a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

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Overall, three of the four hypotheses received support in the reciprocated ties analysis, while only one of the four hypotheses received support in the non-reciprocated ties analysis. This suggests that friendship and advice ties characterized by both frequent contact and reciprocity are more influential than strong ties characterized by only frequent contact when similarity in POS is the dependent variable. These results also provide some support for the exploratory hypothesis which proposed that strong ties characterized by reciprocity would be more strongly associated with interpersonal similarity in POS than would strong ties characterized by only by frequent contact. There are several explanations for this finding that ties characterized by reciprocity and frequent contact are more strongly related to similarity in POS than are ties characterized by frequent contact. It could be that reciprocal ties were more influential because they were characterized by information sharing. Thus, each employee in the dyad, to some extent shared his or her opinion related to treatment offered by the organization. Since there is no objective measure of POS, employees may have utilized information obtained from one another to determine the extent to which they were supported by the organization. This is consistent with Deutsch and Gerard’s (1955) interpretation of Sherif’s (1935) experiment in which subjects estimated the distance that randomly moving points of light had moved. After hearing each other’s estimates, the subjects in this experiment provided estimates that were very similar. Thus, it is possible that people “accept information from another as evidence about reality” (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955: 629) when situations are ambiguous, such as determining the extent to which they are supported by the organization. A second plausible explanation for this result is provided by Hammer (1985). Hammer suggests that reciprocal ties provide more accurate measures of what ties actually exist in a social network because they are verified by a second source. Thus, the chance that employees are able 87
to provide false information is less when reciprocated ties are utilized for social networks analysis. Contributions The results of this study make several important contributions to the organizational literature. First, results of this dissertation move POS research beyond the traditional employee- organization dyad by demonstrating that the beliefs of an employee's coworkers are related to their beliefs regarding treatment to them provided by the organization. This is an important contribution because existing research is driven by the assumption that employees’ beliefs about their exchange relationship with the organization are formed in a vacuum. The results suggest that this one-dimensional view of the employee-organization relationship needs to be reconsidered, especially in today’s decentralized, team-intensive organizations. Therefore, future research on the antecedents of POS should not only consider supervisory relationships, fairness perceptions, and human resource practices, but relational factors as well. Second, the results of this dissertation extend research on social influence in organizations in several ways. For one, prior social influence research reveals that employees’ social ties are related to perceptions of and attitudes towards organizations, including perceptions of organizational justice (Umphress et al., 2003), attitudes towards technology (Burkhardt, 1994; Rice & Aydin, 1991); decisions regarding job interviews (Kilduff, 1990); and beliefs about organizational coordination (Meyer, 1994). However, prior research had not explored the possibility that employees’ global beliefs regarding the extent to which the organization supports them may be influenced by the social ties that they maintain. This dissertation shows that they are. 88
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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
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identifies with and interacts with
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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 and 92: CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION AND CONCLU
Page 93 and 94: elationship may not have been consi
Page 95: social learning theory (Bandura, 19
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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