Analysis Of Perceived Organizational Support In College Students: Are There Differences Between Job Categories?
APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY LABORATORY
East Tennessee State University
http://www.etsu.edu/apl/
Johnson City, Tennessee
Wesley D. Ramey, Spencer L. Oatts & Chris S. Dula, Ph.D.
INTRODUCTION
:
• Perceived organizational support (POS) refers to employees’
beliefs concerning the extent to which the organization values
their contribution and cares about their well-being (Eisenberger,
Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986).
• There are five outcome variables that are affected by POS:
organizational commitment, job satisfaction, performance,
contextual performance, and intention to leave (Riggle,
Edmondson, & Hansen, 2008).
• Organizations are investing significant resources to POS
programs, but without empirical evidence there is not anyway to
tell how effective these programs are with maintaining
organizational commitment.
• Organizations perceived higher in organizational support tended
to have employees that were more satisfied not only with their
job, but also more committed to the organization (Riggle,
Edmondson, & Hansen, 2008). It was also found if employees
perceived the organization to be high in support provided;
employees would be significantly less likely to leave the
organization.
• The effects of POS were significantly less pronounced across all
outcome variables except contextual performance for employees
who worked on the frontlines for an organization (Riggle,
Edmondson, & Hansen, 2008).
•
Performance of the POS programs are influenced by the type of
job employees hold, as well as distance from upper management
(Riggle, Edmondson, & Hansen, 2008).
• This study sought to observe if there was a difference in levels of
perceived organizational support between job types: Restaurant,
retail, health/social services, office, and manual labor.
HYPOTHESIS
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
Data were subjected to a one-way ANOVA (Table 1). Tukey HSD
post hoc test (multiple comparisons) indicated a significant effect
between retail job types and health and social service job types and
restaurant job types and health and social service job types
between total scores of perceived organizational support (Table 2).
• There was a statistically significant difference observed between
health and social services job types, retail/sales job types and
restaurant job types in levels of perceived organizational support.
Table 1. Differences Between POS for Restaurant vs. Other Jobs
Sum of Squares
df
Mean Square
F
Sig
Between Groups
1492.87
5
298.57
2.81
.021
Within Groups
9533.29
90
105.93
Total
11026.16
95
Restaurant
Retail
Retail
Health/Soc.
Services
Offices
Manual
Labor
No Answer
Restaurant
Health/Soc.
Services
Offices
Manual
Labor
No Answer
95% Confidence Interval
Std. Error
Sig.
1.16
4.09
-11.31
• Employees within health and social service jobs had the highest
levels of perceived organizational support whereas employees
within retail/sales and restaurant industries had low levels of
perceived organizational support.
• This may be due to an employees commitment to the company
or an employees level of job satisfaction.
Table 2. Multiple Comparison of Perceived Organizational Support
(I) Job Type (J) Job Type
Mean
1
2
Difference
• This may be a product of employees’ perceived organizational
support toward their companies or the product of an extraneous
variable.
1.00
Lower
Bound
-10.74
Upper
Bound
13.05
3.70
.03
-22.08
-.537
-4.88
3.55
.743
-15.23
5.47
-6.54
3.60
.46
-17.02
3.93
-6.11
-1.16
3.65
4.09
.55
1.00
-16.73
-13.05
4.51
10.74
-12.47
4.03
.031
-24.20
-.73
-6.04
3.90
.634
-17.40
5.32
-7.70
3.94
.376
-19.17
3.77
-7.27
3.98
.46
-18.86
4.329
• It was hypothesized there would be a significant difference
between scores of total perceived organizational support
between restaurant job types and other job types.
• The current study follows prior findings indicating job type and
employee positions within the organizational hierarchy effect their
overall perceived organizational support (Riggle, Edmondson, &
Hansen, 2008).
LIMITATIONS
• Participants were all college students at a University in the
Southeastern United States. A more diverse sample may
produce better generalizability of results.
IMPLICATIONS & FUTURE DIRECTIONS
• Future research should examine job commitment along with
perceived organizational support. This would allow us to examine
if employees who are highly committed to their organization also
have high perceived organizational support towards their
organization.
REFERENCES
Allan, C., Bamber, G. J., & Timo, N. (2005). McJobs; students
attitudes to work and employment relations in the fast-food
industry. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 12,
1-11.
Eisenberger, R., Huntington, R., Hutchison, S., & Sowa, D. (1986).
Perceived Organizational Support. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 71, 500-507.
Eisenberger, R. , Fasolo, P. , & Davis-LaMastro, V. (1990).
Perceived Organizational Support and Employee Diligence,
Commitment, and Innovation. Journal of Applied Psychology,
75, 51-59.
Riggle, R., Edmondson, D., & Hansen, J. (2009). A meta-analysis of
the relationship between perceived organizational support and
job outcomes: 20 years of research. Journal of Business
Research, 62(10), 1027-1030.
METHOD
• Participants : Participants undergraduate students (N=96). #
were females (#); # were males (#); and one participant did
not answer. The average age of participants was 23.71 (SD=
#), ranging from 18 to 65.
• Measures: Scale of Perceived Organizational Support (POS
α= .97, Eisenberger et al, 1986). A short survey of
demographic and job information.
• Method: Data was collected using SONA systems, an online
participant pool. Participants were granted a modest amount
of extra credit for their participation.
.
CONTACT: Wesley D. Ramey zwdr5@goldmail.etsu.edu or Chris S. Dula, dulac@etsu.edu