How managerial support builds commitment: a group-level sequential mediation of prosocial motivation and collective thriving

Although managerial support has long been acknowledged as an important resource in organizations, the mechanisms through which it translates into stronger affective organizational commitment remain underexplored. Past literature has mainly investigated the direct effects, overlooking the sequential psychological processes that sustain employee commitment. By integrating prosocial motivation as a first-level mediator and collective thriving as a second-level mediator, we address this critical gap. A 2-week time-lagged structure was utilized to gather information from 586 employees working in 76 teams across several industries in Pakistan. The direct and indirect effects between managerial support and affective commitment were evaluated using the Process Hayes Model 6. The study’s findings indicate that managerial support promotes prosocial motivation among employees. The finding also demonstrated that support from the manager promotes collective thriving and ultimately the sense of affective organizational commitment. The present study advances theoretical knowledge of how managerial support fosters affective organizational commitment but also offers actionable insights for top management seeking to enhance employee commitment through prosocial motivation and collective thriving paths. Furthermore, as our data were collected from a single country, cross-cultural research on study constructs remains limited, and further studies conducted in different cultural settings are strongly encouraged.