RESEARCH REPORTS Perceived Organizational Support and Police Performance: The Moderating Influence of Socioemotional Needs

Police patrol officers were surveyed to investigate how the strength of socioemotional needs affects the relationship between perceived organizational support (POS) and work performance. The association of POS with driving-under-the-influence arr sts and speed-ing citations generally increased with strength of the needs for esteem, affiliation, emo-tional support, and social approval. Patrol officers with strong socioemotional needs, but not those with weak needs, showed a positive relationship between POS and performance. The findings are consistent with social exchange views that maintain (a) work effort is encouraged by the receipt of socioemotional resources, (b) POS fulfills a variety of socioemotional needs, and (c) the value of POS and the obligation to reciprocate with high performance increase with the strength of socioemotional needs. Social exchange interpretations of employer-employee relationships maintain that workers trade effort and loy-alty to their organization for such tangible incentives as pay and fringe benefits and such socioemotional benefits as esteem, approval, and caring (Blau, 1964; Eisenberger