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Original Article

Employee Status and the Consequences of Perceived Organizational Support

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1027/1866-5888/a000198

Abstract. Incorporating organizational support and status theory, this study examines whether employees’ status moderates both the relationship between perceived organizational support (POS) and affective organizational commitment (AOC) as well as POS-AOS-job performance relationships. Based on two studies using different types of status measures (i.e., objective and subjective), our findings demonstrate that both the POS-AOC relationship and the entire mediation process were moderated by employee status such that low-status employees showed a greater improvement in effects. This study represents a novel attempt to clarify the critical role of individual status, which has largely been neglected in the field of I/O psychology and organizational behavior, in the complex mechanism of POS and subsequent outcomes.

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