The Effect of Perceived Organizational Support on employees' Ethical Behavior and Intention to leave in Pakistan: The Role of Moral Ownership and Organizational Commitment complemented by Motivation

Abstract

Organizations tend to compete and put high productivity demands on their employees. Arguably, this could make employees feel insecure about their job, prompting them to either adopt any means to protect their jobs or join someone else. Implicitly, the way organizations respond to the specific socio-emotional needs of employees has an important role in defining employee behavior. Toward this, we set out to examine the extent to which perceived organizational support facilitates employee ethical behavior and their intention to leave. Building upon Malakkaran & Dyaram (2019) model explaining the linkage between Perceived Organizational Support (POS), and Ethical Behavior, we modified it by explaining how POS also impact Intention to leave. We hypothesize that POS enables moral ownership and this in turn makes employees behave ethically, it also increases organizational commitment and makes reduces the intention to leave. Here Motivation will complement the effect of POS on organizational commitment. Empirical validity was established by conducting a survey using a close-ended questionnaire. Data was collected from 257 employees working in different organizations and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structured equation modeling. The results suggested that Perceived Organizational Support has a positive and significant effect on Organizational Commitment (OC), and Intention to leave (IL), OC also positively affects IL, hence OC seems to mediate POS IL relationship. POS also seems to affect moral ownership but this, in turn, doesn’t seem to impact ethicality. Moreover, motivation seems to affect organizational commitment OC but doesn’t seem to moderate POS’s effect on OC. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed.