a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

of mutual support, much of which may be socioemotional in nature. Applying Blau’s
perspective to the employer-employee relationship, Eisenberger and his colleagues (1986)
proposed that the employee-organization connection was a social exchange relationship in which
the organization offered employees rewards and favorable job conditions in exchange for loyalty
and work effort. However, an employee’s relationship with the employer is not based on simple
quid-pro-quo. Eisenberger was concerned with the employee’s subjective valuation and
perceptions of the treatment that the organization offered rather than objective measures of
organizational support. When employees perceived that the organization supported them, he
argued that the reciprocity norm (Gouldner, 1960) would obligate them to support the
organization. According to Gouldner (1960), the reciprocity norm is a generalized moral norm
that requires individuals to help (and not harm) individuals who help them.
Commitment (termed “support” by Blau) that the employee offers to the organization is
most often represented by measures of organizational commitment such as the Organizational
Commitment Questionnaire developed by Mowday et al. (1979) and the three-component model
of organizational commitment (Allen & Meyer, 1984). However, management researchers had
not yet created a construct that assessed employees’ beliefs regarding the treatment that they
were offered by the organization, or organizational support. Eisenberger et al.’s (1986)
perceived organizational support construct addressed this need in the literature. POS is based on
employees’ expectation that “in order to determine the organization’s willingness to reward work
effort and meet needs for praise approval, employees develop global beliefs concerning the
extent to which the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being”
(501).
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