Context and social exchange: perceived ethical climate strengthens the relationships between perceived organizational support and organizational identification and commitment

Effective human resource management involves maximizing the value gained from human resource practices and policies. Past research shows that practices and policies are beneficial because they strengthen the employer-employee relationship. We help contextualize research on this important relationship by exploring the moderating effect of perceived ethical climate on the relationships between perceived organizational support and three cognitive and affective employee outcomes: organizational identification, affective organizational commitment, and job-induced tension. We argue that ethical climate perceptions shape the attributions employees make about perceived organizational support and, consequently, how they respond to support perceptions. Drawing on a study of 254 employees from a health care organization, we find that perceived ethical climate strengthens the positive relationships between perceived organizational support and organizational identification and affective organizational commitment, respectively. These results suggest that employee perceptions of an organization’s ethical climate can be instrumental in their cognitive and affective organization-related responses, but not their affective job-related responses, to perceived organizational support. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our work.