Interactive effects of work group and organizational identification on job satisfaction and extra-role behavior q Rolf van Dick a,b, * , Daan van Knippenberg c , Rudolf Kerschreiter d , Guido Hertel e , Jan Wieseke f a Institute of Psychology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, Kettenhofweg 128, 60054 Frankfurt, Germany b Aston University, Aston Triangle, B4 7ET Birmingham, UK c Erasmus University Rotterdam, PO Box 1738 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands d Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, Leopoldstr. 13, 80802 Mu ¨ nchen, Germany e University of Wu ¨ rzburg, Ro ¨ ntgenring 10, 97070 Wu ¨ rzburg, Germany f University of Mannheim, L5, 1, 68131 Mannheim, Germany Received 20 August 2007 Available online 4 December 2007 Abstract Past research has focused on the differential relationships of organizational and work group identification with attitudes and behavior. However, no systematic effort has been undertaken yet to explore interactive effects between these foci of identification. We predicted that in cases of positive overlap of identifications (i.e. high work group and organizational identification) identifications are more strongly associated with employee job satisfaction and extra-role behavior than when only one of the identifications is high—that is, the one identification augments the influence of the other. These hypotheses were tested and supported with data from two samples of bank employees (N = 358) and travel agency employ- ees (N = 308). Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Social identity; Organizational identification; Team identification; Multilevel; Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB); Job satisfaction 1. Introduction Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) has been successfully applied to organizational contexts over the last two decades. It has been shown that social identities play a crucial role for employees’ atti- 0001-8791/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2007.11.009 q We are grateful to Regina Herzfeldt and Charlan Nemeth for very helpful comments to an earlier version of this paper. Study 2 was supported by a grant to Jan Wieseke from the German Research Foundation (WI 3146/1-1). Parts of this paper have been presented at the conference ‘‘Commitment in Organizations: Accumulated Wisdom and New Directions,’’ October 28–30, 2005, Columbus, OH. The data of Study 1 was used in a previous paper (van Dick, Wagner, Stellmacher, & Christ, 2004) but not with respect to interactive effects of identification foci. * Corresponding author. Address: Institute of Psychology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, Kettenhofweg 128, 60054 Frankfurt, Germany. Fax: +49 69 798 22384. E-mail address: van.dick@psych.uni-frankfurt.de (R. van Dick). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Journal of Vocational Behavior 72 (2008) 388–399 www.elsevier.com/locate/jvb