The Organization In Charge Of Support Staff Emotional Commitment And Work Output

Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison & Sowa (1986) found the researchers had paid too much attention to employees' commitment to organization, while lack attention to organization's commitment to employees. So they initiated the concept—Perceived Organizational Support (POS) and defined it as "employees develop globe beliefs concerning the extent to which the organizations values their contributions and cares about their well-being" Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison & Sowa (1986: 501). They used POS to express the employees' perception of "organization's commitment to them".Kottke & Sharafinski (1988) continued Eisenberger and his colleagues' work and defined the concept Perceived Supervisory Support (PSS), that is "employees develop globe beliefs concerning the extent to which their supervisor values their contributions and cares about their well-being".Both POS and PSS are based on social exchange theory, which attributes all the relationships between people to "exchange of interest". But is this the truth in the real world?We did a pre-investigation in February of 2004. Our results show that the employees in Chinese corporations have both "exchange view" and "community view", and the latter dominate the relationship between employees and their organizations and supervisors.So we decide to compare the relationships between POS, PSS and employees' affective commitment (to organization and supervisor) and work outcomes (job performance, organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction, turnover intention) under "exchange view" and "community view".Our literature review also finds, most researchers tested the relationship between POS, PSS and employees' work outcomes without any mediators. That means POS, PSS lead to the work outcomes directly. We take employees' affective commitment (toorganization and supervisor) as the mediators between POS, PSS and employees' work outcomes.We also find only Stinglhamber& Vandenberghe (2003) compared the effects of POS and PSS on turnover intention. In this paper, we compare the effects of POS and PSS on four work outcomes-- job performance, organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction, and turnover intention.At last, we find researchers have different findings on the effects of supervisory commitment and organizational commitment on work outcomes. We will test these effects and give our own results.Our research has the following findings and implications for both theories and practices:1. Under "exchange view" and "community view", POS and PSS have different effects on employees' affective commitment (to organization and supervisor) and work outcomes (job performance, organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction, turnover intention). PSS has more effects on employees' affective commitments and work outcomes under "community view" than under "exchange view". POS has more effects on employees' affective commitments and work outcomes under "exchange view" than under "community view". The results first have an important theoretical implication, that is, when we explain the concept in this subject with a theory from another subject, we should pay attention to the limitations of this theory. The results also tell us we should care the exchange relationships between employees and their organizations and the community relationships between employees and their supervisors.2.We still find: organizational affective commitment and supervisory affective commitment play the median role between the POS, PSS and employee work outcomes. Methodologically, this means when we explore the relationships between things, we must pay special attention on the 'mechanism behind the relationships', and take use of mediators to test the relationships. To the corporate practices, this means: POS and PSS do not bring work outcomes directly, but mediated by attitudes(e.g. affective commitments). Thus, the organizations and supervisors should know they provide must pay attention to the changes of employees' attitudes when they provide support to the employees.3.We still find: Overall, P...