a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

Empirical Measurement of Perceived Organizational Support
Following the introduction of the POS concept, Eisenberger et al. (1986) tested their
expectation that employees develop global perceptions of organizational support by creating a
measure of POS. This measure was an important contribution because it empirically captured
employees’ beliefs concerning the extent to which the organization was committed to them, and
therefore made it possible to test the proposed social exchange approach to the employee-
organization relationship.
To develop the POS measure, Eisenberger and colleagues (1986) created thirty-six
statements “representing various possible evaluative judgments of the employee by the
organization and discretionary actions the organization might take in diverse situations to benefit
or harm the employee” (501). These statements, labeled the Survey of Perceived Organizational
Support (SPOS), were administered to 361 employees in various organizational settings.
Employees reported the extent to which they agreed with each of the statements using a seven-
point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree.
Results indicated that employees responded to SPOS items in a consistent manner,
demonstrating that employees develop global beliefs regarding the extent to which the
organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being. Further, factor analysis
revealed that items loaded higher on the POS factor than they did on a second factor, indicating
that the scale was unidimensional. To create a scale that could be administered to employees in a
more timely fashion, Eisenberger et al. (1986) selected the seventeen highest-loading items for
the short version of the SPOS. The first study assessing the relationship between POS and an
outcome variable (absenteeism) revealed that the reliability coefficient of the SPOS was .93
(Eisenberger et al., 1986).
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