a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

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existed for it to be included as a strong friendship or advice tie in the analysis. This methodology increases the accuracy of the measurement of social networks (Hammer, 1985), because it is more likely that a tie actually exists when it is acknowledged by both parties. The reciprocity requirement also decreases single-source bias because reciprocal measures are not derived solely from the perceptions of one employee, but rather are verified by another individual in the organization. However, a potential shortcoming of this approach is that it does not account for employees’ perceptions of the network, which may be more relevant than ties that actually exist in some cases (Kilduff & Krackhardt, 1994). These authors found that being perceived as having a powerful friend, not actually having a powerful friend, was related to reputation for performance among employees. Thus, it may be that employees who perceive that they have a tie with is more important than who they actually have ties with when perceptions of support are considered. As a result, employees who have different beliefs about what a friend or advice tie entails may respond to these questions in different ways. While these potential shortcomings are noteworthy, including reciprocity as a requirement for a strong tie is consistent with Granovetter’s (1973) definition of tie strength. The non-reciprocated ties analysis tested employees’ perceptions of their own social networks. That is, if an employee believed that s/he had a strong friendship tie or an advice tie with another employee, that tie was included in the analysis, regardless of whether or not the tie was acknowledged by both employees. Defining ties in this fashion is beneficial because it includes all of the relationships that an employee considers to be relevant, regardless of whether 59
or not the employees with whom they claim to have relationships acknowledge having relationships with them (Krackhardt, 1990). However, a limitation of utilizing this methodological approach is that it is less rigorous. Common method bias is a concern because employees’ perceptions of their social networks are utilized as an independent variable, while the dependent variable also consists of a perceptual measure (similarity in POS). Another important point regarding measurement of social networks variables in this study is that, in both analyses, non-overlapping ties were utilized 1 . That is, each employee was assumed to have one (or no) relationship with each other employee in the organization. For example, if employee A indicated that employee B was a friend and a role model, employee B would be considered a friend-role model tie of employee A. However, employee B would not be considered a friendship tie and a role model tie as well; such a tie would only be counted as a friend-role model tie. Thus, ties are only counted once in this type of analysis, which reduces multicolinearity associated with counting the same tie in several different networks. The following friendship, advice and role model ties are the building blocks for all of the variables in this study. Friendship Ties. Consistent with previous research (Ibarra, 1992; Ibarra, 1995, Ibarra & Andrews, 1993; Krackhardt, 1990; Morrison, 2002), friendship ties were measured by asking each respondent to identify coworkers “who you see as an organization member as well as socially – outside of activities related to the organization.” Employees were instructed to circle “yes” if they considered an individual to be a friend, and “no” if they did not. Advice Ties. Advice ties were measured by asking each respondent to identify those employees who “provide job-related advice, meaning that this person has been a source of 1 Results of descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and QAP regression analysis are also available for overlapping ties. 60
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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
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LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Hypothesize
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PREFACE Thank you to my chair, Audr
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epresentatives of the organization
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Researchers also consider the conte
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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 and 58: disseminating organizational inform
Page 59 and 60: less positive. Thus, the POS of the
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: I explored these different requirem
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
Page 109 and 110: of structure and behavior. Academy
Page 111 and 112: organizational support. In J. A-M.
Page 113 and 114: Hammer, M. (1985). Implications of
Page 115 and 116: Kohlberg, L. (1963). Moral developm
Page 117 and 118: 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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