Educational research has repeatedly proven the important role of school leaders for the quality of their schools. However, schools are social organizations which build on human relationships and their interactions. Especially teaching is based on student-teacher-relationships. Thus, school development is not possible without the commitment of the school staff and their efforts towards the developmental process. Therefore, teachers are responsible for the success of school transformations. Hence, to ensure successful school development processes, the individual motives, values and attitudes must be taken into account (Harazd et al., 2012). 

Since the 1960s an increased interest in the particular field of work psychology, the binding of a person towards the organization, is noticeable. This connection is referred to as organizational commitment (e.g., Meyer & Allen, 1991; Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001). The explanations given by the variety of studies improve the understanding of employees’ behavior at work and how it can be influenced. This could also help school leaders to improve their schools by enhancing their teachers’ affective commitment towards the school. 

Empirical studies show that a strong organizational commitment, especially affective commitment, leads to a higher engagement of the employees – even in tough and challenging times. Moreover, affective commitment is negatively related to the perception of stress and positively related to higher well-being among employees (e.g., Meyer & Allen, 1991; Meyer et al., 2002; Westphal & Gmür, 2009). Therefore, the positive effects of a strong commitment to an organization occur on the organizational as well as on the individual level. 

Regardless of its positive effects on schools, affective commitment has hardly been addressed in international and national educational research (Harazd et al., 2012). More in-depth research regarding the antecedent variables of affective commitment among teachers is of great relevance, as the desirable outcomes such as higher engagement are of great interest considering demanded changes and overcoming challenges in the educational system and schools today. Furthermore, knowing which factors are predictive of teachers’ affective commitment enables school leaders to influence the success of school development measures and school quality in this specific person-based environment via their own leadership behavior or personnel development measures. So far, there is a desideratum with regard to the mentioned aspects and their interaction under a longitudinal perspective.

The aim of this paper is to gain insights into the development of teachers' affective commitment over time and asks which factors can be identified as antecedents.  

Previous research has shown that certain leadership actions and style can enhance teachers' affective commitment. In particular, participation in decision-making (Somech & Bogler, 2002; Henkin & Holliman, 2009; Harazd et al., 2012), transformational leadership (Meyer et al., 2002; Westphal & Gmür, 2009; Harazd et al., 2012) and shared school leadership (Pietsch et al., 2019)could be identified as such antecedents. Additionally, the meta-analyses of Sekiguchi (2004) and of Kristof-Brown et al. (2005)emphasize that person-organization fit and person-job fit are correlated to organizational commitment. Furthermore, a strong relationship between overall job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment seems to be confirmed (e.g., Mathieu & Zajac, 1990: r = .69; Meyer et al., 2002: r = .65). However, the nature of the relationship between these two constructs remains inconclusive due to contradictory results of previous studies (e.g., Rayton, 2006; Saridakis et al., 2018). 

In this paper we will investigate the associations between teachers’ affective organizational commitment and the predictors, that have been identified as relevant in former research, through a longitudinal study over the timespan of three years. This particular study was a part of the longitudinal research project conducted in schools in challenging circumstances in North Rhine-Westphalia. The three-year longitudinal mixed-method study is based on a sample of 150 schools. For the quantitative analysis three surveys regarding the working situation are conducted among staff and school leaders over the three-year period. These surveys build the database for the presented analyses. The results are based on survey data of 3.176 teachers taking part in the first wave, 2.558 teachers taking part in the second wave, and 1.325 teachers taking part in the third wave. In a first step, we identified relevant predictors of affective commitment for each wave by means of relative weight analysis (Johnson, 2000). In a second step, we estimated a latent difference score model to predict latent change in teachers’ affective commitment through latent change in the antecedents from the first to the third wave. Besides affective commitment we analyzed the following constructs: job satisfaction, person-organization fit (value and goal congruence), person-job fit (demands-abilities, needs-supplies), social support, personal responsibility and innovation, unity among the teaching staff, person-supervisor fit, Coordination of action school management, pedagogical leadership, programmatic cooperation, trust, communication climate, participative decision making, work climate, coherent leadership team, team spirit among the teaching staff, participative school development, role ambiguity, teacher cooperation for classes. Most items were rated on a 5-point rating scale (1 = disagree/not true, 5 = agree/true). The items of the Person-Supervisor Fit Scale by Chuang et al. (2016) were translated and rated on a 7-point rating scale (1 = no match, 7 = complete match). The items for participative school development are rated on a 4-point rating scale (1 = very bad, 4 = very good).

In terms of relative weight, results show that different fit measures explained the greatest amount of variance in affective commitment. For example, the greatest amount of variance in affective commitment was explained by person-organization fit value congruence (9-10%), followed by job satisfaction (8-9%), person-job fit needs-supplies (7-8%), person-organization fit goal congruence (6-7%) and person-job fit demands-abilities (5%). Essentially, the results of the latent difference score modeling show that the latent change in person-organization fit value congruence (PVA), job satisfaction (JSA), person-job fit needs-supplies (PNS) and personal responsibility and innovation (REI) (all estimates above .100 and significant p-value) predict change in affective commitment. The results implicate that person-organization fit value congruence and person-job fit needs-supplies are central aspects in developing affective organizational commitment. Even though we did not investigate one particular leadership style, the different aspects of fit are integrated into the concept of transformational leadership. As stated before, the impact of transformational leadership on affective commitment in the school context was verified in multiple studies (Meyer et al., 2002; Westphal & Gmür, 2009; Harazd et al., 2012; Forte, 2015). Looking at our results, we can also conclude that aspects of transformational leadership like creating common values or offer customized help are part of generating or improving person-organization fit and person-job fit and therefore are of importance to enhance teachers’ affective organizational commitment in schools in challenging circumstances. Another conclusion regarding the effect of personal responsibility and innovation on affective commitment verifies the finding of studies that found participation to be an antecedent (Somech & Bogler, 2002; Henkin & Holliman, 2009; Harazd et al., 2012). It reflects on the freedom for innovation and new ideas as well as being involved in decision-making in school which can be considered a form of participation.

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