Open Access

Nadine Costabel

• This thesis examines the effects of social interaction and the interaction channel on affective commitment. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a major increase in the implementation of remote working policies in organizations. This development has significantly reduced the quantity and quality of social interactions among employees. In an experimental setting, subjects were assigned a level of social interaction, either limited or extensive and an interaction channel, either offline or online. Participants were given a task in which they had to find as many words as possible ending on a specific letter. Affective commitment was measured as the time spent on the task as well as the number of words found. Afterwards, subjects received a questionnaire with statements about their perceived affective commitment for which they had to indicate their level of agreement. The results indicate that extensive social interaction has a significant positive effect on affective commitment. Although the findings of the experiment are not significant for the interaction channel, some of the survey results hint towards a possible positive effect of offline interaction on the subject’s perception of affective commitment. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that there may be a discrepancy between displayed and perceived affective commitment. Taking the study results and available literature into consideration, organizations should warrant in-person interaction whenever possible and provide enough time and space for short informal conversations among employees to increase levels of affective commitment.