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Using data from 467 members of a large firm in the United States, this paper found that perceived work-group support is a distinct construct from perceived organizational support. To reinforce the uniqueness of the constructs, the work-group and organizational support constructs exhibited meaningful, differential relationships with six of eight variables reflecting different levels of exchange relationships and commitments. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Meyer and Allen (1991) suggested that organizational commitment reflected the psychological ties between an employee and the organization, leading to favourable work-related behaviours such as increased job performance and citizenship behaviours. Because of this, an understanding of what fosters commitment became important. Over the past several years, two such organizational level 'triggers' that have come under scrutiny are the exchange between the employee and supervisor or Leader-Member Exchange (LMX; Liden & Maslyn, 1998), and the exchange between the employee and the organization or Perceived Organizational Support (POS; Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchinson, & Sowa, 1986).
A third possible activator of organizational commitment is the relationship that exists between the employees and their work-group. Measuring this relationship is important, as Cole, Schaninger, and Harris (2002) note, 'to fill in the "missing piece"' and more fully understand the relationships that foster commitment. Cole et al. go on to suggest that the means to evaluate such a relationship empirically are not well-established; yet, it is extremely important to have measures, given the organizational environment today in which much emphasis is being placed on work-groups and measures of their effectiveness. Accordingly, this study offers an employee to work-group relationship measure using a variant of Eisenberger et al.'s (1986) POS measure and offers some initial evidence of its validity.
Specifically, we take Eisenberger et al.'s (1986) POS construct and by changing 'my organization' to 'my work-group' we predict that individuals will perceive support from their work-group differently than they perceive support from the organization. This approach has been used elsewhere (cf., Bishop, Scott, & Burroughs, 2000; Kottke & Sharafinski, 1988). Kottke and Sharafinski (1988) argued that the content of Eisenberger et al.'s (1986) measure of POS not only could represent a global perception of commitment from the organization, but also represent commitment from an employee's supervisor. Using Eisenberger et al.'s POS measure, Kottke and Sharafinski assessed...