Conceptualization and empirical validation of general organizational commitment and its links with ethical leadership and team participation

Organizational commitment has traditionally been conceptualized through affective, normative, and calculative dimensions; however, affective-centered approaches may be insufficient to explain employees’ sustained and responsible attachment to organizational goals and collective projects. Addressing this limitation, the present study advances the concept of general commitment as an integrative form of organizational attachment that combines emotional identification with a deliberate endorsement of organizational purposes, and examines how ethical leadership contributes to its development through normative mechanisms and employee participation in decision making. Using survey data from 404 employees in Peruvian organizations, structural equation modeling was employed to test an integrated model linking ethical leadership, normative commitment, general commitment, participation in team decision making, and calculative commitment. The results indicate that ethical leadership is positively associated with normative commitment, which in turn fosters both general commitment and employee participation. General commitment and participation were further related to calculative commitment, suggesting that moral and goal-oriented forms of attachment shape instrumental considerations regarding organizational membership. Multi-group analyses by sex showed that the proposed model is structurally invariant across male and female employees. Overall, the findings underscore the central role of general commitment as a morally grounded and goal-oriented form of organizational attachment, and highlight ethical leadership as a key driver of commitment processes operating through normative mechanisms. By clarifying the conceptual distinctiveness of general commitment, this study offers a more nuanced account of organizational commitment in contemporary work teams, particularly in emerging-economy contexts.