be able to provide specific and informative feedback, which is not an obvious thing to do in this occupational group due to the ambiguity of police work (Johnson, 2015). As a result of the enhanced LMX quality, employees will feel more committed in return to their organization because the leaders are seen as agents of the organization (Levinson, 1965). In line with social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), and with relational leadership theory (Gottfredson & Aguinis, 2017; Uhl-Bien, 2011; Uhl-Bien et al., 1997), we argue that the quality of LMX functions as a mechanism (i.e., social exchange) that explains why leaders’ feedback quality and team members’ affective commitment (in response to their leader’s positive behaviors) are related to one another (see also the meta-analysis by Dulebohn et al., 2012; Metcalfe & Dick, 2001). We thus hypothesize:

Hypothesis 1a: Feedback quality is positively related to affective commitment.

Hypothesis 1b: Feedback quality is positively related to LMX.

Hypothesis 1c: LMX mediates the relationship between feedback quality and affective commitment.

The Moderating Role of Organizational Cynicism

In this section, we develop theory to explain within-team differences in the strength of the relationship between feedback quality, LMX, and affective commitment by discussing the possible moderating role of organizational cynicism. Frontline workers such as police officers are frequently confronted with the negative side of society, and their ideal of being able to fix things often fades after a couple of years in service (Osborne, 2014). This results in cynicism among police officers (Osborne, 2014), which has even been referred to as typical in the context of policing (e.g., Caplan, 2003) because of occupational socialization in the police culture (Twersky-Glasner, 2005). The specific prevalence of cynicism among this category of workers is mirrored by the fact that the majority of research on cynicism in organizational settings has been conducted in police organizations and correctional institutions (Andersson, 1996). However, not all police officers hold the same beliefs and opinions about aspects of their work, their agencies, or the public (Byrne & Hochwarter, 2008; Cordner, 2007), and thus, they vary in their level of cynicism as well. Cynicism in the workplace is defined as “both a general and specific attitude, characterized by frustration and disillusionment as well as negative feelings toward and distrust of a person, group, ideology, social convention, or institution” (Andersson & Bateman, 1997, p. 450). Considering that we are interested in correlates of employees’ affective commitment, we specifically study organizational cynicism which entails “(1) a belief that the organization lacks integrity; (2) negative affect toward the organization; and (3) tendencies to disparaging and critical behaviors toward the organization that are consistent with these beliefs and affect” (Dean et al., 1998, p. 345). For example, Moskos’ (2008) case study provides examples of cynical behavior within the work context that are typical to socialization in police work. Police officers have an initial noble motivation “to serve and to protect.” However, they frequently interact with citizens that are living in degradation and delinquency. The latter is inclined to foster organizational cynicism because it can seem questionable to police officers that they can really make a fundamental difference in serious social problems.

We expect that organizational cynicism would affect the relational mechanism of LMX in the linkage between feedback quality and affective commitment because high organizational cynicism generates poor attributions about the trustworthiness of the organization. In particular, attributions determine how management’s purpose in implementing HR practices is interpreted by the employees and, importantly, how employees respond to these HR practices (Nishii et al., 2008). According to Nishii et al. (2008, p. 505), the relationship between HR practices and employee attitudes “may depend on the attributions employees make about the motives underlying the HR practices they experience.” Specifically, they differentiate between attributions referring to the notion that HR practices serve management’s purpose to foster service quality and employee well-being, versus attributions that HR practices serve management’s interests for reducing costs and exploiting employees (Van De Voorde & Beijer, 2015). Analogously, Dirks and Ferrin (2001) have theorized that trust—or mistrust in the case of organizational cynicism—determines how the employee interprets the organization’s actions as well as employees’ responses to these. The level of organizational cynicism thus functions as a lens through which employees interpret their leader’s feedback behaviors. Based on the above line of reasoning, we argue that police officers who are not very cynical toward their organization will attribute their organization’s intentions to implement HR practices, such as feedback, in a positive way, regardless of the quality of the feedback. Their trust in the organization’s intentions, and in particular in their leader who is an agent of the organization (Levinson, 1965), functions as a lens to interpret the feedback as a signal that their leader cares for their well-being, also when some aspects of the feedback that is provided are actually of a poor quality. Therefore, feedback quality is assumed to foster LMX and affective commitment, especially of those employees that are not very cynical toward to organization, even when the feedback is not of a high level. In contrast, police officers who are more cynical toward their organization will attribute their organization’s intentions to implement feedback in a negative way. As they are doubtful of their organization’s motives and integrity, they will critically reflect on the quality of the feedback that is provided. When the feedback is perceived to be of a lower quality, it is in line with their expectations toward their leader in his or her role as an agent of their organization, and they will reciprocate accordingly with lower organizational commitment. However, in contrast, these cynical employees may be pleasantly surprised when the feedback is of a high quality. In other words, although leaders are seen as an agent of their organization (Levinson, 1965), employees can both distrust their management, yet trust their leader at the same time (Gould-Williams, 2003; Gould-Williams & Davies, 2005) based upon the trustful bond that has been build up (i.e., high-quality LMX) because the leader’s behaviors demonstrate professionalism. In reciprocation to this trustful bond, we expect that employees will be more committed to their organization.

Therefore,

Hypothesis 2a: Organizational cynicism moderates the relationship between feedback quality and LMX, such that feedback quality has a stronger positive impact on LMX for employees higher on organizational cynicism as compared with those who are lower on organizational cynicism.

Hypothesis 2b: LMX mediates the interactive effect of feedback quality and organizational cynicism on affective commitment, such that in case of high levels of organizational cynicism, the interactive effect will be stronger in comparison with the effect in case organizational cynicism is weaker.

Method

Sample

The sample for this study was randomly chosen from the Belgium Police Force. Similar to most police forces, the Belgium Police Force is a public organization that is responsible for enforcing the law in Belgium. It exists of two main organs: local police forces and a federal judicial police force. We gained data at one time point from one local police force and from two decentralized federal judicial police forces that are responsible to solve organized crime in a certain region of Belgium. This leads to 456 police officers who filled in the questionnaire (response rate: 56%). We should note that our data gathering approach implies that our analyses are prone to common-method bias. Therefore, we took some measures to prevent common-method bias and followed recent guidelines in our data gathering, such as creating psychological separation by putting the measurement instruments in separate chapters of the survey (George & Pandey, 2017).

Moreover, police officers are known for being involved in team-related tasks, such as enforcing the law while protecting each other, maintaining order as a team during grand public events and solving complex criminal events by reflecting on it together such as murders, robberies, and public violence. In-depth conversations with police managers led us to understand that feedback quality should be studied at the higher level. In particular, we understood that police managers offer daily feedback during brief team meetings because tasks are usually performed in team, and as a result, bilateral one-on-one feedback is much less frequent. Therefore, we required data with multiple ratings for the aggregated construct of feedback quality. We represented every team with minimum two respondents to prevent decreased statistical power and inflated standardized effect size estimates (Hirschfeld et al., 2013). Hence, our final sample included 266 respondents nested in 71 teams.

Measures

Each item was assessed on a 7-point scale going from 1 (= “totally disagree”) to 7 (= “totally agree”). The items are provided in Appendix.

Feedback quality was measured by a five-item scale that is part of the Feedback Environment Scale (FES) developed by Steelman et al. (2004). Respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed that a specific statement reflects the feedback practices in their organization. We consider feedback quality as a higher level construct in this study as we expected that feedback quality will differ more between teams than within teams. We statistically calculated if aggregation to the team level was appropriate with the tool developed by Biemann et al. (2012). ICC(1) has a value of .16 (F = 1.71, p = .00) that suggests that a significant proportion of variance is explained by team membership (Bliese, 2000). The ICC(2) value of .42 is just below the conventional cut-off value of .45 (Bliese, 2000). However, Rwg values (M = 0.65 and median = 0.84) indicate a moderate to strong agreement within teams (LeBreton & Senter, 2008). Taken together, aggregation of feedback quality to the team level was justified.

Affective commitment was measured by a five-item scale that was developed by Meyer et al. (1993). Cronbach’s alpha is .83.

Organizational cynicism was measured by the five-item scale that was developed by Enciso et al. (2017), specifically for research on the origination and growth of cynicism in the police force. Due to reliability issues, one item was excluded (“Employees in this department have the right to be upset and bitter about the way they are treated”). Cronbach alpha for this scale is .66. To ensure the reliability of this scale, we performed exploratory factor analyses. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure is .68 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity is significant, indicating the adequacy of the total variance explained by one component. In addition, the loadings of all of the items are above .64.

LMX was measured by the four-item scale developed by Kuvaas et al. (2012). Consistent with our hypotheses, this scale is operationalized starting from social exchange theory. Cronbach alpha for this scale is .83.

Controls

We considered several team characteristics. (a) As organizational cynicism is correlated with tenure (e.g., Burke & Mikkelsen, 2006), we considered team tenure. (b) We considered team size that may affect the extent that feedback is provided to the team and the development of individual LMX relationships (Whitman et al., 2012). (c) We looked at team interdependency (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006; Cronbach α = .81) which may affect the emergence of team-level perceptions of feedback quality (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004). Team interdependency was aggregated to the team level, ICC(1) = .11; ICC(2) = .52.

Analyses

After testing the reliability of our measurement model through confirmatory factor analyses (CFA), we conducted hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) with full maximum likelihood, which is suitable to test cross-level relations (Hox, 2010). We used group-mean centering to avoid spurious cross-level interactions (Aguinis et al., 2013). We calculated the pseudo R² (Snijders & Bosker, 1999), and the deviance score; the smaller the deviance, the better the fit of the model (Hox, 2010). We followed Muller et al. (2005) to test our moderated mediation model. To test the significance level of the indirect mediation effect, we estimated the indirect effects using the Monte Carlo method (Selig & Preacher, 2008).

Results

CFA analyses demonstrate a good fit—with χ²(129) = 301.55; significance = .00; confirmatory fix index (CFI) = 0.94; Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = 0.93; root mean square error of approximation = 0.07; and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) = 0.05—indicating that the items used in this study actually measure what we intended to measure with a minimum of .5 correlation between item and construct and an average standardized correlation of .86.

Table 1 represents the mean values, standard deviations, and correlations between our model variables at their respective level of analyses. In Table 2, we conducted the analyses with affective commitment as an outcome. We started with the intercept-only model, which indicated significant between-team differences for affective commitment (Hox, 2010). Model 2 included the control variables and showed that team size was significantly negatively related to affective commitment in our sample. Model 3 shows that feedback quality, on the team level, was significantly related to affective commitment (β = .31, p < .01), herewith supporting Hypothesis 1a. Furthermore, Model 4 demonstrates that organizational cynicism did not affect the direct relationship between feedback quality and affective commitment (β = .08, p = .21). Taken together, the significant linkage between feedback quality and affective commitment and the finding that this effect does not depend on the moderator, support the first condition for moderated mediation (Muller et al., 2005).

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations at the Team and Individual Levels.

Variable	M	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Team level
1. Team size	7.73	3.84	—
2. Team interdependency	5.06	0.89	−.2	—
3. Feedback quality	4.15	0.92	.71	.32**	—
Individual level
4. Team tenure	5.00	4.82				—
5. LMX	4.35	1.22				−.14*	—
6. Organizational cynicism	4.42	1.02				.01	−.31**	—
7. Affective commitment	4.63	1.68				−.06	.35**	−.41**	—

Note. n teams = 71; n team members = 266. LMX = Leader-Member eXchange.

p < .05. **p < .01 (two-tailed).

Table 2.

Staged Approach to First and Second Conditions of Moderated Mediation Analysis With Affective Commitment as Outcome.

Variable	Intercept-only model	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6
Intercept	4.27***	4.85***	5.07***	4.48***	5.16***	5.10***
Tenure in the team		−0.02	−0.01	−0.02	−0.01	−0.01
Operational function^a		−0.29	−0.41	−0.28	−0.45^†	−0.42^†
Organizational cynicism				−0.44***		−0.39***
Team level
Team size		−0.05*	−0.05**	−0.04*	−0.04*	−0.03^†
Team interdependency		0.12	0.02	0.04	0.04	−0.01
Feedback quality			0.31**	0.15	0.14	0.06
Cross-level moderator
Feedback Quality × Organizational Cynicism				0.08		0.01
Mediating effects
LMX					0.34***	0.25***
Deviance	875.12	862.31	851.95	806.44^b	824.39^b	795.94
ΔDeviance		12.81*	10.36**	45.51***	39.22***	28.44***
Pseudo R²		.06	.12	.27	.16	.30

Note. n teams = 71; n team members = 266. LMX = Leader-Member eXchange.

Administrative function as reference category. ^b Compared with Model 3.

†

p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Furthermore, we tested the second condition for moderated mediation (Muller et al., 2005), which corresponds to Hypotheses 1b and 1c: in particular, whether LMX functions as a mediator in the relationship between feedback quality and affective commitment. First, we tested whether feedback quality affects LMX (Table 3). The Intercept-only Model in Table 3 demonstrates significant between-team effects for LMX, and Model 2 in Table 3 reports the effects of the control variables on LMX, and shows that tenure in the team is negatively related to the level of LMX. Model 3 in Table 3 demonstrates a significant relationship between feedback quality and LMX (β = .52, p < .001), herewith supporting Hypothesis 1b. Second, we included the mediator LMX in the relationship between feedback quality and affective commitment (see Table 2). Model 5 in Table 2 shows that there is a significant relationship between LMX and affective commitment (β = .34, p < .001), herewith supporting Hypothesis 1c. The direct effect of feedback quality on affective commitment became insignificant after incorporating the mediator LMX, which suggests full mediation. We applied the Monte Carlo method of Selig and Preacher (2008) which showed a significant indirect effect of LMX for feedback quality and the outcome of affective commitment (95% confidence intervals [CIs] = [0.11, 0.28]). Also, the decreasing deviance score and increasing pseudo R² indicate a significant improvement of the model when LMX is included as a mediator.

Table 3.

Staged Approach to the Third Condition of the Moderated Mediation Analysis With LMX as Outcome.

Variable	Intercept-only model	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4
Intercept	4.31***	3.65***	3.98**	4.00***
Tenure in the team		−0.03	−0.02	−0.03^†
Operational function^a		0.37	0.18	0.20
Organizational cynicism				−0.30***
Team level
Team size		−0.03	−0.02	−0.01
Team interdependency		0.16	0.04	0.03
Feedback quality			0.52***	0.38***
Cross-level moderator
Feedback Quality × Organizational Cynicism				0.24***
Deviance	855.81	846.21	815.04	784.52
ΔDeviance		9.6*	31.17***	30.52***
Pseudo R²		.07	.23	.30

Note. n teams = 71; n team members = 266. LMX = Leader-Member eXchange.

Administrative function as reference category.

†

p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

We also tested the third condition for moderated mediation (Muller et al., 2005; whether the effect of feedback quality on LMX is moderated by organizational cynicism), which is reported in Model 4 of Table 3. We found support for Hypothesis 2a that states that organizational cynicism moderates the relationship between feedback quality and LMX (β = .24, p < .001). To interpret the results, we plotted these findings in Figure 2. The simple slope significance for higher levels of organizational cynicism, for example, SD +1: 0.66(0.13), t = 5.21, p < .001, provides support for the expectation that the linkage between feedback quality and LMX is stronger for employees who have higher levels of organizational cynicism than for employees who have lower levels of organizational cynicism. The latter is also supported by the insignificant simple slope of the value of the mean minus one standard deviation of cynicism, 0.16(0.12), t = 1.27, p = .21. The CI, generated by the Johnson–Neyman technique (Bauer & Curran, 2005), allows us to overcome the limitations of simple slope analyses by providing the regions of significance of an interaction effect. For our interaction, this technique indicates that there is a significant positive moderating effect when organizational cynicism exceeds the absolute value of 3.63 (on a 7-point scale).

Figure 2.

Plot between feedback quality and LMX moderated by organizational cynicism.

Finally, we tested the fourth condition of moderated mediation (Muller et al., 2005), which corresponds to Hypothesis 2b (whether the indirect relationship of feedback quality with affective commitment via LMX is stronger for employees with a higher level of organizational cynicism). As mentioned before, our findings suggest a direct negative relationship of organizational cynicism and affective commitment, but no overall moderation effect of organizational cynicism on the relationship between feedback quality and affective commitment (see Model 4 in Table 2). This suggests that organizational cynicism does not have an impact on how feedback quality affects the commitment of police officers. Although we did not hypothesize a moderation effect on the second path of the mediation, the moderated mediation analysis required us to test potential moderation between the mediator and the dependent variable (Muller et al., 2005). Therefore, we included Model 6 in Table 2. As the cross-level moderation between feedback quality and organizational cynicism is not significant in this model, the fourth condition of moderated mediation can be rejected, as expected (β = .01, p = .89). Thus, because the effect of feedback quality on LMX appeared to depend on the level of organizational cynicism (i.e., second condition) and LMX was found to mediate the relationship between feedback quality and affective commitment (i.e., third condition), our hypothesized moderated mediation model, and thus Hypothesis 2b, was supported.

Discussion

Theoretical Implications

We aimed to enhance our understanding of the motivational underpinning of the linkage between police managers’ feedback quality and police officers’ affective commitment, which is particularly threatened because police officers are street-level bureaucrats with a high level of discretionary freedom. Our findings support a cross-level moderation of organizational cynicism in the mediated relationship of feedback quality and affective commitment via LMX.

On one hand, this study adds to previous studies that looked into the relationship between individual-level feedback quality and affective commitment (Johnson, 2015; Metcalfe & Dick, 2001; Perez et al., 2017), by finding support for a cross-level effect. After all, employees are nested within organizations, units, cells, jobs, and teams, and, in the context of the police setting in our study, feedback is typically given during team meetings. According to multilevel theories, leadership behaviors lead to a collective sensemaking or to shared perceptions (Klein & Kozlowski, 2000). Therefore, employees share a common environment and perceptions. These shared perceptions among group members reflect a shared social reality (Thomas et al., 2005), which explains why the quality of a police manager’s feedback is somewhat consistent across team members. As a consequence, the police officers in those teams that receive high-quality feedback are more affectively committed to the organization in comparison with teams who do not. This is a crucial finding that adds to recent findings that suggest the relevance of supportive leadership, although it is complex to steer street-level bureaucrats due to their high level of discretion that provides them relative autonomy from their leaders’ directions (Keulemans & Groeneveld, 2020). Our study adds to these findings by suggesting a way in which leaders could be supportive, namely, by providing qualitative feedback. This suggests a specific pathway how public managers can foster the affective commitment of their street-level bureaucrats.

On the other hand, this study developed arguments from organizational psychology to enhance our insights in public administration and public HRM (Olsen et al., 2018) by building on two crucial insights in social exchange theory (Blau, 1964). First, this study adds to the literature by indicating that perceptions of feedback quality at the team level are an important antecedent of LMX, and through this, positively impact affective commitment of police officers as well. With this outcome, we may conclude that different leaders implement HRM practices in a variety of ways across teams (cf., Nishii et al., 2008), and that the leader’s use of high-quality feedback is instrumental to employees’ attitudes and behaviors at work (see also Audenaert et al., 2019b; Bauwens et al., 2019b). This effect of feedback quality on affective commitment can be explained by the crucial role of the relationship between the leader and his or her employee. In other words, the exchange relationship charts the pathway from feedback quality to affective commitment. If high-quality feedback is offered by the leader, the employee reciprocates by being committed to the organization because the leader is seen as an agent of the organization (Levinson, 1965).

Second, we built on the crucial insight in social exchange theorizing that individuals differ in their orientation toward social exchange obligations out of fear that they may be exploited (Shore et al., 2009). Interestingly, our findings support that individual team members are inclined to respond differently to their leader’s approach to feedback (see also Tseng & Levy, 2019). Considering that employees have different individual schemas to interpret their leader’s HRM behaviors (Nishii et al., 2008), we have incorporated an individual-level moderator, namely, organizational cynicism. We found support for the argumentation that (a) these different interpretations of leader’s exchange resources (e.g., feedback quality) can start from the employee’s view on the organization (i.e., organizational cynicism); and that (b) these different interpretations lead to different LMX relationships among the leader and their individual team members. Specifically, we may conclude that feedback quality can particularly make a difference for police officers who are more cynical about their organization, implying an attitude that is specifically relevant for police officers (Johnson, 2015; Osborne, 2014). These police officers will be less susceptible to return to the favor of getting feedback from their leader when it is of a lower quality. That is to say, cynical police officers are inclined to mistrust their organization, which can result in low expectations from their leader who is seen as an agent of the organization (Levinson, 1965). Thus receiving high-quality feedback that is specific and consistent goes against their low expectations, and enhances their trust in the leader. In turn, this results in a better relationship with their leader and in more commitment to their organization, in return to the leader’s feedback provision. In sum, more cynical police officers are more likely to reciprocate feedback in case their leader provides feedback that is specific, consistent over time, and informative for current and future performance (Steelman et al., 2004).

Limitations and Future Research Recommendations

A first possible limitation of our study is the existence of common-method bias. However, we should note that the survey was designed to prevent common-method bias beforehand (Podsakoff et al., 2012) and our analyses have been conducted in a multilevel way, herewith acknowledging the nesting of the police officers within the teams (Hox, 2010). We found a cross-level interaction, which we do not assume to be an artifact of common-method bias (Siemsen et al., 2010). In addition, we used cross-sectional data, which does not allow to make causal inferences. It could be possible that being committed to one’s organization automatically increases levels of LMX, or, rather, that LMX increases the amount of high-quality feedback provision. For instance, when an employee experiences to have a high-quality bond with their leader, the employee may also experience a higher quality of feedback given by the same leader. Due to the nature of our data, we are not able to exclude such reversed causal relationships. Future research could address the issue of the common-method bias using multisource ratings and the issue of causality by gathering longitudinal data. Furthermore, besides LMX quality as an indicator to understand how feedback quality translates into affective commitment, future research could consider the extent to which police officers perceive their leaders to be credible and competent. Building on Maranto and Wolf (2013), police leaders’ credibility and competence matter and are expected to make employees more mission driven, which allows incremental change that relies on exchange processes such as LMX and trust. It may be relevant to study the role of the organizational context in the relationship between managerial credibility and competence, LMX and employee attitudes. For instance, managerial competence may supersede leader–member exchange in terms of importance in a context of low performing organizations. Finally, whereas studying affective commitment is relevant in a police context where officers have discretion in their work, future research could consider the effect of loyalty in with the light of leader’s behavior and police officers’ organizational cynicism. In doing so, it may also be particularly relevant to disentangle the impact of loyalty to the organizational agent (that is the leader) versus loyalty to the team.

Importantly, future research could explore other public sector settings in which employees are particularly prone to develop cynicism. The increasing complexity in the public sector brings along needs to implement multiple changes in culture, strategy, HRM policies and practices, and so on. Such changes may require proactive behavior that is aligned with the organizational goals to deal with multiple challenges, but employees may rather be inclined to develop cynicism with regard to these challenges. For instance, faced with the teacher shortage, teachers may become cynical about change initiatives while being confronted with the impossibility to fully execute their core job, educating pupils, and this on top of being confronted with high levels of red tape (Bozeman, 1993). In this context, it may be relevant to study both the roles of organizational cynicism in general and cynicism toward change in particular. When employees already are more cynical toward management in general, they tend to be more cynical toward change as well (Grama & Todericiu, 2016).

Practical Implications

Frontline workers such as police officers consider their autonomy and discretion as an occupational privilege, but at the same time, they do look for guidance and feedback. Police officers on intervention duty highlight that mainly positive feedback is lacking, as if it is considered normal that everything goes well (Cronin et al., 2017). Also, it may be difficult to provide police officers with specific guidance on how to perform their jobs. Frontline workers are rarely under the direct supervision of their leaders while performing their duties. Two patrol officers will handle most interventions on their own, without direct assistance of a superior officer. A police officer working his neighborhood, or two patrol officers that are literally on patrol, are not supervised in a direct manner. To make sure that police officers use their discretion in a way that the organizational interests are safeguarded, the police manager’s feedback quality can make a difference. It has the potential to improve their relationship with the police officers, which in turn results in more affective commitment to the organization, because leaders are seen as agents of the organization. This is particularly the case for many of the police officers who have become more cynical about the organization throughout the years. Therefore, police academies should pay attention on how to improve leaders’ skills in proving specific feedback that is consistent over time and informative for goal-oriented behaviors. As feedback makes part of the daily team briefings, it should make an explicit part of the job description, and police managers should be managed on their feedback quality skills. Police leaders can be coached to use high-quality feedback by making this part of the continuous HRM cycle that signals that this kind of feedback is expected and rewarded. This implies that police organizations should include high-quality feedback as a specific job requirement within the job description and that employees should receive a consistent signal of its importance in multiple HRM practices. As such, police leaders and officers alike will receive consistent communications about their employer’s orientation toward qualitative feedback. This necessitates elaborate discussions between all parties involved and guided by HR managers and police commissioners.

Conclusion

This study adds to a better insight into how feelings of being part of the police force family can be fostered, protected, and further enhanced. For cynical police officers high-quality feedback may not be what they expect, because they are inclined to mistrust the organization. Qualitative feedback which meets their high expectations (grow) trust and gains respect for their leader (again), which they want to return in terms of their attitudes to the organization, in particular an increase in affective organizational commitment.

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Mieke Audenaert

Tine Van Thielen

Author Biographies

Mieke Audenaert is assistant professor of People Management, involving the interrelation of HRM and leadership, at Ghent University in Belgium. Her main research areas are the employment relationship, people management, and performance management. Recently, she has joined the editorial board of Tijdschrift voor HRM.

Beatrice Van der Heijden is full professor of Strategic HRM and Head of the department Strategic HRM at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Moreover, she occupies a Chair in Strategic HRM at the Open University of the Netherlands; at Ghent University, Belgium; at Kingston University, London, United Kingdom; and at Hubei University, Wuhan, China. Her main research areas are sustainable careers, employability, and aging at work. Van der Heijden is associate editor of the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology and co-editor of the German Journal of Human Resource Management. Recently, she has been elected for the Academy of Europe.

Tim Rombaut received a master’s degree in criminology and in public administration and management at Ghent University, Belgium. He worked as a frontline police officer for 5 years before obtaining his current rank as police commissioner. Now he is head of the Community Policing Unit at the Meetjesland Centrum Police Department.

Tine Van Thielen obtained the doctoral degree of Business Economics at the Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior Research Group at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University. Her research interests include how performance management and leadership can positively affect well-being and team effectiveness. In particular, she is interested in studying these aspects in the specific context of policing or other extreme environments.

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The Role of Feedback Quality and Organizational Cynicism for Affective Commitment Through Leader–Member Exchange

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Theory and Hypotheses

Toward a Mediation Model for Enhancing Affective Commitment to the Organization

The Moderating Role of Organizational Cynicism

Method

Sample

Measures

Controls

Analyses

Results

Discussion

Theoretical Implications

Limitations and Future Research Recommendations

Practical Implications

Conclusion

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iDs

Author Biographies

References