Rhoades, L., & Eisenberger, R. (2002). Perceived organizational support: a review of the literature. Journal of applied psychology, 87(4), 698.
Note - the original paper dealing with perceived organizational support has a similar title to this one, but the lead author is Eisenberger and the year published is 1986.
Summary
Perceived organizational support (POS) represents the employee’s viewpoint regarding how the organization treats and values said employee. This happens, in part, because employees anthropomorphize the organization, and imbue it with “humanlike characteristics.” Social exchange theory states that employment is “the trade of effort and loyalty for tangible benefits and social rewards.” Ideally, favorable treatment by either party is reciprocated, thereby creating a virtuous cycle.
This meta-analysis finds that the three categories most strongly associated with high POS are “fairness, supervisor support, and organizational rewards and favorable job conditions.” The strongest association is with fairness. Procedural justice is concerned with the fairness of outcomes regarding distribution of resources. Interactional justice, the specifically social aspects of procedural justice, involves the quality of interpersonal treatment. Perceived organizational politics, which refers to “attempts to influence others in ways that promote self-interest, often at the expense of rewards for individual merit or the betterment of the organization,” also strongly affects perceptions of fairness.
Employees perceive their supervisor’s actions towards them as representative of the organization’s support for them. This relationship is stronger the higher the perceived status of the supervisor is within the organization. This is not covered in the review, but I wonder if this relationship persists simply because it is the only (or most salient) information point that employees have regarding organizational support. For example, do quarterly performance reviews or department-wide reviews moderate or mediate this relationship?
Finally, organizational rewards and job conditions are positively related to POS, though not as strongly as the previous two categories. This category includes recognition, pay, promotions, job security, autonomy, role stressors, training, and organizational size (larger organizations have less flexibility for dealing with individual employees’ situations). One of the reasons why this category’s relationship to POS is not as strong is because rewards and favorable job conditions are often “attributed to external pressures on the organization rather than to discretionary choice.”
Application
Reviews such as this sometimes paint a construct as an organizational panacea, and this review is no exception. I suspect that POS covaries highly with other positive constructs. That being said, POS seems to be an extremely robust construct that is associated with a wide variety of both positive and negative outcomes. Many times, a manager seeks to retain top talent by simply paying more. POS shows that there are other methods that should be attempted first. Another takeaway is that managers should make sure that their rewards (including praises) are seen as discretionary (i.e., as a result of the manager’s choice, and not done simply because they “had to do it”). If it is felt that the behavior of the supervisor is done out of obligation or duty, the positive POS effects will disappear. This highlights the importance and power of the one-to-one relationship between manager and employee.
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