The PCMT Model of Organizational Support: An Integrative Review and Reconciliation of the Organizational Support Literature

We present an integrative conceptual review that reconciles the organizational support, social exchange, and social support literatures. In particular, we argue that the prevailing, singular conceptualization of organizational support is misaligned with contemporary perspectives on social exchange-which has served as the bedrock for organizational support theory since organizational support theory's inception-and is inconsistent with the social support literature-which has long recognized that support takes several forms. Thus, we draw on both the social exchange and social support literatures to develop four unique forms of organizational support: Teleological, Personalized, Collectivistic, and Monistic Organizational Support. With this enlarged framework for understanding organizational support in hand, we then detail the various research opportunities that the integration of these literatures affords. Specifically, we explain that this framework warrants future research related to the development of new measures, the differential prediction of outcomes, and the discovery of organizational support profiles. We also invoke the social support literature to highlight the potential opportunities in applying optimal matching theory to organizational support, examining relationships between received and perceived organizational support, and identifying the consequences of excessive organizational support.