Antecedents of organizational and community embeddedness: The roles of support, psychological safety, and need to belong

• Author: Barjinder Singh,Margaret A. Shaffer,T.T. Selvarajan
• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Date: 01 March 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2223

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Antecedents of organizational and community embeddedness:

The roles of support, psychological safety, and need to belong

Barjinder Singh

1

|Margaret A. Shaffer

2

|T.T. Selvarajan

3

1

Martha & Spencer Love School of Business,

Elon University, Elon, North Carolina, U.S.A.

2

Michael F. Price College of Business,

University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma,

U.S.A.

3

College of Business and Economics,

California State University, East Bay, Hayward,

California, U.S.A.

Correspondence

Barjinder Singh, Martha & Spencer Love

School of Business, Elon University, Elon,

North Carolina, U.S.A.

Email: BSingh3@elon.edu

Funding information

Society for Human Resource Management

(SHRM) Foundation; SHRM Foundation

Dissertation Grant

Summary

Defining embeddedness as a psychological construct that influences individuals to stay, we draw

on conservation of resources theory to develop and test a model of the influence of contextual

social support resources on both organizational and community forms of embeddedness. In addi-

tion to the direct relationship between support and embeddedness, we also assess the mediating

influence of organizational and community psychological safety and the moderating impact of

need to belong. Using a multisource sample of employees and coworkers (N= 165), we found

support for most of the hypotheses. Social support resources emanating from the organization

and the community were positively associated with embeddedness in each domain, and psycho-

logical safety mediated these relationships. We also found that need to belong was an important

boundary condition in the determination of organizational embeddedness. We discuss the theo-

retical contributions and practical implications of our findings.

KEYWORDS

organizationaland community embeddedness, psychological safety, social support

1|INTRODUCTION

Organizational scholars introduced the construct of job embeddedness

as a unique perspective to explain why employees choose to stay in

their current jobs (Feldman & Ng, 2007; Holtom, Mitchell, & Lee,

2006; Lee, Burch, & Mitchell, 2014; Mitchell & Lee, 2001). Defined

as the collection of a diverse array of forces that make people stay in

their current employment, job embeddedness is a general form of

attachment (Crossley, Bennett, Jex, & Burnfield, 2007; Felps et al.,

2009; Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski, & Erez, 2001). With conceptual

roots in field theory and embedded figures concept (Lee et al., 2014),

the uniqueness of job embeddedness lies in its representation of both

affective and cognitive aspects of attachment. According to field the-

ory (Lewin, 1951), there is a life space that surrounds all individuals,

and embeddedness is a manifestation of the extent to which an indi-

vidual feels connected within that life space—connectivity that cap-

tures affective associations as well as cognition‐based intent to stay

(Collins & Mossholder, 2014). Similarly, embedded figures, which are

widely used in psychological testing, depict individual images that are

deeply immersed and are difficult to visually separate from their sur-

roundings (Peltokorpi, Allen, & Froese, 2015). Once an employee

chooses to stay with the employer, it strengthens the connectivity

between employee and his or her organization and, consequently,

creates social capital, which is advantageous for organizational stability

and success (Holtom et al., 2006; Origo & Pagani, 2009; Sekiguchi,

Burton, & Sablynski, 2008).

The concept of job embeddedness, as proposed by Mitchell et al.

(2001), includes both on‐the‐job and off‐the‐job embeddedness and

is composed of three causal or formative components, namely, fit,

links, and sacrifices (Mitchell et al., 2001; Mitchell & Lee, 2001). Fit

refers to the congruence with organizational and community roles;

links refer to formal and informal connections with individuals and

institutions both within and outside the organization; and sacrifices

refer to the perceived costs, both material and psychological, that an

individual may incur by quitting the organization and the community.

For more than a decade, the construct of embeddedness has been

instrumental in predicting several outcomes, including employee reten-

tion, performance, commitment, innovation, job satisfaction, and citi-

zenship behaviors (cf. Felps et al., 2009; Harris, Wheeler, & Kacmar,

2011; Holtom et al., 2006; Hom et al., 2009; Lee, Mitchell, Sablynski,

Burton, & Holtom, 2004; Ng & Feldman, 2010; Sekiguchi et al.,

2008). However, research on its antecedents is limited. We identified

two conceptual articles that proposed antecedents of embeddedness.

Ng and Feldman (2011) considered inputs to occupational and organi-

zational embeddedness across different career stages. Although they

acknowledge the relevance of family and community involvement,

Received: 9 September 2015 Revised: 2 August 2017 Accepted: 11 August 2017

DOI: 10.1002/job.2223

J Organ Behav. 2018;39:339–354. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 339

almost all of their propositions focus on work‐related antecedents,

including socially based inputs such as organizational socialization,

social work ties, and mentoring, as well as other factors such as work

hours and skill development. Another conceptual piece by Kiazad,

Holtom, Hom, and Newman (2015) proposed contextual antecedents

for various work and nonwork forms of embeddedness. In particular,

they focus on developing propositions for the influence of high perfor-

mance work practices on work‐based embeddedness. Empirical studies

investigating antecedents of embeddedness are limited to those that

position embeddedness as a mediator. For example, Bambacas and

Kulik (2013) assessed the mediating influence of job embeddedness

on the relationship between human resource practices (e.g., perfor-

mance management and rewards) and employee turnover. Similarly,

Hom et al. (2009) considered the intervening role of embeddedness

on the relationship between employee–organizational relationships

and employee turnover. We are not aware of any study that explicitly

addresses the antecedents of embeddedness.

Because it is critical to identify ways to foster embeddedness and

to expand its nomological network (Kiazad et al., 2015), the purpose of

this study is to understand the factors that help to promote

embeddedness within work and community settings. We conceptual-

ize embeddedness as a general attachment construct and draw on con-

servation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989, 2001) to develop

and test a model of contextual and personal resources associated with

organizational and community embeddedness. To be consistent with

the social nature of embeddedness, we focus on socially based

resources as inputs to embeddedness. We first consider the direct rela-

tionship between organizational and community social support

resources and both forms of embeddedness, respectively. According

to Hobfoll (2001), social support is a key resource that plays an impor-

tant role in managing stress and fostering well‐being. Second, we con-

sider two possible indirect pathways, involving personal intrinsic

resources, whereby contextual social support resources lead to

embeddedness. For the first pathway, we examine the underlying

motivations for embeddedness by examining the mediating role of psy-

chological safety, defined as a person's ability to display and employ his

or her true self without any fear of negative consequences (Kahn,

1990). For the second pathway, we investigate the role played by need

to belong, defined as individual desire to form interpersonal connec-

tions (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), as a moderator of the relationship

between support and embeddedness. According to Ryan and Deci

(2002), the need to belong (i.e., the need for relatedness) is a basic psy-

chological need that is essential for healthy psychological functioning.

In other words, the need to belong is a means to attain a valued out-

come; as such, it meets the definition of a resource (Hobfoll, 2002).

In the accomplishment of the above objectives, our study contrib-

utes to the research and practice of management in two ways. First,

our study contributes to the embeddedness and retention literatures

by systematically investigating the antecedents of two distinct social

domains in which individuals become embedded: the organization and

the community.In doing so, our study not only offersa coherent nomo-

logical net of the social environment of embeddedness but also

addresses the call by researchers (e.g., Kiazad et al., 2015; Peltokorpi

et al., 2015; Zhang,Fried, & Griffeth, 2012) to separately evaluate con-

textual support antecedents of organizational and community

embeddedness. Although embeddedness was originally conceptualized

in terms of attachmentto work and communitydomains, embeddedness

researchers have generally ignored the component of community

embeddedness(Ng & Feldman,2012, 2013, 2014).By including anteced-

ents of both organizational and communityembeddedness, our research

not only bridges this gap but also advances the multifoci view of

embeddednessespoused by Kiazad et al. (2015).

Second, we contribute to the embeddedness literature and COR

theory by offering insights into why individuals become embedded.

This approach offers a robust theoretical framework to investigate

the antecedents, underlying motivations, and boundary conditions of

embeddedness. In doing so, we consider both instrumental and intrin-

sic socially based resources and test COR theory's assumption that

instrumental resources (i.e., social support) foster intrinsic (i.e., percep-

tions of psychological safety) resources that provide a channel through

which social support influences embeddedness. Also, by examining the

role of another intrinsic resource, the need to belong, our study inves-

tigates the relatively ignored influence of personality and individual

differences on the process of embeddedness (Ng & Feldman, 2011).

Because personality profiles and individual differences influence

employee staying (Barrick & Zimmerman, 2009; Zimmerman, 2008), it

is important to identify potentially relevant individual differences in

employees' decisions to stay. Further, organizational scholars have

noted that research on embeddedness can be advanced by specifying

boundary conditions that qualify the relationships between

embeddedness and its antecedents (Peltokorpi et al., 2015; Jiang, Liu,

McKay, Lee, & Mitchell, 2012). Overall, our consideration of the

socially based process by which employees become embedded in their

organizations and communities not only informs theory but also pro-

vides insights that can help managers retain employees.

2|REVIEW OF LITERATURE, THEORETICAL

FRAMEWORK, AND HYPOTHESES

2.1 |Organizational and community embeddedness

—construct background and clarification

As articulated above, Mitchell and colleague's initial conceptualization

and operationalization of embeddedness is based on three formative

components of fit, links, and sacrifices (Mitchell et al., 2001), which,

according to many researchers, has serious limitations (e.g.,

Diamantopoulos & Siguaw, 2006; Crossley et al., 2007; Edwards,

2011; Zhang et al., 2012). Therefore, building on the existing body of

research on embeddedness, and recognizing the limitations associated

with formative constructs, Crossley and associates (2007) conceptual-

ized and operationalized a global embeddedness construct. Although

the construct of global embeddedness is strongly correlated with the

fit, links, and sacrifice facets of embeddedness, it is nevertheless dis-

tinct from these components and provides an opportunity for exami-

nation of other inputs to embeddedness (see Crossley, et al., 2007,

for an in‐depth discussion of this).

Although Mitchell and Lee and colleagues initially conceptualized

embeddednessin terms of on‐the‐job and off‐the‐jobforms (Lee, et al.,

2004; Mitchell & Lee, 2001; Mitchell et al., 2001), we focus on the

340 SINGH ET AL.