Perceived sex similarity and attitudes: The effect of coworker support and creativity requirement

Abstract

Coworker support is a critical phenomenon in organizational settings that determines work place behaviors and job attitudes, yet it has not received a lot of attention in the literature. This paper seeks to answer two research questions. First, how does perceived demographic similarity (i.e. sex similarity) among coworkers affect job attitudes (i.e. job satisfaction and organizational commitment) through the mediation effect of coworker support? Second, does the creative requirement of various jobs influence the relationship among coworker support and job attitudes? To answer these research questions, the National Employee Survey (NES) is used which contains a sample of 1160 full-time employees. The results indicated that employees who are similar to their coworkers with respect to their sex receive more coworker support than those who are not similar to their coworkers. In addition, coworker support mediates the relationship between perceived sex similarity and both job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Furthermore, as predicted, coworker support is more strongly correlated with job satisfaction for those jobs that have high creative requirements compared to jobs that require low levels of creativity. However, the moderation effect of creative requirement on organizational commitment is not supported. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings and potential future research directions are discussed.