International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 5, Issue 4, April 2015 1

ISSN 2250-3153

The Influence of Perceived Organizational Support on

Employees’ Job Performance
Sa’diya Ahmed Mohamed* and Maimunah Ali

Department of Technology Management, Faculty of Technology Management, Business and Entrepreneurship

University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, 86400 Parit Raja, Batu Pahat, Johor Malaysia

Abstract- Perceived organization support studies on employees had been conducted in different international environment, but POS
research in Malaysia is scanty. In Malaysian context, a number of studies found relationship between POS and organizational
commitment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to address this gap by examining the relationship between POS antecedents
(organizational justice, organizational rewards and job conditions), POS and job performance. The data of this study have been
collected from a group of academic and support staff in the faculty of electrical and electronic engineering of University Tun Hussein
Onn Malaysian through questionnaire survey. The data were analyzed using SPSS. The findings reveal that POS antecedents including
organizational justice and job condition have significant relationship with POS. Likewise; this study suggests that POS can improve
the staff’s job performance by presenting a significant relationship between POS and job performance. However, results did not show
any significant relationship between organizational rewards and POS.

Index Terms- Job conditions, job performance, organizational justice, organizational rewards and perceived organization support.

I. INTRODUCTION
here is much evidence in the professional literature that advocates the importance of employees’ job performance which, in turn,
T affects professional conduct (Judge et al., 2001a; Liu and Ramsey, 2008). In the educational realm, staff’s job performance is
considered influential in its relationship to institute effectiveness and university outcomes; therefore, it is considered of as a key factor
in improving university performance (Thompson et al., 1997; Sargent and Hannum, 2005). While the importance of staff’s
performance is well documented (e.g. Reyes and Shin, 1995; Rossmiller, 1992), less is known about the way organizations promote
their employees’ job performance through organizational processes. Most of all organizational support; such as high level of fairness
and good job conditions are very important for the development of the employees. If employees are valued and rewarded in the
organization they will be more relaxed and satisfied and will consider themselves emotionally committed towards their organization
and will perform highly for their jobs. While organizational appreciation may be viewed through various organization measures, the
current study specifically focuses on perceived organizational support (POS) and staff’s job performance. This relationship may be
theoretically explained in considering that POS and its antecedents are process variables testifying for a university’s organizational
behavior while job performance is an outcome variable. Therefore, it is assumed that job performance is likely to be influenced by the
qualities of organizational processes. Taking into account previous research evidence indicating the significant connections between
POS and job performance, the following study takes a unique perspective as it attempts to assess the contribution of POS directly to
staff’ job performance. The theoretical rationale for this research endeavor may be better understood when considering that while
these variables are organizational processes, POS is viewed by employees as a perceived measure for the organizational backing in
their professional conduct while its antecedents expresses the extent to which employees’ experience organizational backing through
an actual change in their authority. Therefore, it is assumed that POS with direct effect on job performance is likely to provide a
powerful measure when attempting to appraise employees’ performance.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

This part describes the theoretical background of the variables of the study such as POS, POS antecedents, job performance, research
theoretical framework and hypothesis development.
A. POS
The concept of perceived organizational support (POS) has been developed by Eisenberger et al. in 1986. It is related to how
employees perceive their organizations. Any actions and human resource management practices taken by organization may affect
employees’ perceptions of the organization’s commitment towards them. According to Eisenberger (1986), the concept of POS refers
to “employees develop global beliefs concerning the extent to which the organization values their contributions and cares about their
well-being”. Through the process of making attributions as to the way the organization behaves, employees arrive at an evaluation
about the degree to which they believe that the organization supports them, values their contribution, and is concerned with their well-

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being. In other words, POS stands for employee’s beliefs about a certain degree of the organization’s commitment towards their
employees. The employees with high levels of POS belief that their organizations consider their well-beings, appreciates their
contributions and will help them whenever problems arise. On the contrary, employees with low levels of POS perceive that their
organizations ignore their best interests, will possibly take advantage of them and replace them.
Three antecedents of perceived organizational support on the basis of organizational support theory (Eisenberger et al., 1986) that
are considered in this paper are organizational justice, organizational rewards and job conditions.
B. Organizational justice
OJ concerns the fairness of the ways used to determine the distribution of resources among employees (Greenberg, 1990). Shore
and Shore (1995) suggested that repeated instances of organizational justice in decisions concerning resource distribution should have
a strong cumulative relationship with POS by indicating a concern for employees’ welfare. It has been widely believed that
organizational justice contributes to employees’ job performance. The relationship between organizational justice and employees’ job
performance has been tested by some studies; the results revealed that distributive justice has a significant and positive effect on task
performance. While, procedural justice is found to be significant and positive effect on contextual performance (Nasurdin and Khuan,
2007). In support of this, the work of distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice had significant positive effects on
task and contextual performance (Devonish and Greenidge, 2010). Finally, it was also found that interactional justice had direct effect
on task performance (Wang et al., 2010).
C. Job conditions
Shore and Shore (1995) proposed that job conditions have in relation to POS for example job security, autonomy, role stressors,
and training. Job security means assurance that the organization wishes to maintain the employee’s future membership. Job security
provides a strong indication of POS, particularly in recent years, when downsizing has been prevalent (D. Allen, Shore and Griffeth,
1999). Autonomy means employees’ perceived control over how they carry out their job, including scheduling, work procedures, and
task variety. Autonomy has traditionally been highly valued in Western culture (Geller, 1982; Hogan, 1975). By indicating the
organization’s trust in employees to decide wisely how they will carry out their job, high autonomy should increase POS (Eisenberger,
Rhoades, & Cameron, 1999).
D. Organizational rewards
Shore and Shore (1995) suggested that human resources practices showing recognition of employee contributions should be
positively related to POS. A variety of rewards have been studied in relation to POS, for example, recognition, pay and promotions.
According to organizational support theory, favorable opportunities for rewards serve to communicate a positive valuation of
employees’ contributions and thus contribute to POS. In some studies, employees were asked to evaluate the relationship between
POS and organization rewards, in which they presumably made such comparisons implicitly (Greenberg, 1990). Enough studies are
available to allow separate examinations of recognition, pay and promotions.
E. Job performance:
The employees’ job performance is the consequence variable of POS, which is contrary to the previous studies in which no direct
relationship is documented. In the view of McConnell (2003), job performance focuses directly on employee productivity by assessing
the number of units of acceptable quality produced by an employee in a manufacturing environment, within a specific time period.
Therefore, the success of business depends on employees’ job performance. One of the most effective ways to increase business
performance and profit is to increase the job performance of employees, from the lowest levels of the organization to senior
management (http://www.quantisoft.com/index/html). Performance improvement is not only a result of well-functioning system but
also depends on effective human resource strategies that succeed in recruiting and maintaining a committed and motivated workforce
(Al-Ahmadi, 2009).
F. Research theoretical framework
A theoretical framework refers to the theory that a researcher chooses to guide him/her in his/her research. Thus, a theoretical
framework is the application of a theory, or a set of concepts drawn from one and the same theory, to offer an explanation of an event,
or shed some light on a particular phenomenon or research problem. Figure 1 presents research theoretical framework, which explains
the relationship between POS, POS antecedents (organizational justice (OJ), organizational rewards and job conditions (JC)) and POS
consequence as job performance (JP).

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Organizatio
nal justice
H1

Organizatio H4
H2
nal rewards POS Job performance

H3
Job
conditions

Figure 1: Research frame work

G. Hypothesis
The hypothetical model of the study is elaborated in the theoretical framework diagram which is shown in Figure 1. As defined by
Greenberg (1987), organizational justice or fairness is related to how an employee judges the behavior of an organization and the
resulting attitude and behavior. There are three main proposed components of organizational justice: distributive justice, procedural
justice, and interactional justice (Khurram, 2009). Therefore, the following hypothesis is offered to be tested on the relationship
between OJ and POS:
H1: Organizational justice has a significant relationship with perceived organisational support.
Items include organizational rewards are recognition, pay and promotions. Allen et al. 2003 research showed that the degree
to which the organization bestows rewards on an employee is indicative of the support that is provided, and thus significantly
contributes to the POS of the individual being rewarded. Hence, the following hypothesis is offered to be tested:
H2: Organizational rewards have a significant relationship with POS.
Sumita, 2004 study has shown that job conditions are significantly related to POS. Organizations would only need to increase
and maintain job conditions to achieve the positive effect on POS. So the following hypothesis is offered to be tested:
H3: Job conditions have a significant relationship with POS.
Research shows that employees who are not cared display apathy, disenchantment and social aloofness (Hochschild, 1980).
This is contrary to motivated employees, who experience a pleasurable emotional state at work, indicating high level of job
performance. Therefore, the following hypothesis is offered to be tested:
H4: POS has a significant relationship with employees’ job performance.

III. METHODOLOGY
Nature of this research is quantitative. The research looks to evaluate the relationship between the independent variables such as POS
antecedents, intervening variable such as POS and POS consequence such as job performance.
A. Respondents and Sampling
The population of this research is the staff of the faculty of electrical and electronic engineering of University Tun Hussein Onn
Malaysia (UTHM). Random sampling was used on subjects from all departments of the faculty.
B. Measures
The questionnaire for perceived organization support was developed by Eisenberger et al, (2002), describes the perception of the
employee that how their organization willing to reward their greater efforts. The organizational justice questionnaire was developed
Abbas (2013) to measure the level of justice in the organization. The questionnaire of organizational rewards and job conditions were
developed by Eisenberger, 1997 and Ary et al, 2002 respectively. While Job performance questionnaire was developed by Williams,
1991 and it is used to measure employee job performance.

IV. FINDINGS
The descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used to conduct the analysis. For hypotheses testing, the Pearson correlation
coefficients were used. The first part of the analysis focused on the descriptive analysis of the respondents. At the end of gathering
data, the reliability of the scales was analyzed. An exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was performed in the study to
ascertain the reliability of the measures by using Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient; 0.60 being the acceptable reliability coefficient
level in terms of research standards as shown in Table I.

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Table I: Reliability Statistics

Variable Cronbach’s Alpha
Perceived organizational support 0.854
Organizational justice 0.755
Organizational rewards 0.820
Job conditions 0.873
Job performance 0.836

As it can be seen in Table I, the measures of the study are reliable because all the variables have an acceptable reliability
coefficient which ranged from 0.755 to 0.873.
A. Descriptive analysis of the respondents:
The descriptive analysis focused on the variables such as gender, age, marital status and job status as shown in Table II. Male
responders represented 56.8% while female responders were 43.2%. Most of the respondents (45.9%) were aged between 30 and 34
years old, 18.9% of the respondents were between 25 and 29 years old, 16.2% of the respondents were between 35 and 39 years old,
10.8% of the respondents were above 50 years old and 8.2% of the respondents were between 40 and 49 years old. Majority of the
respondents were having job permanent and were married in a percentage of 91.9% and 73% respectively. While employees; who
have contract jobs represented 8.1% and single staff were 27% of the total respondents.

Table II: Demographic Information

Variables Percentage (%)
Gender
Male 56.8
Female 43.2
Age (in years)
25-29 18.9
30-34 45.9
35-39 16.2
40-49 8.2
Above 50 10.8
Marital status
Married 73
Single 27
Job Status
Permanent 91.9
Contract 8.1

B. Inferential analysis of the respondents:

The correlation data shows the relationship between the independent, intervening and dependent variables of study as shown in
Table III. The table displays correlation coefficients between these variables. The correlation coefficients are a measure of the
strength of the association between any two metric variables (Hair et al., 2003). The results of the Pearson correlation show that most
of the dimensions of the independent variable and dependent variables were positively correlated to each other.

Table III: Pearson correlations between Variables

Pearson Correlation Pearson Correlation Coefficient (r) Hypothesis Support
OJ POS 0.344* Yes
OR POS -0.064 No
JC POS 0.369* Yes
POS JP 0.374* Yes
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
OJ: Organizational justice, POS: Perceived organizational support, OR: Organizational rewards,
JC: Job conditions and JP: Job performance.

The results of Table III demonstrated that there is significant Pearson correlation between organizational justice and perceived
organisational support and (r=0.344; p=0.037) and the correlation is significant if the p=0.05 or less than that. The correlation shows
that there is significant relationship between perceived organisational support and organizational justice. Hence the alternative
hypothesis is accepted. Similarly, the results have shown that there is a significant Pearson correlation between job conditions and

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POS (r=0.369; p=0.025), so the proposed alternative hypothesis is accepted. However, the result did not show a significant correlation
between organizational rewards and POS as (r=-0.064; p=0.708). Then the hypothesis is rejected. In addition, Table III shows that
there is significant Pearson correlations between Perceived organisational support and job performance (r=0.374; p=0.022), so the
alternative hypothesis is accepted.

V. DISCUSSION
The aim of this study is to analyse the relationship between POS antecedents and POS, and also to analyse the relationship between
POS and job performance. Therefore, four hypotheses were proposed in order to achieve the aim of the study. The first hypothesis
proposed that there was a positive relationship between organizational justice and POS. Hence, this meant that an employee who is
given good level of justice in their jobs, rewards will translate that high level of good perception towards their organization into
getting involved in activities that are outside their job requirements. This means that due to that high level of perception, they will
reciprocate from the organizational justice to good job performance (Isaks, 2002). However, the proposed second hypothesis about
the positive relationship between organizational rewards and POS was rejected based on the outcome of the correlation results. The
results of this study, after expansive testing of hypothesis showed clearly that there was no established positive relationship between
the variables that is perceived organisational support and organisational rewards (r=-0.064; p=0.708).
In addition, the third hypothesis predicted that there was a positive relationship between job conditions and POS. The outcome
results has supported the prediction of the hypothesis and there was a significant relationship between job conditions and POS. This
shows that when the employees get high level of good job conditions such as job security and autonomy, their perceptions towards
their company increase and this also increases their job performance. Likewise, the four hypothesis examined the relationship between
perceived organisational support (POS) and job performance. It followed that the employees having good perceptions about their
employers and views their employers as being generally caring about their well-being will, that type of attitude will influence their job
performance in a positive way. Therefore, there was a positive strong relationship between these two variables in that the independent
variable POS had a positive influence on the dependent variable job performance. The results agreed as the studies conducted on the
international level which had always shown and agreed with the assertion that perceived organisational support has a positive
influence on employee job performance (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2001).

VI. CONCLUSION
The aim of the study was to analyse the relationship between POS antecedents, POS and job performance. The adopted measures of
this study have shown remarkable level of reliability as shown in Table I. Four hypotheses were developed; three of them were
supported and one of them (third hypothesis) was rejected. Based on the findings of the study, the organizational justice and job
conditions have a significant relationship with POS. But the proposed hypothesis of organizational rewards and POS was rejected,
which means there was no a significant relationship between organizational rewards and POS. Finally, POS and job performance have
shown very significant relationship between them.

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AUTHORS
First Author – Sa’diya Ahmed Mohamed, Technology Management, University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia,
Second Author – Dr. Maimunah Ali, Technology Management, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia.
Correspondence Author – Sa’diya Ahmed Mohamed, Technology Management, University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia,
sakiya209@hotmail.com.

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