The Negative Aspects of Social Exchange: An Introduction to Perceived Organizational Obstruction

The authors introduce the concept of perceived organizational obstruction (POO) to fill a theoretical gap in the social exchange literature. They draw on four different samples of employees working in various organizations to: (a) generate items to measure POO, (b) assess the psychometric properties of the POO scale, (c) replicate the factor structure and other psychometric properties of the scale, (d) assess the discriminant validity with respect to existing measures of the employer—employee relationship, and (e) determine whether POO explains additional variance beyond existing constructs (perceived organizational support, psycholosgical contract breach, organizational politics, procedural justice, and organizational frustration) in the exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect framework. The results of this study indicate that the POO scale is internally consistent and unidimensional, demonstrates discriminant validity with respect to existing employer— employee relationship constructs, and explains additional variance in the exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect framework.