Longitudinal trajectories of perceived organizational support: a growth mixture analysis

Abstract

PurposeThis research aims to identify trajectories of employees' perceptions of organizational support (POS) over the course of an eight-month period and to document associations between these longitudinal trajectories and several outcomes related to employees' well-being (i.e. job satisfaction), attitudes (i.e. turnover intentions, affective commitment) and behaviors (i.e. voice behaviors).Design/methodology/approachPOS ratings provided each four months by a sample of 747 employees were analyzed using person-centered growth mixture analyses.FindingsResults revealed that longitudinal heterogeneity in POS trajectories was best captured by the identification of four distinct profiles of employees. Two of these profiles followed stable high (67.2%) and low (27.3%) POS trajectories, whereas the remaining profiles were characterized by increasing (2.2%) or decreasing (3.3%) POS trajectories. Our results showed that, by the end of the follow-up period, the most desirable outcome levels were associated, in order, with the increasing, high, low and decreasing trajectories.Practical implicationsThis research has important implications by showing that perceptions of organizational support fluctuate over time for some employees and help better predicting valuable work-related outcomes.Originality/valueThese findings shed a new perspective on organizational support theory by adopting a dynamic perspective, and revealing that changes over time in POS are more potent predictors of valuable work-related outcomes than stable POS levels.