Longitudinal trajectories of perceived organizational support : a growth mixture analysis

Purpose: This 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/approach: POS ratings provided each four months by a sample of 747 employees were analyzed using person-centered growth mixture analyses. Findings: Results 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 implications: This 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/value: These 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.