More than relatedness: basic psychological need satisfaction linking communal workplace climate to productive work behaviors

Purpose This study examines whether and how communal workplace climate (CWC) – defined as a perception that organizations prioritize care, high-quality relationships, trust and employee involvement – relates to productive work behaviors, and whether these associations operate through satisfaction of basic psychological needs. Building on Self-Determination Theory and belongingness perspectives, we test the proposition that CWC functions as a proximal motivational context fostering different forms of productive behavior via differentiated need-based pathways. Design/methodology/approach The study comprised two complementary studies. In Study 1, employees (N = 257) nested within 37 work teams completed measures of CWC and productive behaviors (task engagement, organizational citizenship behavior toward coworkers [OCB-C], and toward the organization [OCB-O]). Multilevel models were used to examine individual- and team-level effects. In Study 2, a larger sample of employees (N = 2,039) completed measures of CWC, basic psychological need satisfaction (autonomy, competence and relatedness) and productive behaviors; hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. Findings In Study 1, individual-level CWC was positively associated with task engagement and OCB-O, whereas team-level CWC showed weak or inconclusive contextual effects. OCB-C showed no between-team variance and was positively predicted by individual-level CWC. In Study 2, CWC was indirectly related to task engagement via autonomy and competence, to OCB-C primarily via relatedness (with a smaller contribution of competence), and to OCB-O via autonomy and competence, with a small remaining direct effect. Originality/value The study contributes to the literature by showing that CWC is linked to productive work behaviors through differentiated basic psychological need pathways rather than through relatedness alone. This provides a more nuanced understanding of how CWC may support different forms of productive work behavior.