Emotionally exhausted employees’ affective commitment: Testing moderating effects using three-way interactions

We investigated the joint effect of employees’ emotional exhaustion, transactional leadership, and leader–member exchange (LMX) on employees’ affective commitment and in-role performance. With the inclusion of the antecedents and the consequences of affective commitment, we constructed a comprehensive framework for examining how employees’ organizational affective commitment and emotional exhaustion jointly affected their in-role performance. Using the stimuli theory, vulnerability–stress theory, and job demands–resources model, we tested hypotheses regarding the 3-way interaction effects of the independent and moderating factors with 332 employees of a South Korean firm. All hypotheses were supported. We concluded that employees’ in-role performance could be poor when emotionally exhausted employees are working with a leader whose style is transactional and where there is high LMX.