Examining the relationship between primacy, experienced diagnosticity, and job commitment.

Abstract

This study examined the mediating effect of diagnosticity between primacy and job commitment. Previous work by Touré-Tillery and Fishbach (2015) indicated diagnosticity to be a mediator between primacy and goal commitment. It was proposed that these findings could be applied to an organisational context whereby diagnosticity could function as a mediator between primacy and job commitment. The present study tested this by accommodating a model representing the order in which employees were hired as a sequence of persons to reflect primacy. Accordingly, 150 adolescents completed questionnaires distributed on the campus of Universiteit Utrecht. Mediation was tested with Hayes’ PROCESS module in SPSS using model 4 with a multi-categorical predictor. Results demonstrated that the association between primacy and job commitment was not mediated by diagnosticity. Additionally, significant correlations were found between primacy and diagnosticity, and diagnosticity and job commitment. These results suggest there are some significant relationships between key variables. However, the current model used in this study is statistically insignificant and shows primacy is not associated with job commitment, nor is this relationship mediated by diagnosticity.