a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

Eisenberger and colleagues (1986) argued that POS develops as a result of employees’
tendency to personify the organization and attribute actions taken by its agents to the intent of the
organization itself rather than to the individual motives of agents (Levinson, 1965).
Organizations signal to employees whether or not they are favored or disfavored through human
resource practices, quality of supervisory relationships, and fairness of treatment. However,
favorable treatment from the organization does not always correspond to high levels of POS in
employees. Rather, employee attributions for the treatment offered to them by the organization
play a key role in the development of POS.
Attribution theory explains how people use information to arrive at causal explanations
for events (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). People make dispositional attributions when the cause of
behavior is thought to reside within the individual performing the behavior. Situational
attributions, on the other hand, are made when an individual’s behavior is controlled by the
situation or environment that the individual is in. Eisenberger and colleagues (1986) stressed
that POS would be more strongly affected when employees made dispositional attributions for
organizational treatment. Thus, organizational treatment that materially benefits employees
(e.g., pay raises) would not always result in high POS. If, for example, employees received a
pay raise from the organization as a result of pressure from a union or if they received better
working conditions as a result of government regulations, there would be no increase in POS
because this treatment would not be attributed to the disposition of the organization. Employees,
according to Eisenberger’s model, would make an external attribution for the positive treatment
and POS would not be affected.
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