Social influence and perceived organizational support: A social networks analysis
Introduction
Organizational support theory (OST; Aselage and Eisenberger, 2003, Eisenberger et al., 1986) suggests that treatment offered by the organization (in terms of fairness, job conditions, and supervisory relationships) serves as a signal to employees regarding the extent to which the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being (perceived organizational support; POS). Consistent with social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) and the reciprocity norm (Gouldner, 1960), POS obligates employees who feel supported to reciprocate by expressing greater affective organizational commitment, performing citizenship behaviors, and exhibiting lower levels of withdrawal (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). As a result, organizations that foster POS within employees are thought to have a competitive advantage over organizations that do not (Pfeffer, 2005).
Our fundamental contention in this research is that the formation of POS is not solely psychological but also a social process influenced by information that employees acquire from the social context. Although OST research on the antecedents and consequences of POS offers relatively consistent results (see Rhoades and Eisenberger (2002), for a meta-analysis), we argue that its explanatory power is limited because it implicitly assumes that employees independently observe and interpret treatment offered by the organization. As a result, OST provides only individual-level psychological explanations for employees’ perceptions of treatment offered to them by the organization. Yet social exchange relationships in general (Emerson, 1976) and the formation of POS in particular (Eisenberger, Jones, Aselage, & Sucharski, 2004) require that employees collect and interpret a great deal of information, much of which can only be obtained through interaction with coworkers (Eisenberger et al., 2004) or by monitoring the organizational environment (Kiewitz, Restubog, Zagenczyk, & Hochwarter, 2009). Despite this, past theoretical and empirical research has devoted scant attention to the effects of the social context on employees’ POS (Kiewitz et al., 2009). Although Eisenberger et al.’s (2004) theoretical work suggests that employees develop POS through socialization processes, it does not explicitly describe the manner in which coworkers and the overall social structure of the organization are related to POS. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to clarify how employees’ direct relationships (advice and friendship ties) and positions in the social structure of the organization (advice and friendship structural equivalence) shape POS. We suggest that by expanding organizational support theory to account for social influence, we will increase its predictive validity.
To make our arguments, we draw on research on employee socialization (Morrison, 1993), social referent selection (Shah, 1998), and social influence (e.g., Burt, 1987, Festinger, 1954, Salancik and Pfeffer, 1978) to specify relationships between the social context and POS. We test our hypotheses in two social network studies in different settings – the admissions department of a large public university and a private company specializing in food and animal safety product manufacturing and sales. We further elaborate on our theoretical model and predictions below.
Section snippets
Organizational support theory
Organizational support theory suggests that employees pay attention to treatment offered by the organization in order to discern the extent to which the organization is supportive and values their contributions (Eisenberger et al., 1986). To this end, employees infer that the treatment offered to them by agents of the organization is indicative of organization’s overall favorable or unfavorable orientation towards them (Eisenberger et al., 1986). Accordingly, OST is rooted in Levinson’s (1965)
Sample and procedure
In Study 1, we conducted a field study with employees from the admissions department of a large public university in the eastern United States. Consistent with Marsden’s (1990) suggestion, we bounded our data collection to members of a single organizational unit. At our research site, the admissions department is regarded as an independent organization run by a supervisor who is responsible for coordinating walking and bus campus tours for prospective students. In addition, employees perform
Analysis and results
In this research, the level of analysis is the dyad. Accordingly, each variable is represented as a matrix in which rows and columns represent actors and cells represent a relational state between actors (Raider & Krackhardt, 2001, p. 68). When dyads are considered, there may be high levels of autocorrelation among the error terms when traditional statistical procedures are used. Accordingly, it is inappropriate to analyze dyadic data using Ordinary Least Squares Regression, PLS or LISREL.
Methods – Study 2
Study 1 provided some empirical support for our hypotheses in a field study. However, it is reasonable to question whether the results are generalizable to other settings because the sample included mainly part-time student workers who worked 25 h per week with potentially high levels of turnover. In addition, there are other theoretically relevant variables, beyond demographic characteristics, that may influence employee POS – such as reporting structure, similarity with respect to supervisor
Analysis and results
As in Study 1, quadratic assignment procedure correlation analysis was utilized to generate a bivariate correlation matrix and MRQAP was used to test the hypotheses. Table 3 provides the means, standard deviations, reliabilities, and QAP intercorrelations for all variables. Like in Study 1, advice ties and friendship ties and friendship ties were significantly related (r = .07, p < .01), indicating that friendship and advice networks overlapped to a degree. Similarity with respect to tenure was
Discussion
Our study responds to calls for research on the effects of context on organizational phenomena in general (e.g., Johns, 2006) and perceived organizational support in particular (Eisenberger et al., 2004). This is important because the extant research examining POS has focused almost exclusively on consequences (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002) and to a lesser extent antecedents (e.g., Wayne et al., 1997, Wayne et al., 2002) of POS, with little attention directed to considering how the social
Directions for future research
This study suggests several directions for future studies. First, research could more thoroughly investigate the directionality of advice ties.1 In this study, we examined only whether an employee gave advice to another employee. While we think this is important, interesting information may have been obtained if we had inquired as to whether employees had requested advice. We speculate that requested advice would be more influential
Conclusion
Organizational support theory (Eisenberger et al., 1986) has spurred a large body of research which demonstrates consistent results (Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002, Riggle et al., 2009). However, we argue that its explanatory power is limited due to its focus on individual-level psychological explanations for employee interpretation of treatment offered by the organization. Given the complexity and ambiguity associated with today’s organizations (Martinko and Gardner, 1987, Salancik and Pfeffer,
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Associate Editor Jerald Greenberg and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this version of the manuscript and Simon Lloyd D. Restubog, Ray Henry, Zuzana Sasovova, Brian Butler, Stacy Blake-Beard, Josephine Olsen, and Donna J. Wood for comments on earlier versions of this work. In addition, the authors are indebted to Joe Labianca, Ginny Kidwell, Travis Gosser, and Mike Ptaszenski for their help in collecting data used in this manuscript and
References (79)
- et al.
The role of perceived organizational support and supportive human resources practices in the turnover process
Journal of Management
(2003) Implications of behavioral and cognitive reciprocity in social network data
Social Networks
(1985)The interpersonal structure of decision making: A social comparison approach to organizational choice
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
(1990)Predicting with networks: Nonparametric multiple regression analysis of dyadic data
Social Networks
(1988)- et al.
A meta-analysis of the relationship between perceived organizational support and job outcomes: 20 years of research
Journal of Business Research
(2009) Toward a self-evaluation maintenance model of social behavior
- et al.
Perceived organizational support and psychological contracts: A theoretical integration
Journal of Organizational Behavior
(2003) - et al.
The analysis of social interaction data
Sociological Methods & Research
(1981) Exchange and power in social life
(1964)- et al.
Does one good turn deserve another? Coworker influences on employee citizenship
Journal of Organizational Behavior
(2003)