Perceived organizational membership: an aggregate framework, representing the employee-organization relationship

Organizational scholars have examined the relational ties between employees and organizations, often focusing on specific facets of the relationship. However, this approach has not generated an overall representation of the employee-organization relationship, nor has it facilitated the identification of interrelationships among the concepts. This paper seeks to address these two issues by developing an integrative framework labeled perceived organizational membership. Perceived organizational membership is proposed to be an aggregate multidimensional construct reflecting employees' perceptions of their relationship with their employing organization, and its three underlying dimensions (need fulfillment, mattering, and belonging) offer a framework for categorizing and understanding relational tie concepts, both separately and in combination with one another. Drawing from the community psychology literature (McMillan & Chavis, 1986) as well as Graham's (1991) early work on organizational citizenship, we identify perceived organizational membership's underlying motives and the mechanisms through which they influence the construct, demonstrate how specific relational tie subdimensions fit with the more general construct, and develop propositions regarding relationships among the dimensions and the specific relational tie subdimensions. Finally, we discuss the benefits of the framework, including its ability to allow researchers to better understand both specific relational tie concepts as well as the overall employee-organization relationship. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.