a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

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they admire, and 2) provide them with job-related advice. Therefore, although not directly tested, these findings offer some support for social information processing and social learning as theoretical underpinnings of social influence. Interestingly, strong friendship ties were not significantly and positively related to similarity in POS. Thus, results of this study did not offer support for either the associative or comparative function of social comparison, at least with respect to friendship ties. Social comparison could have played a role in the effects of advice and role model ties. As mentioned previously, employees who associated with friends would tend to develop perceptions similar to those of friends, while employees who compared perceptions of support to those of their friends would be expected to have perceptions that were dissimilar to those of their friends. Regression results generally showed that strong ties characterized by friendship were positively, although not significantly, related to similarity in POS. For instance, strong friendship ties were only related to similarity in POS when such friends were also role models who provided advice. Although strong friendship ties were not related to similarity or dissimilarity in POS, role model relationships were. I expected that in order for role models to be influential, it would be necessary for an employee to maintain an advice or friendship relationship with the role model. However, the findings indicate that this was not the case. Employees had similar POS to those of role models with whom they had frequent interaction, regardless of whether or not that interaction included the exchange of advice or friendship. This suggests that role models may serve a role similar to that of opinion leaders in organizations as well (Reynolds & Wells, 1977). While these role models may not have been considered friends or advice ties by their colleagues, other employees may have gone to them occasionally to request their opinions on matters related to the organization, or perhaps others even became aware of their opinions second hand. Such a 83
elationship may not have been considered classic advice provision by employees in this study, and thus it may not have been captured in the advice tie measure. The fact that strong role model ties (that were not characterized by friendship or advice) and strong advice-role model ties were both significantly related to similarity in POS while strong friend-role model ties were not is also interesting. Consistent with research on social comparison theory (Crosby, 1984), I predicted a positive relationship between strong friendship ties and similarity in POS. My expectation was that because friends are likely to share their opinions with one another in great detail, they would be very aware of how much support they perceive relative to one another, and when one employee was supported (or not supported) by the organization, that would indicate whether or not friends of that employee would feel supported. The absence of the hypothesized positive relationship between strong friendship ties and similarity in POS may stem from some employees’ tendency to compare their outcomes with other friends (and thus have dissimilarity with respect to POS), while some friends tended to associate. The comparison function may be particularly strong when a friend compares his or her own POS to the POS of another friend who is regarded as a role model, as the role model may receive more support from the organization (as role models were defined partially by how successful they had been in the organization). It may also be important to consider the nature of the support provided by the organization when examining friendship ties and similarity in POS. For instance, in her study examining the effects of social influence on employee perceptions of psychological contract breach, Ho (2002) argued that promises related to competitive resources would result in dissimilar perceptions of breach among employees, while promises related to non-competitive resources would result in similarity with respect to perceptions of breach. However, she did not 84
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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
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CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW Orga
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Levinson’s work explained the lar
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Eisenberger and colleagues (1986) a
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In subsequent studies, researchers
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the organization is based on percei
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esearch exploring the antecedents o
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a manager with high formal status s
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to carry out tasks on their own, an
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occurs because the norm of reciproc
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on their daily tasks. Examining thi
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coworkers are able to provide infor
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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 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: CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION AND CONCLU
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.
Page 119 and 120: Rogers, E.M. (1995). Diffusion of i
Page 121 and 122: networks: An introduction to Markov
Page 123 and 124: Name of employee Yes Yes No No Name
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