The effect of job characteristics on employee loyalty: the mediation role of vertical trust and perceived supervisory support

Although the effects of job characteristics on employee motivation and commitment are broadly researched, questions remain to the extent that job characteristics influence perceived specific attitudes and behaviours of employees. It is particularly interesting to what extent the process is reinforced by supervisors, namely through their support perceived by employees and vertical trust. Survey data were collected from 550 front-line employees across a variety of industries in Poland. A structural equation modelling analysis was performed to delineate the relationship between job characteristic and employee loyalty with the mediating influence of perceived supervisory support and the trust between the supervisor and employee, which is labelled as vertical trust. We confirmed that employees who have a strong job-role fit with the characteristics of their job will have a higher level of employee loyalty than those employees who lack a strong job-role fit. Furthermore, this relationship is enhanced by the perceived supervisory support and vertical trust. Few studies have been devoted so far to the relationship between job characteristic and loyalty, and even less have been conducted in Central and Eastern European countries. The findings of our study offer new perspectives to examine loyalty dimension. We propose to distinguish a construct labelled employee loyalty, that is oriented on both the organization and co-workers, and as such, it may be treated as a supplementary construct to OCBs’ organizational loyalty. Our study is one of a few that investigates the mediating role of vertical trust and perceived supervisory support in the relationships between job characteristics and loyalty. In the literature, the need to explore the mediating mechanisms between the effects of job characteristics and loyalty on employee behaviors has been repeatedly stressed, which we address with this research study.