Advancing Organizational Support Theory into the Twenty-First Century World of Work

Purpose

This review focuses and aids the development of organizational support theory, which explains relationships between employers and employees based on social exchange. Many studies have explored the theory??s central construct, perceived organizational support (POS), or the degree to which employees believe their work organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being. Since the last review of POS literature in 2000, the occupational landscape has shifted, increasing nontraditional work relationships and the importance of managing an international workforce while considering influences on employee well-being. This review discusses how the recent POS research reflects these trends.

Design/Methodology/Approach

This review focused on how themes in the POS research since 2000 have enhanced organizational support theory as relevant to the twenty-first century world of work.

Findings

Four important theoretical themes have developed since 2000 that enhance organizational support theory: considerations of employee well-being, nontraditional workers, international and cross-cultural issues, and developments tied to the use of multilevel modeling.

Implications

Giving both researchers and practitioners a synthesized view of the current status of POS research, this review serves as a springboard for new developments. It also integrates the multitude of recent studies into organizational support theory, focusing theoretical progress.

Originality/Value

This is the first review and theoretical integration of the POS literature since 2002. It is a valuable resource for all interested in the field, with theoretical insights, useful tables, explanatory figures, and references.     

Couple adjustment to a stressful life event: a dyadic investigation of the roles of positive reframing and perceived benefits

Background and Objectives: This study examines positive reframing (a form of meaning making), perceived benefits (a form of meanings made) and adjustment in couples who experienced a stressful life event in the past year. This study tested whether couple members’ scores were nonindependent and whether one’s own perceived benefits was predicted by their own positive reframing (actor effect) as well as their partner’s positive reframing (partner effect). Further, this study tested actor and partner effects for the link between perceived benefits and adjustment and whether positive reframing (the initial variable) works through perceived benefits (the mediator) to affect adjustment (the outcome) at the dyadic level.

Design: A standard dyadic design was used.

Methods: Eighty couples completed measures of positive reframing, perceived benefits, and adjustment (depression, anxiety, positive affect, life satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction).

Results: Partners’ scores on study variables were related, and although only actor effects were found for the path between positive reframing and perceived benefits, both actor and partner effects were found for the path between perceived benefits and adjustment. Mediation was found for actor–actor and actor-partner indirect effects.

Conclusions: Results indicate that a greater focus on interpersonal factors is needed to further meaning-making theory and inform practice.     

Obstructive sleep apnea and depression

Is there an association between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and depression? OSA is a common breathing-related sleep disorder. There have been reports that depressive symptoms can be associated with this sleep disorder. A number of investigations have addressed this issue. Although some have found no correlation, most studies have concluded that there is an association between OSA and depressive symptoms. Other investigations have shown that depressive symptoms improve with treatment of OSA, and that untreated OSA may contribute to treatment resistance in some cases of mood disorders. Within the framework of current psychiatric diagnostic criteria, the depressive symptoms associated with OSA can be viewed as a combination of a mood disorder secondary to a primary medical condition and an adjustment disorder with depressed mood. The question of whether OSA causes depressive symptoms can perhaps be best answered by viewing OSA and depression as having certain symptoms that are common to both disorders.     

Collective Narcissism Predicts Hypersensitivity to In‐group Insult and Direct and Indirect Retaliatory Intergroup Hostility

Results of five studies (N = 1596) linked collective narcissism—a belief in in‐group exaggerated greatness contingent on external validation—to direct and indirect, retaliatory hostility in response to situations that collective narcissists perceived as insulting to the in‐group but which fell well beyond the definition of an insult. In Turkey, collective narcissists responded with schadenfreude to the European economic crisis after feeling humiliated by the Turkish wait to be admitted to the European Union (Study 1). In Portugal, they supported hostile actions towards Germans and rejoiced in the German economic crisis after perceiving Germany's position in the European Union as more important than the position of Portugal (Study 2). In Poland, they supported hostile actions towards the makers of a movie they found offensive to Poland (Studies 3 and 5) and responded with direct and indirect hostility towards a celebrity whose jokes about the Polish government they found offensive (Study 4). Comparisons with self‐positivity and in‐group positivity indices and predictors of intergroup hostility indicated that collective narcissism is the only systematic predictor of hypersensitivity to in‐group insult followed by direct and indirect, retaliatory intergroup hostility. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Polynomial Regression with Response Surface Analysis: A Powerful Approach for Examining Moderation and Overcoming Limitations of Difference Scores

Polynomial regression with response surface analysis is a sophisticated statistical approach that has become increasingly popular in multisource feedback research (e.g., self-observer rating discrepancy). The approach allows researchers to examine the extent to which combinations of two predictor variables relate to an outcome variable, particularly in the case when the discrepancy (difference) between the two predictor variables is a central consideration. We believe this approach has potential for application to a wide variety of research questions. To enhance interest and use of this technique, we provide ideas for future research directions that might benefit from the application of this analytic tool. We also walk through a step-by-step example of how to conduct polynomial regression and response surface analysis and provide all the tools you will need to do the analyses and graph the results (including SPSS syntax, formulas, and a downloadable Excel spreadsheet). Our example involves how discrepancies in perceived supervisor and organizational support relate to affective commitment. Finally, we discuss how this approach is a better, more informative alternative to difference scores and can be applied to the examination of two-way interactions in moderated regression.     

Cross‐cultural invariance of NPI‐13: Entitlement as culturally specific,leadership and grandiosity as culturally universal

The current study explores the problem with the lack of measurement invariance for the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) by addressing two issues: conceptual heterogeneity of narcissism and methodological issues related to the binary character of data. We examine the measurement invariance of the 13‐item version of the NPI in three populations in Japan, Poland and the UK. Analyses revealed that leadership/authority and grandiose exhibitionism dimensions of the NPI were cross‐culturally invariant, while entitlement/exploitativeness was culturally specific. Therefore, we proposed NPI‐9 as indicating scalar invariance, and we examined the pattern of correlations between NPI‐9 and other variables across three countries. The results suggest that NPI‐9 is valid brief scale measuring general levels of narcissism in cross‐cultural studies, while the NPI‐13 remains suitable for research within specific countries.     

Chronic stress and sex differences on the recall of fear conditioning and extinction

Chronic stress effects and sex differences were examined on conditioned fear extinction. Male and female Sprague–Dawley rats were chronically stressed by restraint (6 h/d/21 d), conditioned to tone and footshock, followed by extinction after 1 h and 24 h delays. Chronic stress impaired the recall of fear extinction in males, as evidenced by high freezing to tone after the 24 h delay despite exposure to the previous 1 h delay extinction trials, and this effect was not due to ceiling effects from overtraining during conditioning. In contrast, chronic stress attenuated the recall of fear conditioning acquisition in females, regardless of exposure to the 1 h extinction exposure. Since freezing to tone was reinstated following unsignalled footshocks, the deficit in the stressed rats reflected impaired recall rather than impaired consolidation. Sex differences in fear conditioning and extinction were observed in nonstressed controls as well, with control females resisting extinction to tone. Analysis of contextual freezing showed that all groups (control, stress, male, female) increased freezing immediately after the first tone extinction trial, demonstrating contextual discrimination. These findings show that chronic stress and sex interact to influence fear conditioning, with chronic stress impairing the recall of delayed fear extinction in males to implicate the medial prefrontal cortex, disrupting the recall of the fear conditioning acquisition in females to implicate the amygdala, and nonstressed controls exhibiting sex differences in fear conditioning and extinction, which may involve the amygdala and/or corticosterone levels.