Impacts Of Perceived Organizational Support Of Knowledge Workers On Contextual Performance

In an age themed on knowledge competition, knowledge workers are taken as the most valuable asset of a company. Compared with other employees, they share stronger perceptual sensitivity. Therefore, when it comes to employment, they will value not only the economic rewards that companies provide, but also the spiritual satisfaction of high level gained from their work, such as perception of affiliation, sense of accomplishment and self-realization. For this reason, companies attach great importance to such issues as how to encourage knowledge workers at psychological level to engage into the organization voluntarily and then effectively display contextual performance for the sake of company’s long-term objectives, based on the harmonious employee-organization relationship.The concept of perceived organizational support based on social exchange theory provides a new idea for the study on employee-organization relationship. It emphasizes that once employees enter an organization, they will get a comprehensive perception about whether the organization thinks highly of their contribution and happiness or not. Thus, the perceived organizational support will satisfy the social and emotional appeals of the employee, which determined by to what extends that organization will pay its employees and support them when needed. Considering the principle of reciprocity, after receiving the care and support of company, the employees will feel grateful and thus alter their engagement according to the level of company’s care and support. After all, it’s much easier and more realistic for them to alter their attitude toward work (engagement) rather than work performance as a way of return to the company. Attitude can determine performance. The different attitudes of employees towards organization will have influence on their extra-role behavior-contextual performance. On this basis, this study will concentrate on the main line of perception-attitude-performance. After giving review on the concepts of perceived organizational support, employee engagement and contextual performance, it will deepen the study from the perspective of employee engagement and research the impact mechanism of perceived organizational support of knowledge workers on contextual performance, which aims at not only enriching theoretical research on perceived organizational support, employee engagement and contextual performance, but also providing references for management of knowledge workers.This paper firstly gives credibility analysis, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis on the questionnaire result from pre-testing and formal testing, which verifies that organizational support consists of three dimensions like work support, interests concern and value identity while employee engagement involves organizational identity, work involvement and work value and besides the two-dimensional contextual performance applies to Chinese context too. Secondly, it shows that perceived organizational support, employee engagement and contextual performance of Chinese knowledge workers are not so significant and only at the intermediate level through descriptive statistical analysis. Thirdly, according to correlation analysis and structural equation model from questionnaire, it comes to conclusion as follow:1) each dimension of organizational support has significantly positive impact on dimensions of employee engagement;2) each dimension of employee engagement has significantly positive impact on dimensions of contextual performance;3) work support and value identity of organizational support have significantly positive impact on dimensions of contextual performance while interests concern has little direct impact on dimensions of contextual performance;4) employee engagement plays a mediating role between dimensions of organizational support and contextual performance. Lastly, it gives the conclusion of the whole paper. It puts forward some suggestions related to employee management by combining the subjects, background and objectives of this research, points out the weakness of this paper and finally raises further prospects of the study.