Contact employees’ prosocial behaviors: The role of leader-member exchange and perceived organizational support

Abstract

Prosocial behaviors of contact employees are considered as a crucial key to deliver excellent service to consumers. This study investigates the mediating role of perceived organizational support in the relationship between leader-member exchange and prosocial behaviors. We examined four types of such behaviors, namely role-prescribed behavior, extra-role behavior, cooperation, and internal influence. Research data were obtained from 1,353 Account officers who worked at microfinance state-owned company in Indonesia. The data were analyzed through Lisrel 8.51 and all hypotheses were tested through confirmatory factor analysis. Results indicate that when leader-member exchange increases, the level of organizational support perceived by employees also escalates. In the same way, as perceived organizational support increases, employees might perform prosocial behaviors. Specifically, perceived organizational support fully mediates the relationship between LMX and extra-role behavior, and acts as a partial mediator with the other behaviors. Therefore, it might be argued that in order to encourage prosocial behaviors of boundary spanners, human resource practices may focus on increasing the level of leader-member exchanges and improving organizational support facilities for employees.