Perceived organizational support (POS) is the degree to which employees believe that their organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being and fulfills socioemotional needs.
[1] POS is also related to employee commitment, which can be negatively affected by a sense of helplessness in the event of change.
[4] In fact, organizational commitment, increased performance, and reduced withdrawal behaviors were found to be the most strongly related to POS in Levy's study.
Organizational support theory[6] says that in order to meet socioemotional needs and to assess the benefits of increased work effort, employees form a general perception concerning the extent to which the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being.
; promoting their employees when they deserve it; providing job security as incentive to remain with the organization; encouraging autonomy to correspondingly increase production and morale; reduce stress when made aware of it; and to provide proper training, to ensure employees' confidence in their jobs.
Being autonomous increases an employee's desire to continue to remain loyal to his or her organization because if he feels competent and confident in his ability to do well, he will be less likely to give up or lose faith.
Affective commitment, or feeling an emotional tie to one's organization, is important in employees because it demonstrates a deeper meaning for work than simply earning money.
Continuance commitment, or knowing that staying with one's organization will be less costly in the end than leaving, is telling of extrinsic motivation to remain wherever one will profit the most.
[7] If the respect and appreciation is either not present or is not expressed adequately, then the employee may begin to harbor suspicion, which may increase organizational cynicism.
Reciprocation can include a wide array of things, such as pleasing pay and benefits, a promotion, mutual respect between employer and employee, etc.
[7] Authors Lynch and Armeli wrote that "fewer companies today than in the past implicitly guarantee long-term employment, provide generous pay increments and comprehensive health benefits, or subsidize general education courses."
Examples like these are possible sources for reciprocation wariness to bloom amongst employees, potentially lowering their perceptions of organizational support.
It is important for POS to be high because an employee's feeling of belonging, respect, and support raises his or her morale, which has a positive effect on performance.
The police officers who needed more "approval, esteem, emotional support, or affiliation"[7] issued more speeding tickets and arrested more people for driving under the influence when their POS was high.
If aware of a general problem, employers might be unable to take action because they do not know how to fix specific issues.