a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

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Finally, this proposed dissertation has important implications for managers. If social relationships do in fact play a role in shaping employees’ POS, managers should consider this when making decisions. If an employee maintains advice relationships with others or is widely regarded as a role model in the organizational context, treating that employee in an unfavorable way may have important effects on the perceptions of other employees in the organization. When the focal employee shares his or her stories with coworkers, his or her beliefs about the perceived insufficiency of support may spread through the social network and lessen other employees’ POS as well. In contrast, managers who look after employees who are widely regarded as role models or advice ties may be able to increase POS in the organization via the contagion process described above. In this dissertation, I utilize a social networks approach to explore the shaping effects of advice, friendship, and role model relationships on employees’ POS. A social networks approach focuses not on individual attributes, but rather on the content and strength of relationships between actors and their impact on social phenomena. Social networks approaches are commonly used to explore social influence in organizations. I explore the effects of social influence on employees’ POS in the admissions department of a large university in the eastern United States. 7
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW Organizational support is an important concept in the management literature because it offers an explanation for the relationship between an organization’s treatment of its employees and the employees’ attitudes and behavior towards their jobs and organization. While the formal concept of perceived organizational support (POS) was not introduced and quantified until the 1980s, the idea of organizational support has been present in the management literature for nearly seventy years. I will briefly examine the development of organizational support research in the context of societal and industrial change and provide a history of the conceptual development of the POS construct in the management literature. The Development of Organizational Support in the Management Literature Researchers have long recognized that organizations are an important source of material and socio-emotional support for employees. Initial organizational research in the early 1900s focused exclusively on the material resources and benefits an employer provided for employees (Taylor, 1911). However, the Hawthorne studies of the 1930s (Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939) illustrated that organizations were also an important source of socio-emotional resources for employees. Results of these studies indicated that employees who were given work breaks and shorter hours had better attitudes and higher productivity than employees who were not provided these benefits. To better understand the results of these initial experiments, researchers devised programs in which employees were interviewed by managers. The surprising result was that employees who had interviews subsequently had better attitudes than employees who were not interviewed (Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939). Employees interpreted being interviewed as an 8
Page 1 and 2: TITLE PAGE A SOCIAL INFLUENCE ANALY
Page 3 and 4: Copyright by Thomas J. Zagenczyk 20
Page 5 and 6: with the expectation that reciproca
Page 7 and 8: LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Hypothesize
Page 9 and 10: PREFACE Thank you to my chair, Audr
Page 11 and 12: epresentatives of the organization
Page 13 and 14: Researchers also consider the conte
Page 15: Exploring the effects of social inf
Page 19 and 20: Levinson’s work explained the lar
Page 21 and 22: Eisenberger and colleagues (1986) a
Page 23 and 24: In subsequent studies, researchers
Page 25 and 26: the organization is based on percei
Page 27 and 28: esearch exploring the antecedents o
Page 29 and 30: a manager with high formal status s
Page 31 and 32: to carry out tasks on their own, an
Page 33 and 34: occurs because the norm of reciproc
Page 35 and 36: on their daily tasks. Examining thi
Page 37 and 38: coworkers are able to provide infor
Page 39 and 40: when forming perceptions and evalua
Page 41 and 42: identifies with and interacts with
Page 43 and 44: Miles, and Grover (2003) showed tha
Page 45 and 46: instance, a researcher may find a p
Page 47 and 48: likely to discuss sensitive issues
Page 49 and 50: it does not require that the role m
Page 51 and 52: among tellers. In one branch, no se
Page 53 and 54: eside outside of the focal individu
Page 55 and 56: To test the effects of social influ
Page 57 and 58: disseminating organizational inform
Page 59 and 60: less positive. Thus, the POS of the
Page 61 and 62: ties (and other combinations of str
Page 63 and 64: Research Setting Hypotheses were te
Page 65 and 66: network data concerning recurring i
Page 67 and 68:
I explored these different requirem
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or not the employees with whom they
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frequent contact with person j, or
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employee held a leadership position
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correlation analysis has two steps.
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Organizational Support was .84, whi
Page 79 and 80:
Table 5: Descriptive Statistics for
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Correlations. Two different types o
Page 83 and 84:
Control Variables Table 7: Pearson
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Control Variables Table 9: Pearson
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Results of Hypotheses Tests using Q
Page 89 and 90:
positions had perceptions of organi
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CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION AND CONCLU
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elationship may not have been consi
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social learning theory (Bandura, 19
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to provide false information is les
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Fourth, when studying social influe
Page 101 and 102:
theoretical foundation of POS is so
Page 103 and 104:
consistent with past research (Ibar
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employees who were widely regarded
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etween employees, only strong frien
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of structure and behavior. Academy
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organizational support. In J. A-M.
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Hammer, M. (1985). Implications of
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Kohlberg, L. (1963). Moral developm
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Mehra, A., Kilduff, M., & Brass, D.
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Rogers, E.M. (1995). Diffusion of i
Page 121 and 122:
networks: An introduction to Markov
Page 123 and 124:
Name of employee Yes Yes No No Name
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