Perceived organizational support, employee health and emotions

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine work‐related emotion as a mechanism explaining the relationship between perceived organizational support (POS) and employee physical health.Design/methodology/approachStudy participants were employees at a large Canadian health care organization (n=72). A survey methodology was utilized.FindingsPOS was positively related to physical health. Negative emotion fully mediated this relationship between POS and health, and positive emotion was found to partially mediate this relationship.Research limitations/implicationsCross sectional survey data is one potential limitation. Findings suggest that further investigation of the links between POS, positive and negative job‐related emotion and physical health would be a fruitful avenue of research.Practical implicationsOrganizations can increase POS through actions that have been investigated in past research. Increasing POS would appear to be one avenue that an organization can utilize to positively influence employee health through its effect on employee work‐related emotion.Originality/valueThe paper addresses previous calls to investigate mechanisms underlying the relationship between POS and physical health, and shows that job‐related emotion plays a role in explaining why POS is positively correlated with physical health.