A Literary Look at Outcomes of Support at Work

This study is an endeavor to highlight the outcomes support at work offers. It includes both individual and organizational outcomes. Literature survey approach is adopted in this study. An attempt had been made to cover the existing literature on the said issue. The major outcomes identified from literature include job satisfaction, organizational commitment abd organizational citizenship behavior, reduced stress, job involvement, employee engagement, reduced withdrawal behavior, reduced turnover intentions, increased performance etc. Future directions and implications are also discussed.


INTRODUCTION
Organization is collective whole of many resources and employees are one of the most valuable resources (Chen, 2010).Employees have to act interdependently in order to perform their tasks.This interdependence affects their relationship at work abd vice versa.Out of many determinants of interdependence and work place relations, support is the most important one.When employees feel that they are supported at work they reciprocate it with support and positive relationship (Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002), which increases task performance.
This support perception is dependent on exchange relation present at workplace (Eisenberger et al., 1986(Eisenberger et al., , 2001)).This exchange relation is backed by social exchange theory of Blau (1964).According to Blau (1964) in exchange relation one party offers something valuable to other party, which creates a sense of obligation on receiving party to reciprocate it with something valuable.When receiving party gives something in return, first party feels obliged which creates a continuous exchange relation.This exchange relation is present in organizational set-up as well, where employees interact with employees (Ahmed et al., 2011(Ahmed et al., , 2012;;Eisenberger et al., 1986).
While exploring types of exchange relations at work researchers have identified that there are three basic types of exchange relations at work: employeeemployee relation, employee-supervisor relation and employee-organization relation (Ahmed et al., 2012;Chou and Robert, 2008;Woo, 2009).All these relations move from top to bottom.For instance, support provided by organization creates a reciprocation sense in employee; resultantly they perform better (Rhoads and Eisenberger, 2002).
Similarly, support form supervisor or coworker also makes employee perform better (Ahmed et al., 2012;Pack, 2005;Sluss et al., 2008).Kiewitz et al., (2009) clinched that support at work is one of the significant areas to study.
Thus it can be concluded that provision of support at work can benefit organization.This benefit derives from better individual outcomes.As, Wang et al. (2011) commented that support at work makes employees offer better individual outcomes which resultantly become the overall organizational outcome.So it can be inferred that offering support at work leads to organizational level outcomes.It leaves a message for organizational top level, 'if you want to get best out of your employees offer them best of yours in form of support.' The following section discusses the main outcomes discussed in literature.

OUTCOMES OF MANAGERIAL SUPPORT FACTORS
Managerial support means support provided by organization in form of rewards, benefits, growth opportunities, policies, rules and regulations and employee consideration (Ahmed et al., 2012).Woo (2009) commented that support provided by organization in form of rules, policies, rewards etc. is the primary supporting element in an organization.Ahmed et al. (2012) identified main factors of organizational support from literature, these factors and outcomes of those factors are presented in Table 1.
Table 1 shows that each independent managerial support factor is offering many job related outcomes.These outcomes affect overall organizational efficiency level and performance.Thus concentrating on these factors can pay off in shape of positive work outcomes.

OUTCOME OF SUPERVISORY SUPPORT
Another important exchange relation present at workplace is relationship between supervisor and employee.In this relation supervisor offers something valuable to its follower/employee which creates a sense of reciprocity in employees and makes them perform better (Jokisaari and Nurmi, 2009).Support form supervisor positively influences employees' perception of organizational support (Tekleab and Chiaburu, 2011;Pack, 2005;Stinglhamber and Vandenberghe, 2003).Supervisory support is found to be determinant of many job related outcomes; Table 2 shows details of those outcomes: Table 2 helps us conclude that provision of support from supervisor offers many job related outcomes (both individual and organizational).It is also evident that supervisory support is an important determinant of organizational support, which helps us conclude that supervisory support is a determinant of organizational support.Yet another support that requires attention is coworkers' support, following section covers its detail.

OUTCOMES OF COWORKERS' SUPPORT
Another form of support at work is support form coworkers.When one employee offers something valuable to his peer, the receiving employee becomes  (Knoll and Gill, 2011;Larse et al., 2011;Chou and Robert, 2008), Commitment (Filstad, 2011;Morrow, 2011;Larse et al., 2011), Organizational citizenship behavior (Ma and Qu, 2011), Performance (Turner et al., 2011), Job stress (Paoline III et al., 2006).Adjustment in new environment (Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2011) morally bound to reciprocate is positively (Ahmed et al., 2012).This creates a never ending exchange relation at work.This exchange relation also offers many returns both to employees and organization.This form of support is more valuable in team structures where there is task interdependence.In the words of Eisenberger et al. (1986), employees perceive organization like a human being and acts are considered to be the acts of human being.Support from peers will be considered as support from organization.Thus coworkers' support is also important for organization and management.

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
From the literature discussed in the previous sections it is evident that support at work consists of three forms: support from management, support from supervisor and support from coworkers.If we put a look at the outcomes these support relations offer it is evident that outcomes include both individual and organizational outcomes.When we have a detailed look at the outcomes it is evident that the outcomes are quite common for all forms of support e.g.satisfaction, commitment, OCB, turnover intentions, performance.These all outcomes are the basics for organizational outcomes.Thus it can be concluded that in order to get best outcomes for organization, individual outcomes should be focused and provision of supporting work environment can offer such outcomes.Support should be all round which should include support from management, supervisory support and coworkers' support.All these supports collectively offer best job and organizational outcomes.If any of these supporting factors is missing, it will influence both individual and organizational outcomes.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
This research is limited to few of all the studies conducted on exchange relations at work and outcomes offered by such relations.Outcomes discussed in this study are also the definite outcomes as there are many other outcomes that are being offered by exchange relations at work.So this study doesn't show the definite outcomes of support at work.Future researchers should try to cover all the outcomes of support at work.An extensive literature survey should be done to find out all the outcomes.

Table 1 :
Outcomes of managerial supportOutcomes of managerial support -

Table 3 :
Outcomes of Coworkers' support Table 3 covers literature on outcomes of coworkers' support at work.Table 3 also shows that provision of support at work can positively influence both individual and organizational outcomes.This table also highlights the significance of supporting work environment.