a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

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of organizational treatment will become to those of their role model-advice ties. As a result, role models will be an important source of social influence in organizations – and will influence the perceptions of support of employees who interact with them. Hypothesis 2: An employee’s perceived organizational support will be positively related to the perceived organizational support of role models with whom that employee has strong advice relationships. Friendship Ties and Similarity in POS Like strong advice ties and role model advice ties, I contend that strong friendship ties will be positively related to similarity in POS. I draw on social comparison theory to provide the rationale for this hypothesis. POS is subjective; that is, there is no objective standard for employees to evaluate their POS against. Social comparison theory contends that when an outcome is subjective, individuals (or in this case, employees) will turn to individuals who are similar to themselves, such as friends, as a reference point when evaluating subjective outcomes (Wheeler & Miyake, 1992). Therefore, it is likely that employees will compare their perceptions of support to the perceptions of support of strong friendship ties. Social comparison can create association or comparison between individuals. Association would result in similarity in POS between employees who have strong friendship relationships. When a focal employee’s friend is treated positively or negatively by the organization, the focal employee may take the positive or negative treatment as a signal that the organization favors or disfavors him/her as well. Therefore, both employees’ POS would increase as a result of one employee receiving favorable treatment. On the other hand, comparison would result in dissimilar perceptions of support between a focal employee and a strong-tie friend. When the focal employee’s friend receives positive treatment from the organization, this may cause the focal employee to believe that the treatment s/he has received is 49
less positive. Thus, the POS of the friend who received positive treatment will increase, and the POS of the focal employee, who perceived less positive treatment, will decrease following comparison with his/her friend. Since ego’s POS decreases, and ego’s friend’s POS increases, the POS of the two friends will become less similar. Tesser (1988) stresses that the outcome in question determines whether or not the occurrence of an association or comparison function is likely. When considering POS, then, a focal employee’s POS would increase (and become more similar to the similar other’s POS) if the similar other received a training opportunity that the focal employee was not interested in having for him/herself, or if all employees received an across-the-board raise or a new benefit from the organization. On the other hand, if the similar other received a promotion that the focal employee desired, his or her POS could become dissimilar to the POS of the similar other. However, it is also very possible that friends could be happy for a friend who is treated favorably by the organization, even if they were competing for an outcome. In such a case, even when employees are competing, an employee’s POS may become similar to the POS of his or her friendship ties. Research on justice perceptions and POS is useful in predicting whether or not a comparison or association function will occur between friends. Specifically, researchers have shown that the relationship between procedural justice and POS is stronger than the relationship between distributive justice and POS (Masterson et al., 2000; Tekleab et al., 2005; Wayne et al., 2002) because employees deal with procedural justice on a daily basis while promotions and raises occur infrequently. This suggests that the organization’s policies (procedural justice) are more important to employees’ perceived support than are the rewards that they themselves receive (distributive justice). Thus, it is policies and procedures, which Tesser (1988) would 50
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TITLE PAGE A SOCIAL INFLUENCE ANALY
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Copyright by Thomas J. Zagenczyk 20
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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 and 16: Exploring the effects of social inf
Page 17 and 18: CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW Orga
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: disseminating organizational inform
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
Page 69 and 70: or not the employees with whom they
Page 71 and 72: frequent contact with person j, or
Page 73 and 74: employee held a leadership position
Page 75 and 76: correlation analysis has two steps.
Page 77 and 78: Organizational Support was .84, whi
Page 79 and 80: Table 5: Descriptive Statistics for
Page 81 and 82: Correlations. Two different types o
Page 83 and 84: Control Variables Table 7: Pearson
Page 85 and 86: Control Variables Table 9: Pearson
Page 87 and 88: Results of Hypotheses Tests using Q
Page 89 and 90: positions had perceptions of organi
Page 91 and 92: CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION AND CONCLU
Page 93 and 94: elationship may not have been consi
Page 95 and 96: social learning theory (Bandura, 19
Page 97 and 98: to provide false information is les
Page 99 and 100: Fourth, when studying social influe
Page 101 and 102: theoretical foundation of POS is so
Page 103 and 104: consistent with past research (Ibar
Page 105 and 106: employees who were widely regarded
Page 107 and 108: 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
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networks: An introduction to Markov
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Name of employee Yes Yes No No Name
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