In this chapter, this research reviewed the former researches related to variables. It started from perceived organizational support (POS), then organizational commitment (OC) and lastly show organizational justice (OJ). This chapter also included definitions and components of each variables, then the relationships among variables. Studying the relationships among these three variables provided useful implications for human resource management in this diversified era, which required HR measures and systems aimed at coping with diversity.
Perceived Organizational Support
Perceived organizational support (POS) is a concept proposed by Eisenberger and his colleagues (1986). It has been used as a theoretical platform for understanding the relationship between individuals and organizations as well as for the methods which enable understand the attitudes and behaviors of working people. POS is a concept that focuses on the perspective of individuals, and especially it enables to visualize how organizational efforts and responses are evaluated by an employee.
POS was defined firstly as a global belief that employees have about how much the organization evaluates the contribution of employees and how well the organization cares about their well-being (Eisenberger et al., 1986). Sato (2014) suggested that the introduction of POS made it possible to explain the process in which employees have a commitment to the organization and the process in which employees make a further effort for the organization from the viewpoint of the social exchanges. Hence, almost all studies considering POS have adopted this definition. Furthermore, research accumulations have been made under the unified definition.
There are several reasons why POS is a distinctive concept. First, POS is not a belief in the specific assistance or benefits provided by an organization, but a general belief which is formed by the organization's support for employees. Takada and Kawamura (2018) concluded that POS is valuable, which can assess the relationship between individuals and organizations.
Second, POS has two different aspects of the perceptions. One is the extent to which the organization values employee's contributions and another one is the extent to which the organization cares about employee's well-being (Eisenberger et al., 1986).
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Organizational Support Theory
Organizational support theory (OST) can explain the mechanism in which POS is encouraged. Levinson (1965) concluded that employees tend to view actions by agents of the organization as actions of the organization itself. POS is the concept that determines the quality of the relationship between individuals and organizations (Liu, 2009; Masterson, Lewis, Goldman, & Taylor, 2000), primarily it assesses the extent how individuals react and evaluate the policies or systems of HRM.
Therefore, studies about POS can provide empirical implications. Eisenberger et al.
(1986) also had developed OST, and it was supposed that employees form a global belief concerning the extent to which the organization cares about them and values their contributions to their organization. Employees also strive to repay their organization for a high level of support by increasing their efforts to help the organization to achieve its objectives. OST also explains how to enhance POS. Employees who receive highly valued resources (e.g., pay raises, developmental training opportunities) would feel obligated to help the organization reach its objectives through increasing their efforts as increased in-role and extra-role performance and lessened absenteeism.
According to Nair and Vohra (2010), POS may affect employee engagement and lead to variance in organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Besides, previous research suggested that POS would increase employees’ affective commitment to the organization by fulfilling socioemotional needs (Eisenberger et al., 1986). In addition, Rhoades and Eisenberger (2002) also concluded that there are three general forms of perceived favourable treatment received from the organization.
Fairness. Procedural justice concerns the fairness of the ways used to determine the distribution of resources among employees (Greenberg, 1990). Related to procedural justice is the concept of perceived organizational politics, referring to attempts to influence others in ways that promote self-interest, often at the expense of rewards for individual merit and the betterment of the organization.
Supervisor support. The employee develops general views concerning the degree to which supervisors value their contributions and care about their well-being (e.g., perceived
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supervisor support) (Kottke & Sharafinski, 1988). Employees understand that supervisors’
evaluations of subordinates are often conveyed to upper management.
Organizational rewards and job conditions. Human resources practices showing recognition of employee contributions should be positively related to POS (Wayne, Shore, Bommer, & Tetrick, 2002).
The relationship between individuals and organizations is changing due to the progress of labor diversification. Therefore, organizations are facing the problem of how to draw high commitment and contribute to the organization from employees. Sato (2014) suggested that POS, which is based on social exchange theory, is a concept that not only expresses the quality of the relationship between individuals and organizations, but also can explain from the viewpoint of the people who work in the process in which the relationship is constructed. As a theoretical viewpoint to understand not only the attitude and behavior of workers but also the relationship between individuals and organizations, it can be expected to provide useful suggestions for human resource management in the diversification era, which requires HR measures and mechanisms to absorb diversity. POS can also explain the process by which organizational commitment is created.
These previous researches indicate that POS is a very important explanatory factor for work attitude and behavior both theoretically and practically. Therefore, this study sets POS as independent valuables.
Scale of Perceived Organizational Support
Eisenberger et al. (1986) constructed a survey which included 36 items in order to test the globality of the employees' beliefs concerning support by the organization under diverse situations. POS is a distinctive construct that the SPOS measures with high reliability, especially their solid reliability, had been confirmed repeatedly (Armeli, Eisenberger, Fasolo,
& Lynch, 1998; Eisenberger, Fasolo, & Davis-LaMastro, 1990; Eisenberger & Stinglhamber, 2011; Lynch, Eisenberger, & Armeli, 1999; Shore & Tetrick, 1991). SPOS is, however, for practical reasons, the majority of studies on POS use a short form developed from the 17 highest loading items in all 36 items of SPOS. The original scale is unidimensional and has high internal reliability; the use of shorter versions does not appear problematic.
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Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment is a variable that has been discussed in research on the effects of preventing employees from leaving their jobs and improving productivity and work performance since the 1960s. The reason why commitment research attracted attention in the area of human resource management was that "High loyalty and loyalty to the organization" in Japanese companies attracted attention, and that Organizational commitment questionnaire (OCQ), a tool for analyzing commitment, was developed. Organizational commitment has received much attention from researchers and practitioners. The reason is that this concept is more relevant to job expectations than job satisfaction (Williams & Hazer, 1986). In addition, the wealth of knowledge on the relationship between factors of precedence and outcome variables, as well as the progress in theoretical studies, makes operation and management easier and can be said to be useful in evaluating and formulating policies.
Allen and Meyer (1990) also described the organizational commitment as a psychological condition that (1) characterizes the relationship between employees and the organization, and (2) encompasses the decision to remain part of the organization, with committed employees remaining in the organization more than uncommitted employees. Moreover, they also had proposed (1990) organizational commitment by three-component model (TCM), whose component is affective, continuous and normative commitment. Among these three components, affective commitment has the most robust correlation with turnover intention, while the other two components of organizational commitment were negatively correlated with turnover intention. Williams and Hazer (1986) also suggested that affective commitment was clearly shown to have a significantly stronger correlation with turnover.
Dimensions of Organizational Commitment
TCM has become the dominant model for the study of workplace commitment. With measuring with TCM, we can predict important employee outcomes such as turnover and citizenship the behaviours, job performance, absenteeism (Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, &
Topolnytsky, 2002).
Components of TCM are below three: affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment.
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Affective commitment (AC). AC “refers to employees' emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in, the organization” (Allen & Meyer, 1990, p.1).
Continuance commitment (CC). CC “reflects commitment based on the costs that employees associate with leaving the organization” (Allen & Meyer, 1990, p.1).
Normative commitment (NC). NC refers to employees' feelings of obligation to remain with the organization” (Allen & Meyer, 1990, p.1).
Scale of Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment questionnaire (OCQ) was the first tool that enabled quantitative measurement of abstract commitments and is still widely used as a measure of affective commitment. However, there are some critical points on these scales.
First, the original purpose for developing OCQ was to measure the concepts which corresponded only to affective commitment (AC). Therefore, it may not adequately cover emerging multidimensional organizational commitments whose ranges are getting more comprehensive in recent years.
Second, the definition of organizational commitment on which these scales depend does not match the definition of organizational commitment concept purely, as it includes some concepts that are mostly antecedent and consequent factors.
Because of these criticisms, many attempts have been made to develop an alternative to OCQ and to verify its validity and reliability in the field of organizational commitment research.
Especially, three dimensions commitment scale developed by Allen and Meyer (1990) is widely accepted with its effectiveness. Therefore, this scale was be used in this study.
Organizational Justice
Previous researches on organizational justice (OJ) have focused on how each employee assesses the fairness of their employment and how that assessment influences their work attitudes and behaviour (Colquitt, 2008). With defining OJ as the fairness that is perceived by members of an organization and that is primarily related to the functioning of the organization, Colquitt also suggested that this definition covers many other terms under one category more than an actual construct. It also units many fairness relevant concepts.
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Dimensions of Organizational Justice
From the previous research (Inoue et al., 2010), OJ has three sub-dimensions that are distributive Justice procedural justice and interactional justice. Interactional justice can also be divided into two sub-dimensions, interpersonal justice and informational justice.
Distributive Justice (DJ). The studies on OJ has its origin in Equity Theory which was proposed by Adams (1965). Adams proposed that equity exists for the person whenever he or she perceives that the ratio of his or her outcomes to inputs and the ratio of other's outcomes to other's inputs are equal. This fairness is provided as a psychological response to the results of distribution, treatment, and handling. According to Equity Theory proposed by Adams (1965), fairness in reward distribution is achieved when the ratio of one person's input (a contribution or investment by a party in an organization or workplace) to outcome two (that the parties receive or acquire from the organization or the workplace) is approximately equal to the ratio of another person's input to the outcome.
After the limitation of distributive justice research was pointed out in the research of Organizational fairness, the research interest had shifted to procedural justice (Colquitt, 2001;
Misaki, 2007).
Procedural Justice (PJ). Procedural justice is defined in relation to employees’
perception of the methods used in the distribution of awards in the organization. This concept started being developed with the awareness that it was only the results of actions that affected the fairness which is felt by individuals. In the early stages of researches, Greenberg (1990) showed that DJ and PJ as the only two components of OJ.
Interpersonal justice was proposed as the newest element of organizational justice.
Interactional/Relational Justice (IJ). Interactional justice is the third sub-dimension of OJ. IJ is defined as the quality of the perception formed pertaining to inter-personal treatments towards the employees during the organizational activities. It involves administrators’ value and respect towards the employees (e.g. listening to them attentively, having empathy with those who have difficulties) and acting with social sensitivity. Greenberg (1990) defined interactional justice (IJ) as the perceptions towards the quality of the interpersonal treatment people receive while the procedures are executed, and stated that IJ has two sub-dimensions:
interpersonal justice and informational justice.
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Recently, it is becoming common to divide OJ into three-components: distributive justice, procedural justice, and interpersonal justice. While some researchers propose that a four-factor structure in which interactional justice is divided into further two sub-dimensions:
interpersonal justice and informational justice, this study was being conducted with three-components.
Scale of Organizational Justice
Many scales have been developed for organizational commitment. One of the organizational justice scales, which is formulated by Colquitt (2001), is utilized in mainly industrial psychology. This scale covers four dimensions of organizational justice: distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice. In addition, Japanese versions of this scale were developed by translating this scale (OJS-J), which was tested and ensured its reliability and validity by the study, which 229 employees responded.
Another scale that is mainly utilized in the industrial health area is developed by Moorman (1991). This scale consists of two sub-components of organizational justice: procedural justice and interactional justice, and have been adopted in the research about relationship justice and its effect on employee health.
The Relationships among the Variables
Perceived Organizational Support and Organizational Commitment
Organizational Support Theory can explain a lot about the relationship between perceived organizational support and organizational commitment. By Organizational Support Theory, it is suggested that the more employees perceive support by an organization or its agents (e.g.
positive evaluation and consideration for well-being), it becomes more favourable of the perception towards the organization and employees would make further efforts to contribute to organizational goals (Aselage & Eisenberger, 2003).
As described in the previous section, recently many studies have supported that organizational commitment is divided into three components: affective commitment, continuous commitment and normative commitment (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Dunham, Grube,
& Castaneda, 1994; Jaros, 1997).
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Eisenberger et al. (1986) indicated that by Organizational Support Theory, perceived organizational support would create a sense of obligation to help the organization achieve its objectives, and motivate affective commitment of the employee to the organization, and enhance expectations of performance-reward. Other previous studies also supported there is a positive correlation between perceived organizational support and affective commitment (Maertz, Griffeth, Campbell, & Allen, 2007; Panaccio & Vandenberghe, 2009; Shore, Tetrick, Lynch, & Barksdale, 2006).
About normative commitment, Maertz et al. (2007) indicated that perceived organizational support is correlated positively to normative commitment. Panaccio and Vandenberghe (2009) showed their support for this result as well.
Moreover, continuous commitment, O’Driscoll and Randall (1999) showed that there is a negative relationship between perceived organizational support and continuous commitment.
Accordingly, this study was being proposed and tested the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Perceived organizational support is related to organizational commitment.
Organizational Justice as a Moderator between Perceived Organizational Support and Organizational Commitment
The number of researches about organizational commitment being a moderator between perceived organizational support and organizational commitment is few. However, many previous researchers were proposed and tested the fact which organizational justice effects on perceived organizational support.
Previous researches suggested that perceived justice was one of the components of the employee's evaluation of the discretion action taken by an organization or its agents (Moorman, Blakely, & Niehoff, 1998; Wayne et al., 2002). According to the result of the previous research (Eisenberger & Stinglhamber, 2011), the organization's efforts that try to deal with employees fairly had an impact on perceived organizational support. Because such efforts are the representation of the idea that employees are worthy of being carefully evaluated, and are represented as consideration for employees' opinions.
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As described in the previous section, recently, many studies have been comprehended in organizational justice with three components: distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice (Colquitt & Greenberg, 2003).
The positive impact of distributive justice on perceived organizational support has been tested and proven (Moorman et al., 1998; Roch & Shanock, 2006). Moorman and his colleagues made it clear that (1998) there was a significantly positive relationship between distributive justice and perceived organizational support in the study which analyzed the data from employee and their supervisors who were working in a hospital in the United States.
It was found that procedural justice also has a positive impact on perceived organizational support (Wayne et al., 2002). Moreover, it was indicated that procedural justice has a more significant impact on perceived organizational support than that of distributive justice (Rhoades
& Eisenberger, 2002; Wayne et al., 2002).
About the last of three dimensions of organizational justice, interactional justice, some researches (Masterson et al., 2000; Tekleab, Takeuchi, & Taylor, 2005) had rejected the hypothesis that interactional justice and perceived organizational support had related. However, a meta-analysis conducted by Kurtessis, Ford, Buffardi, and Stewart (2009) showed that interactional justice was also positively correlated to perceived organizational support. As described above, a unified sight on the relationship between interactional justice and perceived organizational support has not yet been indicated because many research results have been shown. Therefore, this area requires further study.
From the above previous researches, there is a high probability which organizational justice has a moderated effect over the relationship between perceived organizational support and organizational commitment. The following hypotheses were to be proposed and tested:
Hypothesis 2: Organizational justice moderate the relationship between perceived organizational support and organizational commitment.
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