SummaryMany researchers have used the insider-outsider distinction when discussing employment relationships (e.g., Graen & Scandura, 1987;Pfeffer & Baron, 1988). However, there is no known empirical research directly assessing employees' perceptions of their status as organizational insiders. This article is intended as an initial step to theoretically and empirically explore the concept of perceived insider status (PIS). First, we build theoretical arguments describing how organizations may differentiate between insider and outsider employees, leading to differences in perceptions of insider status. We then hypothesize and show empirical evidence that contrasts, but relates, actual inclusion and perceived organizational support to PIS. We subsequently examine two types of discretionary employee behavior, altruism and production deviance, as potential consequences of PIS. Our results suggest that both actual inclusion, as well as perceived insider status, have implications for organizational functioning via discretionary employee behaviors.

SummaryOrganizational scholars have examined the relational ties between employees and organizations, often focusing on specific facets of the relationship. However, this approach has not generated an overall representation of the employee-organization relationship, nor has it facilitated the identification of interrelationships among the concepts. This paper seeks to address these two issues by developing an integrative framework labeled perceived organizational membership. Perceived organizational membership is proposed to be an aggregate multidimensional construct reflecting employees' perceptions of their relationship with their employing organization, and its three underlying dimensions (need fulfillment, mattering, and belonging) offer a framework for categorizing and understanding relational tie concepts, both separately and in combination with one another. Drawing from the community psychology literature (McMillan & Chavis, 1986) as well as Graham's (1991) early work on organizational citizenship, we identify perceived organizational membership's underlying motives and the mechanisms through which they influence the construct, demonstrate how specific relational tie subdimensions fit with the more general construct, and develop propositions regarding relationships among the dimensions and the specific relational tie subdimensions. Finally, we discuss the benefits of the framework, including its ability to allow researchers to better understand both specific relational tie concepts as well as the overall employee-organization relationship.

SummaryThis survey-based ®eld study of 257 service employees developed and tested a model of differences in the organizational citizenship behavior of full-time and part-time employees based on social exchange theory. Questionnaire data from matched pairs of employees and their supervisors demonstrated that part-time employees exhibited less helping organizational citizenship behavior than full-time employees, but there was no difference in their voice behavior. We also predicted that both preferred work status (an individual factor) and organizational culture (a contextual factor) would moderate the relationships between work status and citizenship. For helping, results demonstrated that preferred status mattered more to part-time workers than to fulltime. For voice, preferred work status was equally important to part-time and full-time workers, such that voice was high only when actual status matched preferred status. Contrary to our expectations, work status made more of a difference in both helping and voice in less bureaucratic organizations. We discuss the implications of work status for social exchange relationships, differences in the social exchange costs and bene®ts of helping compared to voice, and rami®cations of our ®ndings for future research.

This study examines the impact of perceived organizational support (POS) on the relationship between boundary spanner role stressors (i.e., role conflict and role ambiguity) and both work attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction and intent to remain) and behavior (i.e., task performance). Results indicate that POS has strong effects on role ambiguity and role conflict, as well as job satisfaction and intent to remain. However, POS is not related to task performance in our sample. POS also has moderating effects on several role stress-outcome relations. The paper discusses the implication of these findings for managers, along with recommendations for future research.

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