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a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

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POS than would distributive justice because instances <strong>of</strong> procedural justice occur on a day-to-<br />

day basis while promotions and pay raises occur only once in a while. Consistent with<br />

expectations, researchers have found that procedural justice and distributive justice are both<br />

positively related to POS (Cropanzano, Hayes, Grandey, & Toth, 1997; Cropanzano, Prehar, &<br />

Chen, 2002; Masterson, Lewis, Goldman, & Taylor, 2000; Moorman, Blakely, & Nieh<strong>of</strong>f, 1998;<br />

Tekleab et al., 2005; Wayne, Shore, Bommer, & Tetric, 2002) and that this relationship is<br />

stronger for procedural justice than distributive justice.<br />

The relationship between fairness perceptions and POS <strong>of</strong>fers some <strong>support</strong> for the<br />

proposition that POS is <strong>social</strong>ly constructed. This is because perceptions <strong>of</strong> procedural and<br />

distributive justice themselves are <strong>social</strong>ly constructed, as there is no absolute level <strong>of</strong><br />

<strong>organizational</strong> justice (Umphress et al., 2003). When employees are trying to decide whether or<br />

not the treatment <strong>of</strong>fered by the organization is fair, they may try to obtain this information from<br />

their coworkers in the organization. Previous research on <strong>social</strong> <strong>influence</strong> shows that employees’<br />

beliefs about <strong>organizational</strong> justice are similar to the beliefs <strong>of</strong> other employees in their <strong>social</strong><br />

networks (Umphress et al., 2003). Therefore, I expect that POS will be driven by interaction<br />

with coworkers as well.<br />

Support from Organizational Representatives. While employees pay attention the<br />

fairness <strong>of</strong> <strong>organizational</strong> policies when forming POS, they also consider their relationships with<br />

<strong>organizational</strong> agents. One <strong>of</strong> the key assumptions <strong>of</strong> POS is that employees aggregate the<br />

treatment that they receive from <strong>organizational</strong> agents who control the outcomes that they value<br />

into a general perception <strong>of</strong> <strong>support</strong>. The greater the extent to which an employee believes that<br />

the actions <strong>of</strong> an <strong>organizational</strong> agent are representative <strong>of</strong> the actions <strong>of</strong> the organization itself,<br />

the stronger the <strong>influence</strong> an <strong>organizational</strong> agent will have on that employee’s POS. Therefore,<br />

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