How Organizational Culture Shapes the Link Between Perceived Support, Supervisor Backing, and Employee Engagement

Abstract

This research evaluates the effects of perceived organizational support (POS) and supervisor support (SS) on work engagement (WE) with organizational culture (OC) as the intervening variable. The paper applies Social Exchange Theory to explain how organizational and supervisory support function as important resources in promoting employees’ vigor, dedication, and absorption at work. While there is increasing global interest in engagement, empirical studies that explicitly position organizational culture in its contextual role have been scanty. This is more relevant in countries like Pakistan, where hierarchical and collectivist cultural tendencies dominate workplaces in forming employees’ perception of support. Under the positivist paradigm, this study adopts a quantitative research design and uses structured surveys to collect data from employees of healthcare and service organizations. Smart PLS 4 was used for hypothesis testing and moderation analysis. Findings indicated that POS and SS are significant positive predictors of work engagement; hence, they are very relevant antecedent factors that could ignite employee commitment and energy. The organizational culture variable significantly moderates both the relationships between POS and WE, as well as SS and WE. Moreover, supportive and constructive cultures enhance the effect of support on engagement, which, interestingly, does not directly significantly influence engagement itself. Therefore, culture does not play an absolute role but rather a contingent one. In theory, this paper also adds to the literature on engagement by inserting organizational culture as a boundary condition in the support-engagement relationship for better contextual influences. In practice, it gives clues about creating a supportive culture and developing relational competencies among supervisors for making employees highly engaged in Pakistani organizations. The limitations are big because the study has been conducted cross-sectionally and from a single city; hence, generalization is not possible. Future studies should take inspiration from this study and make it even more intense through long-term, multi-level, and cross-country analyses. This study implores firms in emerging economies to see support and culture as strategic implements for eliciting engagement, which therefore enhances employee performance and well-being on one side, and organizational resilience on the other.